unclej Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 ok, go ahead and pass over all of the smart alec replies that you could make unless they're really good. i'm really curious about the differences. take a push/pull tube scenario. bass amp on the left, guitar amp on the right. both putting out say 40 watts rms. other than the speaker what's the difference in how they're built? different output transformers? different caps? i know that first alamo combo head that i have has bass and guitar channels and when i play a guitar through it i get a fuller, ballsier sound than out of a regular guitar amp. and right now i've got it plugged into a 12" speaker out of an old crate guitar amp so it's not the speaker. could someone splain please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyG Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 in truth not that much i dont think very simply they're just voiced differentlly. obviouslly the frequency spectrum for a guitar output and a bass guitar output are different, standard guitar the lowest frequency you'll get in Regular Tuning and without octave boxes or summat is 82 Hz (I think) for Low E. clearlly on a Bass its going to be half that. take 5 strings and detuning into account and both go down. also the upper frequency ranges cut off at different points. if you have alot of distortion etc then guitars will have detectable 7th and 8th harmonics which could extend up to somewhere around and above the 5 kHZ mark (again I think thats about the range, numbers may be wrong but the point is the same) on a bass guitar the upper harmonics normally wont extend much past 2kHz. what this means is that when designing the amp for a guitar amp it doesnt matter how many DB of reduction the stuff below about 80Hz gets just so long as it doesnt attenuate the wanted frequencies that much. bass amps the converse is true, you want to keep the low end more but the upper frequencies above 2kHz dont matter too much since there just won't be any signal up there also ontop of this most Bass amps arent built with alot of distortion in mind. finally the output trannies on bass amps will be larger for the simple reason that lower frequencies have more power. thus an output tranny rated for 50 Watts at 60Hz is smaller than one rated 50 Watts at 30Hz thats pretty much it really and even then the majority of the voicing is mainlly pre amp situated i believe. it was the origional Bassmans i think (again with the thinking :-o) that had seperate inputs for Bass guitars and regular guitars and just had 2 seperate pre-amp circuits feeding one poweramp. hope thats all helpful, oh and a smart alec reply just to round it off...erm, lemme think. bugger i can't think of anything, ill have to get back to you on that one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovekraft Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 In theory, the only difference is that good bass amps are designed for more clean power and wider bandwidth, meaning larger transformers, a heftier power supply and lower overall gain (but more power). In practice, it's often as simple as using larger cathode and coupling caps, reworking the tone stack and tweaking the phase inverter caps to make the bass stronger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclej Posted February 10, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 thank you gentlemen..and what's frightening is that i actually understood most of that.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crafty Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 In theory, the only difference is that good bass amps are designed for more clean power and wider bandwidth, meaning larger transformers, a heftier power supply and lower overall gain (but more power). In practice, it's often as simple as using larger cathode and coupling caps, reworking the tone stack and tweaking the phase inverter caps to make the bass stronger. Don't forget, sometimes they will reverse the polarity of the main deflector dish to emit an inverse tachyon pulse whenever you play the bassline to "The Pina Colada Song". This will allow the phase inverters enough time to build up enough energy for a 12-millisecond burst of chronoton radiation which should be enough to kill everything within a five-lightyear radius of the stage on which you are performing, except Terrans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marzocchi705 Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Don't forget, sometimes they will reverse the polarity of the main deflector dish to emit an inverse tachyon pulse whenever you play the bassline to "The Pina Colada Song". This will allow the phase inverters enough time to build up enough energy for a 12-millisecond burst of chronoton radiation which should be enough to kill everything within a five-lightyear radius of the stage on which you are performing, except Terrans. ← someone needs to lay off the startrak for a while... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclej Posted February 11, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 see crafty...i knew all of that too but i didn't want to loose my position as humble student to all of you gurus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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