Would a guitar cab work with a bass head?

[Jono Bolton]

Yep. That's basically it. Or does a bass head need to be connected to bass cab? And why wouldn't work, if in fact it wont work?

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

It'll work. It [i]may not[/i] sound as good as one designed for bass as bass cabs are often ported to extend the low end and/or have a tweeter to extend the top end.

I'm sure someone with more technical knowlege than I have could elaborate further.

[Marcus]

Bass Drivers and Guitar Drivers are constructed differently due to the nature of their respective jobs !

Usually the voice coils and cone materials are much more robust

Guitar Cabs are usually built handle no more than 100W where as bass cabs can often handle many hundreds of watts

It's quite likely you'll blow the guitar cab's drivers if you play at any kind of volume

Mark

[bass_ferret]

What he ^^^ said - otherwise there would just be guitar and bass cabs rather than dedicated cabs for both.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='Marcus' post='133218' date='Feb 3 2008, 02:32 PM']Bass Drivers and Guitar Drivers are constructed differently due to the nature of their respective jobs

Guitar Cabs are usually built handle no more than 100W where as bass cabs can often handle many hundreds of watts
Mark[/quote]It's not so much the power handling as the cone excursion that's different. The average guitar driver has 1mm of cone excursion, so it won't go very loud before compression and break up occur. The average bass driver has 4mm of xmax, which translates into 16 times the power handling before compression and breakup, all other factors being the same.

[Musky]

I'm with Jean Luc on this - they'll work but you won't get the bottom end. I used a Marshall 200w guitar cab, with an amp knocking out up to 175w through it, for years without any worries at all. Mind you, I was using a Rick on the bridge pickup so I wasn't exactly shaking the foundations with the bass.

Edited February 3, 2008 by Musky