Bass amp wattage: how much power is enough?

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alexwaston
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Bass amp wattage: how much power is enough?

Post by alexwaston » Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:17 pm

Our bass player is being overpowered by the rest of the band. So she's in the market for a new amp. The question is: what should she get? I get mixed opinions: some say 100 watt is more than enough while others recommend 200 watts...

So what is enough for rehearsals with a full band - i.e. drummer and 2 guitarists - and small gigs (at small clubs)?

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Enzo
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Re: Bass amp wattage: how much power is enough?

Post by Enzo » Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:19 am

There are so many answers here.

First, what does she play now? Clearly a nice little amp like a Minx is not up to a whole band.

First, power is not loudness. A 200 w amps is like 3 decibels louder, all else being equal. that is just enough to hear, not a lot.

Next, we need to determine why she can't be heard. Guitar amps are a lot more piercing than bass amps - they ""cut through" the other sounds. Ever sit at a table in a club, and right in front of the guitar speakers it is deafening, but two tables over it is not? What speakers does she have, and where are they in the setup? Stacking the guitar cab on top of the bass for example means the guitar cab is closer to ear level while the higher frequencies of the bass cab are down at your knees.

A good PA mix or overall band mix, means paying attention to sound. If two guitars play and both use the same type amp and use similar tone, they don;t separate in the mix, they all blend together. But if we use two different types of amp, and maybe different pickups, then the tonal signatures don't compete, they complement and add together. For a bass, we might like a really deep tone without much edge, but that has less definition with a more wide ranging tone. In other words sometimes just adding some upper mids fattens the tone and makes it listenable instead of going for subsonic.

What is your PA system like? Nothing wrong with a relatively small amp for just her on stage, but run a line to the PA for general coverage. If you just have a six channel PA, then you likley lack the channels.

But on to your rig. COmbo or head and cabs? I mean if you want a 2x15, there are not a lot of combo choices. 4x10s are punchy and can be had as a combo. Head and cabs lets you be more flexible. You can have a 1x15 and a 2x10 stacked, but for smaller gigs, just use one of the cabs. I think the days of a pair of 8x10 cabs i s behind us, but it sure sounded good in 1969. Speakers are a major portion of the sound, so audition as many as you can.

The heads. Don't look at bass amps as if they were guitar amps, they are not. A 100 watt guitar amp is going to be loud. The difference between a 100 watt bass amp and a 1400 watt bass amp is more about sound than loudness. Think of cars, a little Datsun or VOlkswagen beetle can pull a travel trailer down the highway, but has to work real hard to do it. A big Chevy Suburban can also do it, but much more effortlessly. A 100 watt bass amp will drive the speakers OK, and be loud, but it is giving it all it is worth to do so. A heavier rig, like an 800 watt or 1000 watt amp will result in what I call and effortless sound. I'm not saying you need 1400 watts, just want you to consider a larger amp for tone.

Oren Hudson
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Re: Bass amp wattage: how much power is enough?

Post by Oren Hudson » Thu Feb 23, 2017 8:25 pm

Everything Enzo said, plus the following. You can't have too much power. A long long time ago, a guitarist with Wild Cherry told me that. After all of these years, I find that's still true as a general statement. You can always turn down, but once you're maxed, no turning up. Through my many years of collecting gear and playing a ton, I've also discovered that lots of power is better than great speakers if you can only have one. For example, just yesterday, I was experimenting with some cabs and heads. I was running an SVT 350 watt SS head with some premo EV 15L's that I had just gotten re-coned. Two 1x15 cabs. Sounded great. For fun, and it was nearby, I plugged in a mid 70's Woodson 2x15 cab with original CTS speakers. First by itself, then in conjunction with one of the EV cabs. By itself, the Woodson sounded tremendously better than with the standard 130 watt Kustom head that came with the cab. Then, combined with the EV cab, pure bass heaven. So with the lower powered head, the EV cab, as expected, sounded better than the Woodson. But with the higher powered head, that sound quality gap narrowed greatly. Food for thought. :)
you can't have too much bass

netrecce
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Re: Bass amp wattage: how much power is enough?

Post by netrecce » Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:01 pm

I agree with all of the comments above. That said, I suggest the following:

For your purposes a smallish Combo Amp will be fine. Anything 100W or above will have plenty of power for practice and small venue gigs. And I'd stay away from tube amps (PITA). Also, your lady bass player may need a lightweight rig if she hauls it around herself. (No apologies for gender insensitivity. Being practical does matter.)

A 12" speaker in her Combo cabinet should be fine for nearly all styles of music... except metal and grunge. Dual 10"'s can be sometimes be too punchy. A single 15" speaker can sometimes get muddy unless the cab also has a horn. A "full stack" is probably way overkill for her right now.

She'll know she has enough power when guitar players start asking her to "turn it down".
:o

ksandbergfl
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Re: Bass amp wattage: how much power is enough?

Post by ksandbergfl » Tue Apr 04, 2017 3:46 pm

Enzo wrote:There are so many answers here.
Don't look at bass amps as if they were guitar amps, they are not. A 100 watt guitar amp is going to be loud. The difference between a 100 watt bass amp and a 1400 watt bass amp is more about sound than loudness.
Another way to look at it is -- amps exist to push air, by making a speaker vibrate.

Bass/low frequencies need a lot more "umph" to get pushed thru the air.

Rather than focusing on the amp wattage, a bass player benefits just as much from more air-pushing surface (ie, more/bigger speakers). In a live band situation, trying to push a bass guitar thru a single 12" speaker, no matter what the wattage, will usually be fruitless.

I would say your bass player requires at least one good 15" speaker, and/or two 12" or four 10" speakers. Figure 50W-75W per speaker... a 4x10 cabinet should probably have at least 250w-300W pushing it.

AE1
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Re: Bass amp wattage: how much power is enough?

Post by AE1 » Thu Oct 26, 2017 7:15 am

Enzo is right on the pace with this question

I have been playing 50 plus years and have discovered that the more speakers the better the sound

The 8 x 10 cabs are moving towards "planar" reproduction, which is more efficient and sounds different to a single speaker or pair, but in a multi-speaker cabinet the interal air volume per speaker is small - which reduces bass response (efficiency or SPL)

So for stage performances it is better to have a single 15 inch in a large cabinet than two twelves in the same sized cabinet

The amp can never be too powerful because 60-150 watts of guitar is hard to keep up with

But caution is necessary because a speaker will burnout if overloaded.

Most speakers are in the 50-200 watt continuous range, so when we hook them up to a 1,000 watt amp trouble lies ahead if not careful.

However I find that one or two fifteen inch are adequate for most gigs but for real bass I use two x single 18 inch cabs

When using piggy back cabinets such as a 4 x 10 over a single 15 be careful of the loudness - the closer the speaker is to your ears the louder it is

Peavey put a hearing loss warning in many of their manuals so read and observe - you only get one set of ears for life

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