Recording bass through my Bassman 50

[d-bolan]

My guitar amp is an early 70's Bassman 50 head with an old ampeg 2x12 cab with new greenbacks in it (25w each). I've used this setup from time to time while recording bass, but I've never turned it up too loud in fear that I'd damage the speakers. Lately I've been dying to hear what it sounds like if I turned it up. Will I likely smoke my speakers? What should I look out for? I don't know what the cab is rated for. My friend who's an electrician installed the speakers for me and used his own wiring, etc. Any tips would be appreciated.

[dsw]

Just turn it slowly a little bit at a time, play easy. If you hear real bad distortion like the speaker is bottoming out and whacking the frame, back off, you just found your limit.
Should be ok. That amp isn't super powerful. Also the pickups and your playing style will be a factor.
Active pickups and hard picking for example will put out a lot more signal than passive pickups with fingers.
If you blow your speakers its not the end of the world. They can be re-coned and made new again. (not that you want to incur that kind of expense of course....but you don't have to buy new speakers).

The 25 watt greenbacks are supposed to break up a little bit, that's the whole idea.

[d-bolan]

cool thanks man!!

[dsw]

damn
I hit send by accident
was going to say that sounds like a nice little set-up and that bass should sound pretty cool as long as you keep it reasonably low.
(unless you like a distorted bass sound)
I love older Fender amps.
non-master volume and before.
I had a Bassman 10 that worked way better on guitar than bass, but I suffered through many bands with it back in my early playing days. It had a really crappy glue job on one of the speakers that the previous owner did. Sounded cool, but just never loud enough.

[hopeless_opus]

Another suggestion is to use a power soak, such as the hotplate, then you can drive the amp w/o over loading the speakers. I wouldn't think those would effect the bass tone too much, but it'd be fun to try regardless.

[thunderboy]

The Fender Bassman is a bass amp. It even says so in the name. If you blow any speakers, it's because you are playing too loud, just like with any other bass (or guitar) amp. The end.

jt

[43hertz]

Since your Bassman fifty is capble of putting out fifty watts (thus the "50' in the name") and you've got two twenty-five watt speakers in the cabinet, I'd say you'll be fine at anything up to ten on the amp.

edit:spelling