Playing a regular guitar thru a Bass amp!?!

[dabluesman]

I just got a Hartke B90 bass amp and I tried plugging in my regular 6-string in to it. It sounds a lot better than the 50W amp I was using just for the guitar. Could this do any damage to the Hartke bass amp? I know that If plugged in my bass into my 50W guitar amp, I would probably blow it. But shouldn't the bass amp be able to handle regular guitar frequences?

 

[MISTERQCUE]

There should be no problem as far as damaging
your amp by playing a guitar. It would benefit the low end of the scale as far as music is concerned.However you would lose some of the hi's and clarity by playing thru the bass amp.

 

[Tapehead]

Last Friday nite at a party we ran out of amps so I plugged my acoustic with pickup into a bass amp and (maybe the Tequila helped) but it it sounded great. The graphic eq on the amp permitted boosting the highs to get the presence back, and whereas most acoustic guitars are boomy in standard PAs without cutting the bass, the bass amp gave the acoustic lots of tight clean bass without the boominess. Hmmm I might try that again...

 

[Slackmaster2K]

The fender bassman was a popular bass amp used by guitar players in the "good old days" .....

I couldn't imagine that you'll do any *damage*....but amplifiers and instruments will sort of take the shape of the person using them over time. If you were to play your guitar often through a bass amp over a period of a year or two, I would bet that the amp would sound quite different when you plugged a bass back in.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[dabluesman]

This Hartke B90 amp has a "Shape" dial that "shapes" the EQ curve. I've got the other dials set fairly universal, that is that my guitar and bass both sound very good at these settings, just changing the "Shape" is all I have to do depending on what instrument is plugged in. I use the SansAmp GT-2 for my guitar and SansAmp bass DI for the bass, so I get most of the EP shaping from the SansAmps anyway. I totaly forgot about Fender Bassman's being used for guitar, but if Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd can do it, then I should be able to get by with a Hartke. Thanks for mentioning that!

 

[reco]

Look at it this way....
I had a bass amp and loved the tone, Guys like Dimebag Darel and the guys from korn use a combo of a regular guitar amp with a sub bottum(Randel warhead stack & Rivera Respectivly)You could use You're 50watt for regular sounds with the bass amp for cleaner bottom end, Ive tryed this and liked it but then again I play heaver stuff so the bigg sounding distortion sounds good to me.