"Ghetto Bi-amping" - Using a guitar amp AND a bass amp - good idea?

[Beer of the Bass]

I've always fancied trying it, as my guitar combo is the same width as my 2x12" bass cab and sits very neatly on top. Playing bass through the guitar combo at living room volume has an interesting quality to the high end that I can imagine being pleasing with some more solid lows under it. It would be totally overkill for the band and venues I play in though!

[Ghost_Bass]

The Darkglass B3K ended my search for the perfect distortion, i bet it would do a very similar sound to using two diferent rigs. The distortion works on the mid/high freqs and the blend control retains an untouched low-end. For more tonal shaping there's the B7K.

[MacDaddy]

The Boss ME-50B has a patch which is bass with overdriven signal an octave higher. The original signal can be dry and you can control the distortion levels.

Great for playing Iron Maiden songs if you only have one guitarist!

[Bottle]

I'm doing much the same thing - running clean-ish bass through a couple of 1x12 cabs and the distortion channel is high-passed through my pedals into my 1x10 combo amp

See threads [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/235876-omg-not-another-pedal-order-topic/page__p__2439296#entry2439296"]here[/url] and [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/289-post-your-pedal-board-basschat-style/page__view__findpost__p__2458314"]here[/url]

Hope it works out!


Ian

Edited June 18, 2014 by Bottle

[discreet]

Been thinking about this for a while... I assume the guitar combo (if used) doesn't have to be a spiffy top-of-the-range item? If you have a decent-sounding bass rig then a fairly small, affordable SS guitar combo would do the job?

Having gone a bit lightweight I'm loathe to start carrying more gear around!

[Guest bassman7755]

I don't know why you would be hung up on using an actual guitar amp - something like a digitech rp 55 ([url="http://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/DigiTech-RP55-Guitar-Multi-FX-Processor/TIZ?origin=product-ads&gclid=CMCy45buh78CFSjpwgodHasAHg"]http://www.gear4musi...CFSjpwgodHasAHg[/url]) is going to sound at least as good as any low/mid priced real amp, just set it up to model a marshall jcm800/4x12 or a smaller cab if you want more bass cut and find some way to split and recombine your signal e.g. effects loop with a "parallel" mode or a signal splitter pedal.

Edited June 20, 2014 by bassman7755

[AttitudeCastle]

[quote name='Ghost_Bass' timestamp='1403091921' post='2479624']
The Darkglass B3K ended my search for the perfect distortion, i bet it would do a very similar sound to using two diferent rigs. The distortion works on the mid/high freqs and the blend control retains an untouched low-end. For more tonal shaping there's the B7K.
[/quote]

So much want for the B3K/B7K! Such a wicked crunch.

Personally not a huge fan of non full range distortions, which is why I much prefer bi-amping, but for a single route solution I'd definitely use a Darkglass

There is a pedal maker/shop called Tym who make a pedal called the Big Bottom which filters low end which allows you to apply effects in a loop to only the mids and upper frequencies, which is pretty awesome for getting some cool but still fat sounds!


Really liking the tone of the Brimstone!