Do I need a bass amp?

Blueingreen

You could look for one of the old Peavey Microbass amps.  I used to use them for playing in the house.  Decent sound and very portable. I played them for years and can remember absolutely no issues.

The big potential attraction is that if you can find one I suspect they go very cheap.  I think they cost around £130 20 years or so ago, probably equivalent to around £200 now, but I advertised a couple locally at £25 each a few years ago and got no takers.

stickyfiddle

I'll go the other way and say "not necessarily" but add that it depends how you practise.

I'm playing bass in a rock & soul band but don't have an amp. 

The Bassrig is my #1 preamp for live - that's happy going into a house amp or just DI-ed (or preferably both!). At home I usually plug that or an HX Stomp into a Yamaha THRii. For recording I'll go straight into Helix Native. If I need to do some practice outside the studio or my own house I'll either take laptop and headphones or the THR and run it off the onboard battery. 

Between all of that I haven't even considered a "proper" bass amp

UnclePsychosis

My home practice solution is now a good quality preamp into a powered speaker (a yamaha hs7 in my case).

Works really well. 

pintspiller

I used to play bass through my guitar amps. No ill effects but it generally wasn't loud. I did have a component fire on the board of my Marshall 80v playing bass through it at a club (the Marshall couldn't keep up with my mates JCM900 50w twin).

Stratavarious

Plenty of old Trace Elliott gear for sale online.

But Boss Bass Cube, Fender Rumble, etc out there too.   Seems a waste of a good bass to play it through a boxy guitar amp,  you also need the bass amp headroom for clean transient handing for any popping and slapping which distort a guitar amp.

At home I use a DI box into the home studio desk and monitors most of the time although I have my gigging rig there too. Nice pure sound.

Creed_Clicks

At low volumes, a guitar amp should be ok, but the Blackstar Fly Bass is good, and you can jam along to external audio with it.

Teyeplayer

I picked up a Warwick gnome and an Ashdown cab in the sales last year. Admittedly came to a little bit more than a secondhand trace Elliot. However, it sounds good, is ideal for home use and I now have an easy to lug bass rig for rehearsals and small gigs if I ever become more than a part-time bassist. I’ve also met a few regular bass players who swear by the same amp as a great grab and go rig, so that has reinforced that I made the right choice. 

4on6

Did you say you have an amp for acoustic?? In my experience they generally work very well for low level bass.
I’ve used an AER and a Fishman in the past and they worked well.. wouldn’t want to push the speakers with a loud drummer.

Ossyrocks

ICBM said:

CaseOfAce said:

Phil McKnight podcast the other week he stated that the Fender Rumble bass amps have decimated the home bass amp market cos they are so good in terms of sound, quality and price.

Having tried both together, the Rumble 15 is a nice little amp and sounds pretty good... until you hear the Rumble 25. Admittedly the 25 is literally twice the physical size - although surprisingly it still has an 8" speaker - but the sound is in a totally different league. The 15 is a good bedroom amp, but the 25 is a genuinely good-sounding proper bass amp, which you could use for a recording session or probably even a small jazz gig or something. Even the overdrive setting is decent - it's not over the top, and although there's no control other than the push button for it, it responds well to the instrument volume.

The only reason I didn't buy the 25 is because it's almost exactly the same size and only 1Kg lighter than my - admittedly far more expensive, and fitted with a neodymium speaker which brought the weight down a lot - Ibanez Promethean 5110, which is 500W and a really sophisticated amp. (But still doesn't have an overdrive setting!)

I’ve recently upgraded from the Rumble 15. I now have a Phil Jones Bass Double Four in the lounge. It’s a fantastic bit of kit for home practice. They aren’t cheap though.

Rob