tube bass head? what wattage??

R

ralf

New member
i've been searching for a tube bass head. The only new ones i can find is an ampeg for 800 or a fender for over 1000. i have also been looking at some used ones on ebay. i've seen some 50 watt fender bassman's from the 60's. my main question is how many watts would be suggested for enough power to be loud enough to play a small bar or club. the wattage of tube heads always confuse me. the solid state ones are 300-500 watts, while the tube ones seem to only go to 100 watts. is there a difference between solid state and tube powering? i play guitar out of a fender hot rod deville and am looking for a bass head to keep up with it. thanks for your help amidst all my confusion.
-ralf
 
A 100 watt tube head should do fine in a gig like that. You probalby won't even push more than 50.
 
If you can find a used Bassman 100 or 135 and, get a strong 4x10 cabinet you'd be a very happy camper.
 
The Ampeg svt is 300 watts and it is loud enough to kill you. I would go for as much power as you can afford. You will use it all if you want a clean bass sound. If you are looking for fuzz, you can get away with lower wattage. Stay away from the bassman heads from the 60's. The sounds that bass players had at the time would not hold up to anything that you are doing today.
 
Farview said:
The Ampeg svt is 300 watts and it is loud enough to kill you. I would go for as much power as you can afford. You will use it all if you want a clean bass sound. If you are looking for fuzz, you can get away with lower wattage. Stay away from the bassman heads from the 60's. The sounds that bass players had at the time would not hold up to anything that you are doing today.
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I humbly beg your pardon as to 60s heads not being able to pull off a gig. I have used pretty much anything that was worth a damn since about 1966-68 including SVT's, V4B's, Sunn coliseums, all the Traynors, Kustoms, Acoustics, West, Ryders, Marshalls, Peaveys, Gallien Krugers, and all the tube Fenders with exeptions to some of the boutique amps and they all sounded good with may under 300 watts. Fuzz comes from being overdriven with loss of headroom in the tube and transistor models, and as well come from crappy or weak speaker cabs. I have made an SVT sound like an exploding sack of pennies from overdriving it with dual cabs, hehehe, had a druummer lose his balance( and possibly part of his mind) from sitting between them. It all depends on how hard you need or want to push it before it starts to crunch.
I believe he only wants to stay up with a small tube amp so his needs would not be that hard to achieve with an amp under 300+ watts . While a 50 might strain in a small club it would handle a small bar type venue fine unless your wanting to loosen ceiling tiles. A 100 would be better and allow higher headroom before any appreciable distortion in either situation. For most the objective is clean tone, not killing power. If the needs go beyond what a 100 could do onstage, it needs to be channeled into a FOH reinforcement system.
 
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It does depend on the sound he is going for. If he is going for the ultra clean 'piano string ' sound, the old bassman won't do it. If he does any slap and pop, the bassman will fold. I have never been happy with much less than 250 watts and really the only tube heads that I liked were the Ampeg svt and v4b (both from the 70's) In the late 80's I switched to a Peavey Megabass (kick ass) and then Galien cruger (yuck) and Hartke (puke) and then I wasn't playing too much bass any more so I stopped paying attention. If the guy is in a quiet band, maybe 100 watts will do it, but anything a little louder, he will need the power for the smaller gigs that don't have side fill monitors.
 
Just curious about the reason for searching out a tube bass head? Aside from the fact that they weigh a ton, they seem to be less in favor for bass, where the sag, compression, and distortion of tubes are not generally what a bassist is looking for. I'm a total tube head for guitar, but for bass...
 
i've been searching for a tube bass head. The only new ones i can find is an ampeg for 800 or a fender for over 1000. i have also been looking at some used ones on ebay. i've seen some 50 watt fender bassman's from the 60's. my main question is how many watts would be suggested for enough power to be loud enough to play a small bar or club.

***The old "it depends" rears its ugly head again. If you are playing loud rock music, you will need over 200 watts RMS for a medium sized club. Maybe more if you are playing in the modern style with enclosures using lots of small speakers. They are not very efficient and they soak up lots of power to produce a given level of sound.

***
The wattage of tube heads always confuse me. the solid state ones are 300-500 watts, while the tube ones seem to only go to 100 watts. is there a difference between solid state and tube powering?

***No. Watts are watts, regardless of what the marketing hype and music myths say. You can never have too much bass power - but you can use too much volume. Running a bass amp flat out will provide you with reliability problems and an awful sound. You want a bass amp to loaf through an evenings playing. Guitars sound good distorted. Basses do not.

***
i play guitar out of a fender hot rod deville and am looking for a bass head to keep up with it. thanks for your help amidst all my confusion.

***The Behringer BX3000T sounds perfect for what you are doing. Forget about tubes for bass. Clean is what a bass needs, not tube distortion. I own this head and it is bullet proof, reliable and has a great sound with lots of authority in its tone control section. You can buy prettier, but you have to spend three or four hundred more to make even a very slight improvement in sound.

Good luck in making your decision.
 
Toki987 said:
If you can find a used Bassman 100 or 135 and, get a strong 4x10 cabinet you'd be a very happy camper.
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Totally agree about one of the Bassmans,favouring the 135 not because the declared extra-power (in real life the difference is not 100 vs. 135 watts) but because the particular configuration of the 135's output stage wich is ultra-linear.Also,don't forget the other rule saying "beefy iron=no saturation=dynamic headroom".The size of the output transformer speaks for itself when a clean an punchy bass comes in question.
Someone posted the word "sag"...well,the sag appears mainly when we're talking about tube rectification.Both Bassmans have SS diodes so the sag is not an issue.
The only drawback of the Bassmans could be their channel 1's preamps.In both cases,we're dealing with the "classic" Fender tonestack without mid and this implies that specific "Fenderish" sound (scooped mids) wich is highly touted by guitarists.For bass,however,it's not THE tonestack I swear for,but this can be easily solved by modifying the ch.1 tonestack to an Ampeg-style one (mainly Gemini,it's a great one and simple too).
One short word about the box to be used with a tube head:you must be sure that the impedance of the box matches with the specified impedance of the amp.DO NOT play through a Bassman 100 on a 8 Ohms (or,worse,16 Ohms) cab and use only 4 Ohms.Otherwise,it's very likely you'll destroy the output tubes due to the mismatching.
A 4x10" seems OK regarding punch and speed but if you use a 5-or a 6-string bass,the 10ths lack the bottom.In this case,you'd might try a 1x15'' with a 2x10" on top.
Bottom line:to a certain degree,I agree that a tube amp is pure gold for guitar but somewhat critical for bass.Though,a well-tweaked 100-or-more watter tube can sound unexpectedly good.
Have fun,
Le Basseur
 
A story of it's own

Fendophile said:
***
The wattage of tube heads always confuse me. the solid state ones are 300-500 watts, while the tube ones seem to only go to 100 watts. is there a difference between solid state and tube powering?

***No. Watts are watts, regardless of what the marketing hype and music myths say. You can never have too much bass power - but you can use too much volume. Running a bass amp flat out will provide you with reliability problems and an awful sound. You want a bass amp to loaf through an evenings playing. .
Click to expand...
In fact,a SS 100W is NOT the same with a tube 100W.I'm not talking about lab measurements on 1 kHz and all the spec's crap but about DYNAMIC behaviour.
Tubes have what's called a "soft recovery" and this makes them subjectively more louder that the SS counterparts.Please take some time and do a search on the Net using "soft recovery on tubes" as a notion.You'll find alot of good reading materials wich clarify this aspect.
Regards,
 
Le Basseur said:
In fact,a SS 100W is NOT the same with a tube 100W.I'm not talking about lab measurements on 1 kHz and all the spec's crap but about DYNAMIC behaviour.
Tubes have what's called a "soft recovery" and this makes them subjectively more louder that the SS counterparts.Please take some time and do a search on the Net using "soft recovery on tubes" as a notion.You'll find alot of good reading materials wich clarify this aspect.
Regards,
Click to expand...

a friend of mine and I have been wondering why solid state amps are quieter than tube amps. we were wondering if it's always like that. we've compared a few 100 watt tube amps to the peavey ss amp he used to have and they were all louder than his solid state.
 
Le Basseur said:
Totally agree about one of the Bassmans,favouring the 135 not because the declared extra-power (in real life the difference is not 100 vs. 135 watts) but because the particular configuration of the 135's output stage wich is ultra-linear.Also,don't forget the other rule saying "beefy iron=no saturation=dynamic headroom".The size of the output transformer speaks for itself when a clean an punchy bass comes in question.
Someone posted the word "sag"...well,the sag appears mainly when we're talking about tube rectification.Both Bassmans have SS diodes so the sag is not an issue.
The only drawback of the Bassmans could be their channel 1's preamps.In both cases,we're dealing with the "classic" Fender tonestack without mid and this implies that specific "Fenderish" sound (scooped mids) wich is highly touted by guitarists.For bass,however,it's not THE tonestack I swear for,but this can be easily solved by modifying the ch.1 tonestack to an Ampeg-style one (mainly Gemini,it's a great one and simple too).
One short word about the box to be used with a tube head:you must be sure that the impedance of the box matches with the specified impedance of the amp.DO NOT play through a Bassman 100 on a 8 Ohms (or,worse,16 Ohms) cab and use only 4 Ohms.Otherwise,it's very likely you'll destroy the output tubes due to the mismatching.
A 4x10" seems OK regarding punch and speed but if you use a 5-or a 6-string bass,the 10ths lack the bottom.In this case,you'd might try a 1x15'' with a 2x10" on top.
Bottom line:to a certain degree,I agree that a tube amp is pure gold for guitar but somewhat critical for bass.Though,a well-tweaked 100-or-more watter tube can sound unexpectedly good.
Have fun,
Le Basseur
Click to expand...


That was good information. The 135 model I have has the mids on both channels. I use a 4x10 cab with a 1/2 folded horn under it with a 15". It does a beautiful job. I left Gallien-Kruger amps after over 10 yrs, went back to this for the warm fat punchy tones.
Thanks
 
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