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Hi folks,
I think it has been discussed before somewhere but I´d like to know if some of you are using a bass-amplifier with your guitar.
Genzler makes cool stuff and I saw this one: Genzler Kinetix 800. Tons of clean headroom and tubes included.
I just dont know if the EQ is in the "right places" for guitar.
Best,
lapideus
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06-22-2026 11:02 AM
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I've been using an Acoustic Image Focus 1 (Series II) head -- which was designed/marketed as a bass amp -- for guitar, I'm very happy with it. But tbh I almost never touch the EQ when using it for guitar; I leave every knob in the noon position, just turn the hi-pass filter up a bit, and it sounds lovely through an old Altec-Lansing 12" driver in a Flite Sound cabinet.
I also own a tc electronics BQ500 bass head which several folks on this site have claimed makes an excellent guitar amp, but I've never tried it for that purpose (yet).
The Polytone MiniBrute III that I've owned since 1980 was originally purchased because I needed something that would work for bass, so to my mind that's a bass amp...but obviously they work great for jazz guitar also.
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I use a TC Electric BAM200 for gigs.
I’m confident, if it’s got eq knobs, I can get a usable tone from any amp.
I’m not picky about tone, I have a wide range of acceptable tone. The room colors tone and the people eating dinner don’t care 15% as much as we do. So anything clean and but not shrill, I can work with.
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I also have two Bam200, use one for bass gigs, the other for guitar gigs with a Toob BG Metro speaker. Easily giggable sound.
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I use a Trace Elliot ELF bass head for both guitar and bass.
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While AI founder Rick Jones was a double bass player and AI amps were much used by bassists, his amps are full range and were not marketed specifically as bass amps. This is from the Series II manual:
Originally Posted by Bob_Ross
"Yours is a high fidelity amplifier with full-range frequency response and low distortion and noise that will accurately amplify your sound. Onboard EQ is
sufficient to overcome room acoustics and subtly shape the sound of your
instrument."
In the '80s I bought a Polytone Baby Brute because it was smaller and lighter than other amps that could play at gig volumes, and a Mini Brute IV because it sounded much better than the BB, although nowhere near as small and light.
Danny W.
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Old ones with simple eq, tend to sound good. I'd be wary of modern ones because of your eq worries.
pS, buy a polytone.
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I stand corrected. Originally Posted by Danny W.
In fact, I just read through the entire User Manual and noticed that AI was almost conspicuously coy about not referring to any particular instrument...there was one sentence that referred to "electric and acoustic guitars or basses" and everywhere else it just said "your instrument".
Since I bought my AI from Gollihur Music, a shop in New Jersey that specializes in equipment for upright bassists, it never occurred to me that the amp was built for anything else, and I even asked Bob Gollihur to confirm that the head would work for electric bass before I bought it!
I've owned it for over 20 years yet it's only been in the last ~4 years that I first tried it as a guitar amp...but I've been very pleasantly impressed with its performance as one.
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I've used the SWR Strawberry Blonde on lots of gigs (it's basically a bass amp) and it sounds wonderful.
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I use an old 3 knob Polytone MBIII (ie with the 15" speaker) for both.
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+1 for BAM200. Not the loudest among the 200W Class D bass head crop, but the sweetest-sounding. Despite market positioning as a bass amp, my clan uses it for everything: acoustic and electric guitar, keyboards, power amp for modelers, PA...
Amp manufacturers have thick skulls, with no ears and no e-mail addresses. With on-board reverb, the BAM200 would be touching the Holy Grail of jazz guitar amplification. Polytone replacement therapy with no side effects.
I've also used the Elf (colored sound, pricey), Gnome (louder but less civilized), G+K MB200 head (discontinued?; great for bass, sterile for guitar) and Darkglass Microtubes 200 (a bit larger, more expensive, my best bass tester.)
To be honest, I've also played bass through some guitar amps, like DV Mark Micro 50 and Quilter TB202. No issues. Class D covers the whole frequency spectrum and beyond, so differences come from the preamp and eq settings.
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TBH, the amplifier really doesn't matter much. Even an old Fender tweed chassis was pretty much flat (maybe +/- 3 dB) between 40 and 10kHz. It's the speaker and cabinet that determine the major tonal characteristic of an amplifier, especially at the bottom. Even the best single driver guitar cabs don't have much energy above 5 kH, and they're several dB down from 80 Hz to the bottom of their range. The lowest note on a standard 4 string bass is 41.2 Hz at concert pitch, so that's pretty much the 3 dB down point for even the best old school single driver bass amps. The lowest note on a 4 string bass is 41.2 Hz, and a 6 string guitar only goes down to 82.4 Hz. So a guitar amp can do justice to a 6 string guitar if the bass is tight and well controlled. Sadly, most single driver combo amps are not. They put out a lot of low order harmonic distortion that makes a guitar or a bass sound fatter at the bottom than it is - and entry level bass amps are even worse at this than guitar amps.
I grew up believing that fat, thumpy bass was cool and sounded great for jazz guitar. I had a 4x10 Magnatone with 4 6L6s when I was a sophomore in high school, and I went to a B15N when I was a senior. I was playing a 175 at the time, and I really thought that the dull, flat, lifeless tone I got from these amps was great. When the leader I worked for made me buy a more appropriate amp for the pop stuff and rock I had to play fior weddings etc, I grabbed a Kustom 150 2x10 and discovered a new world of tone. Sadly, the bass sucked - so I was stuck between the two. Bass amps were fat at the bottom and lifeless above. With a few notable exceptions (like a Twin), guitar amps were shrill at the top and thin at the bottom.
Modern bass players use and need a full frequency spectrum. Their instruments are much better and their tone is far more musical. So they need full frequency amplification, and we now have bass amps with tweeters and flat response from 20 to 20 kHz. These bass amps are fantastic for jazz guitar. Along the way, their evolution was fascinating. I went through Bassman 2x12, Bag End, SWR Baby Baby Blue, G-K MB150, early Genz-Benz combo amps, Phil Jones Cub and Briefcase, and several more. As nothing really thrilled me, I continued to use an early Boogie (Mk 0), a Twin, and a Vibrolux for many years while searching for a bigger but tighter bottom end to go with the midrange and treble I was getting from the best guitar amps. Bass amps just didn't do justice to the upper midrange and high end of good archtops.
Then I switched to 7 strings in the early '90s and began to realize that the bottom end of a guitar should sound like the rest of it but lower in pitch. Thumpy, flabby bass is not pleasant. I bought a RE 10 cab in about 2000 and discovered really tight bass. After that, I went for a series of bass cabinets that had at least some high end, like RevSound and Bag End. Heads weren't the problem, since they'e all essentially FRFR amplifiers. The front end seems to determine the character of the amp, with FET preamps and tubes leading the pack for rich, realistic, warm amplification of fine jazz archtops. So I still use the RE 10 and the RevSound, along with a Quilter BlockDock 12HD and a Toob.
If I were still gigging heavily and playing big venues, I'd be using a modern bass amp like Eden, MarkBass, Aguilar, Phil Jones etc with a reverb pedal for dry rooms. My biggest heads (BQ500, EG250, ToneBlock 202) through my RE or RevSound are every bit as good - I just like the convenience of a single box in one carry bag. I just sold my trusty old Twin, which was as fine for bass as it was for guitar if you like old school fat bass. For smaller venues and low volume home playing, I'd be using a small modern bass combo with a tweeter and a reverb pedal up front. So yes, a modern bass amp is great for jazz guitar, as long as it has a tweeter or a wide range driver. If you're playing a solid body and you want a fat and thunky tone, an old style single driver bass amp is probaby fine. But a decent archtop will not sound its best through an amp that has nothing abot 4 to 5 kHz.
Bass heads like the TCs, Elf, etc (and the bigger ones most of us avoid) are excellent for guitar if paired with an appropriate cab. They just need full frequency flat response speakers and cabs to do justice to an archtop. The FET front ends in the TC amp heads sound fantastic, I have both a BAM200 and a BQ500, and the tone from either one is outstanding - warm, rich, full, and sweet. I had an Elf and thought it was fine but audibly compressed and a bit sterile.Last edited by nevershouldhavesoldit; 06-24-2026 at 11:28 PM.
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Bingo... duck drops (not that $100 is what it used to be). Yeah, I know, time passes quickly. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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I play my 175 copy through my Hartke Hydrive 210 often, and it sounds great
I actually play it through that more than I play it through my Boogie or TM Twin.
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Too funny! In 1969 I was looking for players in the DC area to form a jazz group identical to the one I'd had previously, but I was having no luck. My sales guy at Chuck Levin's told me about another jazz guitarist who was looking for a guitar player to form a pop/rock/soul/jazz group, with the claim that there were lots of potential gigs to be had. I wasn't really interested but had no other prospects so we got together, formed the group, there were lots of prospects and we did many gigs. At the time I had a drip-edge Bandmaster while the other player had a same year Twin Reverb with JBLs. The BM struggled to keep up and weighed a metric ton. Our first gig was in a firehouse, four flights up a very narrow and curvy staircase. Getting the BM cab up it was a nightmare, down again wasn't any better. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
The sales guy had a solution he said I'd probably hate, but to keep an open mind, take it home, do a gig, return it for full price if it didn't work for me. He didn't lie. It had no trouble putting me on top of the band when I need that, was trouble-free, and with a pair of Altecs gave me sounds that worked for what we were doing. I spent the next 4+ years gigging with it:
What it replaced:
Danny W.
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Yessir, that’s my baby! It did the job, but they had a lot of noise (mostly hissing). Every time I see one, I feel terrible that the Nauga never made the endangered species list. Now they’re extinct Originally Posted by Danny W.
The sales guy had a solution he said I'd probably hate, but to keep an open mind, take it home, do a gig, return it for full price if it didn't work for me. He didn't lie. It had no trouble putting me on top of the band when I need that, was trouble-free, and with a pair of Altecs gave me sounds that worked for what we were doing. I spent the next 4+ years gigging with it:
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Back when I was playing a es175 I played through a Fender Sidekick 65 Bass amp I worked just fine.
It was damaged in shipment and was destined to the dump. A new case a 12-inch speaker. horn tweeter, and the chassis cut down to as small as I could get it.Last edited by BBGuitar; 06-26-2026 at 02:13 PM.
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Did you prefer the 12" speaker with the 175? Originally Posted by BBGuitar
Back when I was playing a es175 I played through a Fender Sidekick 65 Bass amp I worked just fine.
It was damaged in shipment and was destined to the dump. A new case a 12-inch speaker. horn tweeter, and the chassis cut down to as small as I could get it.
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Never gave it any thought, It's what I had on hand. Originally Posted by garybaldy
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No no no! You SHOULD have used a Dual Showman! Originally Posted by Danny W.
Too funny! In 1969 I was looking for players in the DC area to form a jazz group identical to the one I'd had previously, but I was having no luck. My sales guy at Chuck Levin's told me about another jazz guitarist who was looking for a guitar player to form a pop/rock/soul/jazz group, with the claim that there were lots of potential gigs to be had. I wasn't really interested but had no other prospects so we got together, formed the group, there were lots of prospects and we did many gigs. At the time I had a drip-edge Bandmaster while the other player had a same year Twin Reverb with JBLs. The BM struggled to keep up and weighed a metric ton. Our first gig was in a firehouse, four flights up a very narrow and curvy staircase. Getting the BM cab up it was a nightmare, down again wasn't any better.
The sales guy had a solution he said I'd probably hate, but to keep an open mind, take it home, do a gig, return it for full price if it didn't work for me. He didn't lie. It had no trouble putting me on top of the band when I need that, was trouble-free, and with a pair of Altecs gave me sounds that worked for what we were doing. I spent the next 4+ years gigging with it:
What it replaced:
Danny W.
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This pic has me thinking about the relationship between what we played and what we drove. I’m a small car guy, which severely limited my choice of amps. In high school and before, we had the luxury of our parents’ Chevys etc. So even my Magnatone 4x10 had a home in the trunk with the drum set and other amps & guitars / basses. Originally Posted by Woody Sound
But I drove a ratty ($400) ‘57 Porsche in college, shoving the B15 onto the folded back seat with my girlfriend so the 175 could ride up front. I finally got a better car my senior year - a Mini Cooper (which was 10’ long bumper to bumper - the originals were considerably smalller than the current ones). Same issue!
When I got the Kustom 150 a few years later, I bought a Fiat 850 spider and the amp barely fit in the passenger seat standing on its side, with a Tele wedged into the footwell leaning against it. When I could put the top down, I could stand the 175 up in front of the amp and belt / tie them to the seat. I swear that 175 loved the wind in its hair - it sounded even better after a top down sunset drive to a gig . But in winter or rain, I couldn’t take it unless another band member drove me - so I used the Tele on almost every gig of any kind until I got a bigger car (Fiat 124).
Maybe this would be a good thread. How did you all get around with huge amps when we were kids?
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Originally Posted by Woody Sound
When I was 15-17 years old, my amp was a Dual Showman cabinet (2x15" with JBL D-130) driven by a silverface Bassman 50 head. I used that rig for both guitar and bass. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
And once I turned 16 I drove my Mom's 1970 Volkswagen Beetle. Which meant I almost always had to get a lift to gigs or rehearsals from one of my bandmates, or from my Dad, because they had larger cars.
But in the summer of 1976 I was playing guitar for the Clarkstown Summer Theater Festival who were putting on their annual show(s), so that amp spent several weeks at the auditorium...and when the run was over and I had to get my amp out of the theater, my Dad was out of town. Since my bandmates weren't involved in that theater production, I didn't feel like I could call on them to assist.
So, with the help of a fellow theater kid, we managed to stuff the Dual Showman cabinet into the back seat of the Volkswagen. It only took about 20 minutes.
It then took me three days to get the Dual Showman out of the Volkswagen! Not kidding.
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It took me almost that long to get my girlfriend out of the back seat of my Mini Originally Posted by Bob_Ross
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I appreciate the small car issue. Back in the 80's I owned a '74 Alfa Romeo GTV. It was one of my most favorite cars ever-modded to Weber carbs, Shankle cams and headers.
At the time I had a Bandmaster and a Les Paul, it was a tight squeeze, but the sheer joy of driving it 50 miles home at 2:00 am was worth it!
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Although I'm a classic-era Pininfarina fan, this Bertone beauty is an all-time favorite of mine. Your gear must have been heavy, judging by the raised suspension. Also extra protection under the oil pan? My early '70s car was a Lancia Flaminia Berlina 2.5 litre. Six seats and ample trunk space, but at that point my short career in a rock band was but a memory from bachelor days.
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