Thread: Guitar/Bass Amps? Musicians...help!

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Last year I bought a used practice amp at a pawn shop. It worked great and now I want to get a couple more. The problem is...I have no idea what features I should be looking for. So, for musicians out there that have used these, could you give me some recommendations and/or what controls I'm looking for.

I need amps for two applications: Lightning in a cemetery and PROPS!

For the props: I need to be able to input sound (iPod) and control it's volume. My used amp wouldn't let me control the volume This is important and I see a 'gain' knob but that didn't work. Bass amplifiers look good but do they also emit the treble sounds? You know...like screaming? The overall sound must be rich and deep but it only needs to be heard from a max distance of 5' so I'm thinking practice amps are still the way to go. They are nice and small but there's two kinds...bass and guitar amps. I don't know if my used amp was a bass amp or a guitar amp but the treble and bass sounded good to me.

For the cemetery (front yard): I'm putting in a FireFly 501 Lightning machine with four of Minion's Web LED floods. So, the lightning is gonna RAWK! and I want the sound to as well. The sounds will be in mono so an amp should still work here. Since it's a large yard I'm thinking I'm gonna need a bigger boat (amp). The input is coming from the FireFly and I can use an iPod jack or an RCA jack on the amp. Sound level control would also be needed.

Last night I spent a lot of time looking at amps and all I've ended up with is confused. Perhaps the wine had something to do with it but hey...

Terra
As a practicing musician I can give you a few tips.
You don't need anything that has tubes. I play through tube amps as a musician but they are meant to give a warm sound to music. Tubes will wear out and usually the amps with tubes cost much more.
You basically just need a cheap solid state practice amp. You also want to stay away from amps that have effects built in. Again, this is going to cost more and you dont need that for straight amplification.
A 25 to 30 watt amp will give you enough power to get fairly loud.
Bass amps are probably going to give too much low end and break up on anything that you amplify with higher pitched sounds.
With guitar amps, the bigger the speaker, the better the low end and high end response.
I dont know what your budget is but Fender makes some pretty good basic amps without all the bells and whistles.
Like this one.
http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/p...Amp?sku=485156
Go to www.musiciansfriend.com.

A couple of more things.
The guitar input on all amps is for a 1/4" guitar cable. You can buy a converter at Walmart that will convert down to the small input for iPods. Dont worry about things like gain. Most guitar amps have stuff like gain and reverb. Gain is meant to give that crunch sound to a guitar like you hear on ZZ Top songs. Reverb will give you some echo which you might want.

Thanks so much for your clarifications! So using the guitar input (with an adapter) would then let me control the sound volume from the iPod?

Terra
Yea, the volume should work with the iPod. I dont know why your amp doesnt.
Some amps have separate channels too. So you might want to see if your amp is just set to a different channel. It would have a channel switch for dirty or clean.
I have used my guitar amps for other things besides just my guitar and it works fine.
Anyway, when I play guitar, I can control volume from the guitar and from the amp too.

Ahh...you know what I did?.....I have the iPod plugged into the input for CD players and stuff on the amp. Never tried the guitar input. Super cool. I think I'm good to go now. Thanks so much for the help

Hallow Terra Daaaahling! I have one word for you:

GOODWILL!!

Get your bones to the nearest Goodwill re-store between now and 10/1. You will be amazed at the number of guitar amps that are turned in after little Johnny-B-Not So Good decides to drop his guitar lessons. Cheap - decent and can be weather protected easily. You will get that warm breathing down the back of your neck feeling that you helped support a great non-profit, and your sounds will raaaawk on - like everything else you do to make your set-up award winning! Can't wait to see it all!

Happy hunting!

BOO!

Hey, thanks Susie Boo. I'll pop in there are take a look to see if there's any around. I went to a pawn shop for that last one but not sure I got the best deal. They are a bit more cut-throat in the bargaining than I am.

I use my mp3 with a small guiltar practice amp at theater rehearsals all the time. It can kick out enough sound so that everyone in the auditorium can hear the music samples I want them to hear for style references. I've even had some forgetful pit musicians hook into my practice amp for performance and the balance with the rest of the pit and actors was just fine.

With the amp, if you have volume, treble, middle, and bass dials, you probably have a strong enough one for this purpose. For the extra kick, dial up the bass. You can also play with the iPod settings to balance out your sound design. Be warned: mp3 players tend to create a lot of static on the higher settings. You'll have to play with the settings to get the right balance. If it's really bad and you have a presence nob, lowering that usually helps right away.

With the cable, don't get a 1/4 to 1/8 cable, where one end is a 1/4 plug and the other end an 1/8. I've yet to find one that doesn't stop working after a few uses. Get the adapter that snaps onto the 1/4 cable. Radio Shack and other such stores have them cheaper than most of the chain music stores.

Great help trentsketch. You've probably saved me a bunch of headaches right there.

Last year I just fell in love with that little amp. Compact, tough, relatively cheap and great sound! Plus, it kind of looks good in a haunt. Plan to give them a steampunk makeover like my fog machine to help them blend into the haunt nicely.