Using a 50 watt Bassman head for bass guitar in 2019?

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marqueemoon
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Re: Using a 50 watt Bassman head for bass guitar in 2019?

Post by marqueemoon » Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:13 pm

s_mcsleazy wrote:
Thu Apr 18, 2019 10:56 am
ok. so i said earlier that i used my bassman 50 as a bass head. let's talk further. for me, i used to use it by itself at first into 2 ashdown 1x15's. this sounded great but volume was a bit lacking. then i started using it with 2 2x10 PA cabs. this sounded amazing but there was a lack of low end and the bassman was usually set to run a little bit overdriven. then i got a old PA head and started using it as a slave/mixer and the slave would run a clean signal, a feed from the bassman and a feed from my pedalboard. the pa was running the 2 1x15's. this sounded amazing but was a pain in the ass. i then used my friend's 6x10 with the bassman and it worked great. sadly after a while i stopped playing bass as much live and was using the bassman more for guitar.

my main takeaway is this. if your wanting a more agressive retro bass tone, a bassman 50 into any good cab will do great. if you want a super clean modern bass sound. NO.
This is good info. Some fuzziness is welcome and expected. I just don’t want to be struggling to fill a small room with no help from the PA as sometimes I need to be able to so that.

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s_mcsleazy
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Re: Using a 50 watt Bassman head for bass guitar in 2019?

Post by s_mcsleazy » Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:36 pm

marqueemoon wrote:
Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:13 pm
s_mcsleazy wrote:
Thu Apr 18, 2019 10:56 am
ok. so i said earlier that i used my bassman 50 as a bass head. let's talk further. for me, i used to use it by itself at first into 2 ashdown 1x15's. this sounded great but volume was a bit lacking. then i started using it with 2 2x10 PA cabs. this sounded amazing but there was a lack of low end and the bassman was usually set to run a little bit overdriven. then i got a old PA head and started using it as a slave/mixer and the slave would run a clean signal, a feed from the bassman and a feed from my pedalboard. the pa was running the 2 1x15's. this sounded amazing but was a pain in the ass. i then used my friend's 6x10 with the bassman and it worked great. sadly after a while i stopped playing bass as much live and was using the bassman more for guitar.

my main takeaway is this. if your wanting a more agressive retro bass tone, a bassman 50 into any good cab will do great. if you want a super clean modern bass sound. NO.
This is good info. Some fuzziness is welcome and expected. I just don’t want to be struggling to fill a small room with no help from the PA as sometimes I need to be able to so that.
oh yeah. i did a 200 person room with one and it was fine
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Drewbertca
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Re: Using a 50 watt Bassman head for bass guitar in 2019?

Post by Drewbertca » Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:57 am

I'm using a Bassbreaker 45 head into an efficient cab (15" EV EVM 15b and a 12" Eminence Hempdog). Both very efficient speakers loaded into a butchered Traynor 2x12" cab ( the top 12" opening was opened up to 15" prior to me buying it). I have it wired for 16 ohms in case I want to use it with another cab at 8 Ohms, but this combo could be wired at 4 Ohms if I felt like doing it. This cab sounded bigger and louder than an Ampeg 8x10 cab I used at one gig because We didn't have room to load in my cab with all the gear at the venue for the 2 other bands on the bill that night - but this combo still kept up.

I play bass in a loud Punk band. I play clean-ish and keep up with a very loud drummer - un-mic'ed at just onder 1/2 on the volume dial - of course the power scaling is at the full 45 Watts to do this.

I say try it out. Match impedance. Get efficient speakers. Buck the norm. Have fun. I think it will work for sure with the right cab for the application.

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