The best bass amp for you may not be the best for someone else. The choice is different for every bass player. It depends on many reasons.
Below are a series of questions you should ask yourself to determine a bass amp that best suits your tastes, needs, and experience level. To give you some ideas and examples of how someone would answer these questions, I will answer them for me.
Q: What is your experience level on the bass guitar? Beginner? Intermediate? Professional?
A: I am a professional with over 30+ years’ experience-playing bass live. Because of this fact, I am not looking at combos. Meaning, I do not want an amplifier with a speaker built into it. I buy separate pieces so I have more versatility with the different places I play.
Q: How much money do you have to put toward a new bass amplifier?
A: I wish to spend under $1000 on a professional bass amplifier with a minimum of 500 watts of power. Right now, I have my eye on a Genz Benz ShuttleMax 12.0
that I am hoping to score for around $900.
Q: How are you going to use the bass amp?
A: I will use the amp for live performance at Disneyland, corporate events, weddings, and occasionally bars filled with drunken dancing people. Yes, that is whom I play for sometimes.
Q: Will you use the amp strictly for practice?
A: No. I use a Phil Jones BassBuddy for practice, which I hook-up to my computer. This is a bass preamp designed mainly for headphone use and it sounds amazing for this application. I rarely practice with a speaker into the open-air of my house but instead use headphones. This way I never disturb anyone and can practice late at night if I wish.
Q: Is the bass amp for studio recording or session work?
A: Neither. In the studio, I go straight into the board usually through a tube direct box like an A-Designs REDDI Tube di or a nontube di like an Avalon U5.
Q: Will you need to move it around a lot? Does having a lightweight amp matter to you or not?
A: I do have to move it around often. I do not want to lift heavy bass gear anymore so big tube amplifiers are not for me. I love how they sound but I cannot carry them through the backdoor of my house at 3:00 a.m. anymore. I recently almost killed myself trying to do so.
Q: Are you playing with a loud band and need a lot of power to push through several speakers?
A: I do mostly play with bigger bands. Often as many as six members or more and I need a lot of power in most of those instances. A bass amp that could be powerful enough to drive a 6×10 Ampeg cabinet is perfect. If the amp can also drive a 1×10 cabinet and be small and light enough to carry into a small restaurant, that would be a plus too.
Q: What instrument do you use?
A: Fender and Musicman basses are my bass of choice. I am looking to create the classic tones those basses make but by using more modern bass equipment.
Q: Are you an acoustic or electric bassist?
A: I play strictly electric. If I played an acoustic bass and I needed an amp, I would look at the Genz Benz Shuttle 6.0-12T which has 375 watts and comes with a small separate 12″ bass speaker cabinet. Friends of mine who do play acoustic bass like that amp.
Q: Do you play a four-string or five?
A: I play both so I need an amp that can deliver the lows of the B string and a speaker that can handle it without breaking up.
Q: Do you play with your fingers or a pick?
A: I play bass with my fingers. I have never been able to feel the bass when I have played with a pick. Therefore, I look for an amp that can reproduce a warm thick finger tone and not an edgy sounding tone. I am happy if I can get a thick 70s disco and rock sound for my bass guitar.
Q: Do you use the slap technique a lot?
A: I use slap rarely. It just is not my thing. I feel it sounds thin and needs a special equalization to be potent. Most of my friends that do play a lot of slap technique like more Hi Fi sounding amps. They choose Eden World Tour or SWR bass amps. Neither of these brands sounds right to my ear or taste but my slapping and jazz playing friends love them. However, my same friends like the Markbass Little Mark II. I totally agree with them on this. This is another amp I own and love. It is versatile and might be the best contender for the all around best bass amp. (Note: Markbass now makes the Markbass Little Mark III, which you can get with a tube preamp section. This could be the best amp for bass on the market.) Save Up to 75% with Hot Price Drops at Music123.com
Q: Do you do much of the bass tapping technique?
A: I never do this so I do not need an amp that can communicate the overtones this technique produces. Eden and SWR bass amplifiers are good choices for players of this technique.
Q: What style of music do you mostly play? Metal? Funk? Rock? R&B? Jazz? Pop? Or several of these?
A: Most of these styles are in my repertoire because I play cover music. If I could, I would play all my gigs with an Ampeg SVT Classic bass amp. I love this sound. However, this amp is heavy at 80 lbs and cumbersome to move about. It also needs to have the power tubes replaced at certain intervals. This depends on how much you play. The cost can be around $200 to replace. As much as I play, that is replacing once a year. That is too much hassle for me.
For sound, I also consider the Aguilar DB750 and the new Aguilar DB 751
to be excellent bass amps. They have the right warm thick tone and are half the weight of the Ampeg SVT-CL. However, they run around $2200 and that is outside my budget. In addition, at 42 lbs I am still not thrilled about moving one around much. Therefore, I chiefly want a warm rock amp sound that I can play all types of music with but it must be lightweight. I do not want to lug another heavy bass power amp around. I have been using the Markbass Little Mark II, which is a solid-state bass amp, but it sounds warmer. This unit only weighs 6.5 lbs and fits in a laptop case. The Ashdown Mark King MK500 has also been sounding warm and woody but again is solid-state. This amp has a 12-band equalization control that is a pain for me to use but at 14.5 lbs it is reasonable to tote around. Its 575 watts of power sounds especially good cranked up loud out of an Ampeg 610 box. Some “slappers” like this bass amp too. I have also been using a Demeter VTBP-201 bass preamp with a Peavey DPC 750 as my main bass system for many years. It has always sounded amazing but is heavier and more gear than I want to gig with. Also, I have had some issues with shorts in the Demeter because it is old and needs to be repaired. However, it still sounds superb and has been my sound for many years.
Q: Do you like a warm tube sound or prefer a solid-state sound?
A: I like and want the warmth of tubes but the clean power and lightweight of new solid-state technology. Solid-state technology for bass is getting warmer all the time. One reason the Genz Benz is in my sights is that it is a two-channel amp in a small package. One channel uses a tube preamp and the other channel is FET solid-state. By blending the two, I can get the grit and warmth of the tube but the clarity of the solid-state. I would like to put that theory to the test.
Q: Can you tell the difference between the tube amp sound and the solid-state sound?
A: If I were a beginning bass player, I would probably not be able to tell the difference between a tube amp and a solid-state amp. And for the beginner it does not really matter. However, after much experience and after owning many different amps, I do hear the difference. Therefore, it is a question of finding the best lightweight, inexpensive, most powerful, warm sounding bass amplifier I can get.
Q: What kind of speaker cabinet do you plan to play through?
A: The reason I do not buy combo bass amps anymore is because I need versatility. One night I am at a rehearsal. The next night I am playing a small restaurant where the manager judges you as soon as he sees how big your speakers are. Then the next day I am playing on a football field in front of 1000 people. Therefore, the best bass amp for me is one that can handle all those situations. That means I need a powerful amp that sound good loud or soft. In addition, it means I need to be able to run a 6×10, 4×10, 1×15, or 1×10 bass speaker cab with no problems. Save Up to 75% with Hot Price Drops at Music123.com
If I were just beginning or I did not play so many different situations, I would look at combo amps. I like Ashdown and Markbass for combos. The new Acoustic Amplification amps sound good and are dirt cheap. I do not like the sound of Gallien-Krueger, Hartke, Ampeg, or SWR combos because I do not feel these amps cut a live band mix well. They could be fine for practice or rehearsal.
(I always check here too. I bought an Ampeg SVT-3PRO bass amp here a while back for under $700. That’s $300 under what they normally go for. I just made an offer and they went for it.)