Guitar and Bass

[M E 5000]

I'm having a little trouble understanding something.

What is the main difference between a guitar amp and a bass amp?
This is most likely a dumb question, but i thought i'd ask anyway.

[sliberty]

Coupling caps and bypass caps might be selected to pass more low freq's. Power supply might be a little more robust to offer the additional power need to produce low freq's, and often the amp is voiced for less distortion since guitar players like more distortion than the typical bass player. Some bass amps use ultralinear OT's, some don't. The really good ones produce more wattage than guitar amps.

[doctord02]

Output power is higher and the tonestack is altered to accomodate bass frequencies in a bass amp... and bass amps are designed to run cleaner, generally speaking.

But not much differance honestly...

[mlp-mx6]

Specifically related to the power supply...

Most guitarists like the amp to sag/compress at high volume. Bassists generally want MAX CLEAN POWER. Therefore the power supply needs to be a lot "stiffer" for bass than for guitar - not just more power but less sag.

[jaysg]

Some designers will drive the output tubes with a more complicated PI/driver circuit than the typical long-tailed pair. Look at an SVT vs. a V4-B.

[Andy Le Blanc]

most bass amps require "fidelity" and a current reserve.
where a guitar amp uses the "whole" amp to create tone and "overdrive",
a bass amp must be non-distortive. A bass player I know is always complaining
about old fenders v.s. ampegs because the fenders lacked a line out,
and why cant guitar players use a line out. You can do it for bass.
But, it usually doesnt go so great for guitar because you need the whole amp.

[Structo]

Bass amps also have huge supply filtering to handle the current surge that the low frequencies demand.

So big supply, big output in watts, lots of headroom, tone stack for bass freqs.

That is reason enough that a lot of bass amps are solid state. You don't want power tube distortion or preamp distortion because it sounds like crap on a bass.