Awaiting my new bass! (And a question about amps)

clb1970

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I've just ordered my first Ukulele bass! I've been keen to try a bass guitar for years and after starting to play the Ukulele about a year ago I thought it a good idea to combine the two! It's a Luna with Aquila Thundergut strings and a Fishman pre-amp.

I have a question though, concerning amps.
I have a Fender Passport Mini amp, which is great with an electric guitar. It's nicely portable and has a fun array of effects/mods.

Do you think this might cope with a Ukulele bass?


https://shop.fender.com/en-US/audio/sound-systems-1/passport-mini/0694600000.html
 
Most Lunas are an octave higher than a regular bass guitar, I haven't heard of using Thunderguts on them. Is this an octave up or regular bass tuning? That amp might work ok for practice, especially if you're an octave higher. But for a jam or anything else, it will be weak. There will be as many opinions on amps as there are people, but I have an Orange Crush 25 that is awesome for what I do, which is accompany uke groups. A friend has a Peavey bass 10 watt and it sounds really thin and weak.
 
If you were getting an actual bass guitar, the answer would be no, you need a bass amp. A real bass may blow the speaker in a guitar amp. You can play a guitar through a bass amp, but not vice versa.

However, I don't know about bass ukes. I don't know whether they would damage the speaker in a guitar amp, so I will be interested to see if anyone else weighs in on this.
 
When I first started playing bass uke 5 years ago, I used a Crate Limo guitar amp, 50w, 10" speaker, 2" tweeter, lead acid battery. It worked great for indoor gigs, no problem at all for the bass with Pahoehoe strings standard bass tuning, but outdoors it wasn't enough. It was also big and heavy so I replaced it with a Phil Jones Double Four bass amp with battery, 70w with four 4" special bass speakers and very compact. Very good indoors, not outdoors. For outdoors and larger gigs, I bought a Carvin MB15 combo bass amp, 200/250w with matching external cabinet, 15" bass speaker, 1" tweeter, a kick butt rig. I also put together a very compact battery/inverter to use with it.


This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly West near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 5 acoustic bass ukes, 11 solid body bass ukes, 9 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 34)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
 
I have a Fender Jazz Bass guitar and a Fender Rumble 100 amp ( great for practice and useful in a village hall / pub venue ).

Yes the Amp is big but it is great clean or with the inbuilt effects.

Fender do other smaller versions in their dedicated Bass amps range which would be a better choice than the one you listed.

Like a Rumble 25 or LT 25.

Go for an amp with some power as you need headroom with any amp ( headroom means having masses of power to spare ) since it makes a great difference to the tone.
 
The bass I believe is regular tuning, rather than an octave up.
Luna says the flatwound bass ukes are "
E-A-D-G like a traditional bass guitar - however one octave up". They don't say anything about the tuning of the Thundergut Bari-Basses, but since the strings and scale length matches other UBasses it's probably tuned the same: traditionally rather than an octave up.

I had really poor results playing my UBass through a small guitar practice combo amp (Roland Microcube), but I think your Fender amp is bigger. It's worth a try - if you're careful with the volume you'll hear issues before you cause any damage to the speaker (you won't damage the amp). It should also work fine for practice with headphones.

I usually play through a full size bass amp, but I also picked up a little Blackstar Fly 3 mini-Bass combo ([FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EMSREDG ) for more mobile practice. The lightweight Fly's great to take outside on the deck and plenty loud enough for me to hear without disturbing the neighbors. I believe others here have reported the Fly to be loud enough to work with a uke group, but my search fu is weak today. I wouldn't expect it to compete well with louder instruments.
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You're getting a hollow body, so you can enjoy noodling around on it to start before getting an amp. Maybe try the guitar amp at low volume and see how fast it distorts, but I'm guessing it might not be great. I've got a Fly3 BASS amp, which is great for practice and maybe accompanying an acoustic instrument, but I think it would have a hard time competing with other amplified instruments. I went for a long time without an amp of any kind, then got a VOX headphone adapter which is great when you don't want to disturb others in your home, and then finally the Fly3 BASS.
 
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