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Summary: Bass guitar amps are built for the frequency range of the bass. Learn more about the frequencies produced by bass and guitar amplifiers in this free guitar equipment video from a guitar teacher and band member.
Pete Pidgeon has taught guitar to beginners, experts and even at the college level since 1995. He's given private instruction since 1986. Pete received his Bachelors Degree in jazz...read more
"Now a big difference between the instruments that go through an amplifier has to do with the frequency of the instrument. For example, a guitar is pretty in the middle. You can get some low frequencies by the low strings or the high strings which are the very bright and fast frequencies. Now a guitar amplifier is built specifically for the range of frequencies on a guitar. Therefore, the speaker which is in the guitar amplifier can be very small to moderate size. It could be even larger but an important thing to know is that a bass produces very low frequencies, meaning there's a lot of fluctuation in the wave. Now if you plugged a bass into an amplifier like this and cranked up the volume all the way, you would blow out the speaker because the vibrations would be so much that a speaker this size would be broken. So for a bass, you want to have a much larger speaker so that those frequencies as they go through the speaker do not rupture the speaker."
eHow Article: Differences Between Guitar & Bass Amplifiers