Bass cab for guitar?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JackBootedThug
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JackBootedThug

JackBootedThug

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anybody ever try one? specifically an ampeg 8x10? Just curious....
 
JackBootedThug said:
anybody ever try one? specifically an ampeg 8x10? Just curious....
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I've had a vintage Ampeg V4 cab; pretty great for guitar although the CTS speakers were very bright and you had to darken the amp quite a bit. Some of those older cabs had Altec speakers.
But if it's a newer Ampeg cab; I have no experience.
 
I have a G-K Neo bass 412 cab. I've been experimenting with my EVO TM-50 guitar amp through it for bass. It's still hooked up like that right now. I'll plug a guitar into it to try and get back to you by the end of the weekend with results.
 
It’s a fairly new ampeg 810e….they are all eminence drivers. Might have a couple horns in it also. Think has only 4 ohm taps so it probably wouldn’t work out.
 
Take this with a heap of salt for now as I've been boiling cajun peanuts and drinking whiskey...

Tried the TM-50 as stated and couldn't even get through 5 minutes of the shit tone. The TM-50 sounds excellent through my 212/115 cab, but sounded like absolute garbage through through the bass cab. Absolutely no mids even with the mids cranked on the amp. Weirdly no low end and spikey highs. Based on that I would not recommend using a bass cab for guitar at all.

I'll try again tomorrow when I'm more sober.
 
Fender Bassman, anyone? :ROFLMAO: Anyways, yeah I have played a guitar through a few bass amps like a GK 4x10 and a couple other combos. The only ones that sounded good to me were clean signal w/hollow body guitars. Probably not going to mix well though.
 
Hang on...

Guitar cabs have intentionally-steep HF roll-offs in order to remove varying amounts (every cab's different, obviously) of the HF fizz you get from a direct amp.

Bass cabs AFAIA don't do this, so instead of rolling off the highs, you're boosting the lows instead.

Not a good recipe for overdriven or distorted geetar I'd have thought.
 
Even if you defeat the tweeter that many of those bass cabs cab, they're still commonly very scooped and bassy.
 
The original SVT wasn't just a bass amp; it was often used with the 8x10" cabs for guitar too. (No horn drivers in those, though).
I saw Johnny Winter using SVTs for guitar at Madison Square Garden in the 70s.
Pretty sure the Stones were using them for the Exile On Main Street tour too.
According to Elliott Randall he his guitar solo on Reelin' In The Years was done on a cranked SVT.

I generally prefer 12"s for guitar, mostly because that's what I'm used to. But I've gotten great tone from 10"s on occasion.
A straight sealed cab with regular all-purpose 10"s is just fine for guitar in my book.

The bass cabs that aren't good for guitar are the ones specially designed to optimize the sound of a bass. Some are deeper or ported to extend the low end response, or they have horn drivers to extend the highs, and some use speakers built specifically for use in bass cabs.

Unlike those, the traditional SVT 8x10" is a plain box with regular garden variety speakers. Perfectly usable for guitar as well as bass.
They aren't fun to move around. But if that cab is what you have available I wouldn't worry about its ability to sound good.

Bear in mind that in general 10"s do have a slightly faster response than 12"s. This tends to make them feel a little tighter and more present. The difference between classic Pro Reverbs and Super Reverbs was only the speaker arrangement; AFAIK the amp circuits were the same.
Another thing is, eight 10"s will take a whole lot of wattage and just smile back at you - don't count on getting speaker breakup from an SVT cab.

But those characteristics don't mean it can't sound great if you take it for what it is.
Won't be exactly the same as 12"s in sound or feel, of course. Not worse - just different.
 
Depends on the SVT cab too. They've changed a lot throughout the ages. I don't think it's as well documented, or at least is not as vox populi within us guitarist, but those cabs have seen like 97934793473974394 speaker designs within them. Much like a 1960 cab with Pulsonic Greenbacks sounds nothing like a current 1960 cab with Chinese T-75's.
 
eclecticsynergy said:
The bass cabs that aren't good for guitar are the ones specially designed to optimize the sound of a bass.
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... and that'd be most bass cabs by a country mile.

Some SVTs and of course the Bassman are amongst a small handful of exceptions.
 
The cool thing is it's set up where each pair of 10's are sealed off from each other which is cool. Non ported also. Of course the speakers are designed for bass so....Like I said it's semi local and almost new....plus it's cheap-lol....When using my computer rig for recording(I know what your thinking...lol) I would run a set up with a 4x12 on one side and this 8x10 on the other and it was pretty fuckin cool. I was wondering if I could replicate this in real life or not. I'll probably pass but I thought it was interesting. I would be using this in a wdw set up....this one would be my center dry cab.
 
JackBootedThug said:
The cool thing is it's set up where each pair of 10's are sealed off from each other which is cool. Non ported also. Of course the speakers are designed for bass so....Like I said it's semi local and almost new....plus it's cheap-lol....When using my computer rig for recording(I know what your thinking...lol) I would run a set up with a 4x12 on one side and this 8x10 on the other and it was pretty fuckin cool. I was wondering if I could replicate this in real life or not. I'll probably pass but I thought it was interesting. I would be using this in a wdw set up....this one would be my center dry cab.
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I think for a WDW setup you'd probably want the dry cab to be voiced pretty similarly to the wet ones...
4x12s abound - shouldn't be hard to find a used one.
Plus they're much easier to lug around.
 
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