Do very few people use valve amplifiers for bass guitar?

jaymenon

Most of the bass amplifiers that I see these days are solid-state lightweight affairs. Is there no advantage to having valves/tubes (in the preamp or power amp sections) in bass amplifiers these days?

Rich210

Yes and no.

I like both. The valve amps sound a lot better with a fuzz pedal compared to a solid state in their own. My friend has a 12"markbass combo which is very good, but he prefers my musicman amp in jams and with the pedals on

I get great sound from just plugging into the PA with a le bass pedal, and even my minirigs work a treat with the subs for practice.

ICBM

The big problem with using valves for bass is the weight of the amp when you get to the power levels used in modern bass amps - and the cost of replacing valves. The Ampeg SVT is the classic valve bass amp - it’s only 300W, but it weighs about 90lb just for the head, and a set of power valves are around £150 - and you will need to replace them fairly often. But they’re still probably the single most common model of bass amp you’ll see on big stages with rock bands. Nothing else quite sounds the same.

It’s true that even for bass, valve amps tend to sound louder than solid state, so you can get away with less power than you might think, but you will still need more power and weight than many players are comfortable with now.

I don’t really agree that they sound better with fuzz though, I use fuzz a lot and I actually prefer old solid-state amps, especially Peaveys. Even those are quite a pig to carry relative to their power though.

pintspiller

I use a Sound City B50+. Currently with 210 cab but previously 410. Reasonably able to carry and the only issues I have with guitarists Marshall is when he decides to use the neck pup on his LP Deluxe. But that's more mix than volume.

bluechargeboy

Our bass player uses an SVT II and it sounds AWESOME. Probably the only time, as a non-bassist, that I notice how good the bass sounds. We used it as backline for a festival and reggae bands sounded sweeeeeeeet!

The Ampeg valve preamp rack unit sounds pretty damn good into the PA.

Totally impractical as @ICBM says. Absolute nightmare to move around.

roberty

Bass modelling amps aren't really a thing are they? Would seem a good compromise

JezWynd

I've reverted to using a valve amp. Ampeg and Fender solid state amps do a good copy of a valve sound but some of the modern ss outfits sound too hi fi. 

Bridgehouse

roberty said:

Bass modelling amps aren't really a thing are they? Would seem a good compromise

I use a helix more than anything else and the bass amp models are actually pretty decent..

Funkfingers

roberty said:

Bass modelling amps aren't really a thing are they? Would seem a good compromise

The Fender Rumble Studio 40 is a modelling amp. The obvious clue in its name is that this amp is intended for recording and home practice duties. It has a bigger brother named the Rumble Stage 800.

I still enjoy my tc electronic Staccato '51.





Jump to 9:25 for the Amp B15 section.

lasermonkey

I loved our old silverface Bassman 135. The amp itself wasn't ridiculously heavy, but it was ridiculously loud!

The 4x12 pyramid cab was something else entirely and my wife nearly killed me with it when we were carting it down a flight of stairs. I was taking the weight at the lower end and she had hold of the castors at the top. Inevitably, the snap-in castors snapped out. She fell backwards, punching herself in the face in the process, and I disappeared down the stairs, chased by the cabinet. I had to dive sideways when I reached the bottom of the stairs, as it was a very narrow gap and I would have been squished!

The cabinet was completely unscathed.

fretmeister

I’ve been playing bass for 30 years.

SS Bass Amps  have come along so much I see no good reason to go back to valves, or at least not to valve power sections. I’ve had a few hybrids some of which were great and some sucked.

None of them did overdrive as well as the SS Darkglass M900.

Many modern SS amps sound just as warm as old valve amps, with 10% of the weight.

FWIW I’m playing in a 25 piece big band, exactly where you might expect to find an old warm valve amp. Don’t need one. 

crunchman

roberty said:

Bass modelling amps aren't really a thing are they? Would seem a good compromise

There are some bass amp profiles available on Kemper.  I do tend to use an SVT profile from the Rig Exchange.  WOn't sound the same through my studio monitors at home though.  Never really used it through anything bigger.

fretmeister

The Helix bass models are very good, particularly the SVT4, B15 and the GK. 
I have used my Helix straight into a Yamaha DXR10 with cab sims, or into the FX return of a bass head and a regular cab, both with good results.

The thing that impresses me most with the helix models is that different basses and different strings sound just as they should. My J stays with rounds all the time, but I swap rounds to flats on my P quite a bit and the difference is massive with a normal amp, and with the Helix.


A Stomp with a small power amp + regular cab or just a powered cab would do the job nicely.

Keefy

I bought an all-valve Ampeg PF-50T mainly for its entertainment value but it is has turned out to be a capable gigging amp despite its 'puny' (by modern standards) 50W output - at least when partnered with a Barefaced cab.

This was my setup on a recent country gig,in a larger-than-average village hall:

Jalapeno

I think Bass Players are a far less conseervative lot - willing to embrace S/S amps and quirky bass body shapes ....

and good on them !

fretmeister

Jalapeno said:

I think Bass Players are a far less conseervative lot - willing to embrace S/S amps and quirky bass body shapes ....

and good on them !

Definitely.

Partly fueled by years of dragging Ampeg 8x10 cabs around. Don't need to do that anymore.

Danny1969

Bass player in my band has got or had just about every kind of bass rig made from 80's Trace rigs to Phil Jones. Unfortunately there is no substitute for size  when it comes to reproducing low frequencies so the normal weapon of choice is an Ampeg SVT Classic and the 8 X 10 cab. Nothing sounds quite the same for a good bass rock sound to my ears, it's got such depth and warmth. He's got the 4 X 10 and the 1 X 15" Ampeg cabs as well but nothing sounds like an 8 X 10 

Be careful of the current crop of class D small stuff from Mark, TC, Ashdown etc. I fix more class D bass amps now than I ever did guitar amps. It's just too small and over stressed to ever be reliable 

PhilKing

For gigging I use a McIntyre valve preamp with a Crest SS stereo power amp, into an Ear Candy 2x10 and 2 Ear Candy 1x15's.  For recording though I have an old Ampeg B-15N that sounds great mic'd with an AKG D-112.  I also have an Acoustic small 1x12 bass combo that I use for rehearsals, as it's much easier to move around than the full rig.  I sometimes just use one of the 15's, as in this shot (with an old Trace Elliott 2x10).

crunchman

I played with a guy the other night who used what looked like one of these:

Smaller (and probably lighter) than my 12W Princeton but capable of putting out a good amount of volume.

ICBM

crunchman said:

I played with a guy the other night who used what looked like one of these:

[Gallien-Krueger MB150]

Smaller (and probably lighter) than my 12W Princeton but capable of putting out a good amount of volume.

I had one of those. It sounded loud until I tried gigging with it - it had absolutely no projection, the sound seemed to come out about a foot and stop dead.

I sold it to a chap in a ceilidh band who used it effectively as a personal stage monitor with all the main volume coming from the PA, for which it was ideal...

thegummy

PhilKing said:

For gigging I use a McIntyre valve preamp with a Crest SS stereo power amp, into an Ear Candy 2x10 and 2 Ear Candy 1x15's.  For recording though I have an old Ampeg B-15N that sounds great mic'd with an AKG D-112.  I also have an Acoustic small 1x12 bass combo that I use for rehearsals, as it's much easier to move around than the full rig.  I sometimes just use one of the 15's, as in this shot (with an old Trace Elliott 2x10).

Off topic but I LOVE that pink P!