A bass amp features several components, and you can buy them in different configurations. When you ask any bass player, they can tell you that having an excellent performance tends to depend on the amplifier you decide to buy. No wonder, many professional bass players choose the Fender bass amp as it delivers a powerful and punchy tone. But before you decide to purchase a bass amp, it’s a good idea to know the major components of a bass amp. This page discusses what you need to know about bass amps.
Bass amp components
The two major components of a bass amp are usually the head and the cabinet. The head of a bass amp refers to the housing part of all key electronic components. This is the part of the bass amp that you plug into your bass guitar.
On the other hand, a bass speaker cabinet is simply the box housing of the speaker. The bass amp head output goes to the speaker cabinet. You can choose to buy the cabinet and head separately. Quite often, the cabinet and head are combined into a single unit known as a combo amp. The following are more details about bass amp components:
Bass amp head
The bass amp head can be split into the power amp and preamp. In most cases, you can find these in one unit, but sometimes they are offered as separate units that you need to link together.
When you decide to plug the bass into a bass amp input, the bass signal goes first to the preamp. A preamp can shape and manipulate a bass signal to get in various ways. For example, it can make it sound muddier or brighter or even make it sound brittle or boomier. As you can see, the preamp can make either drastic or small changes to the characteristics of an input signal.
A preamp is usually designed with a specific instrument in mind. For instance, bass preamps are designed particularly to make a tone property of a guitar sound great. A bass preamp is specifically designed for bass. Therefore, you should always make sure that you are purchasing a bass preamp.
Bass cabinet
A base cabinet is just a box that has at least one or more speakers. Many bass cabinets you find on the market are simply constructed. A bass cabinet is usually a wooden box that is covered with carpet. Most manufacturers screw the speaker inside and cover it with a protective grill.
Bass cabinets come in various sizes. The size is usually considered to be the size of the speakers expressed in inches and the number of speakers. For example, a 1 x 10 bass cabinet means it has one 10’ speaker while a 2 x 15” bass cabinet means it has two 15” speakers.
A bass cabinet is also rated according to how much power it can handle. Ideally, there is a good chance that you can destroy the bass cabinet if it receives too much power from the bass head.
