Can a Bass Destroy a 12 Watt Guitar Amp?!?!

Today I put a 12 watt guitar amp to the test with my bass and a overdrive pedal. Will it blow the speaker?!
Thanks for watching!
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[@eliaszobinski2853]

Your video should be named: "how to get perfect black metal tone"

[@ajrockel3838]

Timjami Virtanen necrobutcher

[@DEATHMETALRUST]

What black metal bands do you know that you can even hear the bass?? That shit is all treble homeboy.

[@xXsnowyGamer]

But Does it Djent?

[@talynzkoh6013]

Yeahh Thats what I've thinking Rofl But It Gives Me an idea Lol nc👍🤘

[@dextermorgan1757]

@@ajrockel3838 good old Mayhem

[@HalfDuck]

People always say 'don't use a bass on a guitar amp, it could blow', but I'm still seeing no proof

[@CJ_YT.]

Yeah, I do it in college all the time, I’m a guitarist but bass is really fun too

[@achimdg6335]

I have a cheap guitar amp, it claims to have 20 Watt RMS, but it's not even half the size of an Orange Crush 20RT, I never turned it all the way up, but I did some damage to it by playing a 5-string on it. Yes, bass on guitar amp can do damage to the amp! Sorry, there is no damage done to the apm, only the speker suffered a little.

[@ElOtroJuanjo]

because its not possible

[@mikeroadblock]

26 & 1/2 years playing through guitar amps. Not one has blown yet!

[@TheHungrySurgeon]

I had a shitty guitar practice amp blow out after I played on it with a bass. The amp was pretty old and was not mine so don't know what condition it was in, but it blew out fast.

[@crashwebb4715]

And yet, he still gets drowned out by the guitarists

[@RudyAyoub]

words of truth

[@Prince_Sharming]

This is why mids are a thing.

[@tino8442]

Crash Webb those damn guitarists am I right lol

[@Apost0345]

@@RudyAyoub only 4 likes hmm

[@RudyAyoub]

@@Apost0345 bruh

[@EpictheEpicest]

Playing a bass through a tube guitar amp is what many rock/metal bassists of the 70s and 80s did. The idea of a guitar amp blowing up is a myth caused by something unrelated or a way for music stores to upsell you on something you don't need.

[@TheAmazingDom]

What makes basses blow up guitar speakers isn't a bass, but a bass amp. The guitar amps, even with a bass signal in, won't produce many damaging frequencies. However, a bass amp will.

[@ImOutsideTheBox]

Are you saying that you don't need a bass amp to play bass?

[@bassplayer8815]

John Paul Jones (Bassist of Led Zeppelin) used 3 Marshall Plexis by 1970, you would think that destroy some speakers but it didn't

[@HuntChicagoHomes]

Also done by Chris Squire of Yes to get that extremely distinctive tone.

[@bassplayer8815]

Chris and John Paul Jones are legends along with John Entwistle and all used very powerful custom Amps which probably helped in them becoming so

[@luukidk4850]

Still less loud than Motörhead

[@basilschreyer8807]

luuk hutje nothing is as loud as motörhead

[@PolicemanPlanet]

SWANS.

[@danielmccord8100]

Motörhead did the exact same thing but with 100 watt amps

[@juriewel4461]

@@danielmccord8100 yeah and 12 solid state whats are like 0.05 tube whats🤣

[@dalech72chalker51]

Shut up lemmy fan Maiden fans are superior

[@damienwaychester1527]

Sounds good but can it... Oh shit wrong channel

[@dereksilva5860]

Davie?

[@bradford4570]

But will it chug?

[@laynefuller]

Run Crysis?

[@mamaluigi1579]

2:12 By this point the amp farting more than anything else

[@Akousmatikoi]

Mama Luigi sludge metal guitar tone 101

[@cigarettecat3981]

You know it’s gonna be good if Michael says he’s ready

[@TheSaintberzerker]

12....UNSTOPPABLE WATTS!

[@sarpyavuz2407]

2:39 finger :D

[@bubbleglue1206]

middle finger

[@charlesbooth5233]

I thought the same

[@redacted5035]

noticed like "hm ok all settings: 10 + OD + Bass OD max ou-HEY!😠"

[@JUNKO____]

I feel like fretting the 12th on the low E would do more damage quicker than an open E.

[@mangonectar8117]

Ectoplasmic why is that?

[@thailai3277]

yeah my cheap ass amp buzzes more when fretting the 12 fret on the string

[@juanvaldez4043]

After all of that torture, he should have given a shout out to the manufacture and displayed the make and model.

[@jeromevillanueva2207]

Marty McFly did a better job destroying a much bigger amp. Hahaha! Just kidding. Cheers from the Philippines.

[@andriealinsangao613]

Hello, fellow Filipino!

[@michaelinglis8516]

My girlfriend was born and raised in Cebu being Filipino that's not surprising. But when I found out shed never seen back to the future my heart sank. I'm happy to know not every Filipino was as misfourtunate as her. Lol

[@Amdus289]

2:35 There's a secret message in his left hand!

[@mpasistasyalanci]

play with no overdrive, with a lot of bass freqs from the instrument and try slaping or finger style like a contrabass (with ''clean'' sound and a lot of gain) and say bye bye to your speaker. I ve done this in a 25 watt 12 inch guitar amp and the cone of the speaker had moved so bad (after playing for months in normal levels) that you can hear a buzzing sound afterwards even if you play guitar in the clean channel at 3. Big movement and sudden movement blows off the cone and the electric circuits, overdrive just makes the signal have louder but more and small changes in amplitude so smaller movement and less sudden signal peaks, just listen to the sound it has a lot of energy but in frequency areas similar to a guitar (mids and highs), also a lot overdrive guitar pedals or built in effects have a low cut filter

[@pineconewhisper]

2:40 when you accidentally flip everybody off 😂😂😂

[@skp413]

This is what he thinks about haters 2:40

[@perezcarpio7838]

Sxorps LL r

[@metehanmacit5844]

That amp is stronger than my relationships

[@SRNF]

Note if its a reference speaker its not going to get damaged. Cheap "guitar" combo amps have reference speakers instead of specialized guitar ones, which your test was intended to use. Also the damage of tearing the speaker doesn't necessarily happen instantly.

[@Kreln1221]

While it does add high end harmonics, distortion will actually heavily compress the signal, making it much easier on the speaker. If you want to blow the speaker, set the amp as loud but clean as you can, then repeatedly slap all the strings at once as hard as you can with your flattened palm, basically "spanking" all the strings together as if they were one big ass. It especially helps if you have exposed pickup pole pieces that you can smack the strings against. But remember, clean, clean, clean, not distortion. You'll get a much more brutal spiky dynamic range that'll hopefully clank that little speaker to death...

[@ElOtroJuanjo]

In order to blow a speaker you'll have to take the speaker above its power settings. On every amp speakers are always overdimensioned (not sure if that word exists in english) so that the speaker has a certain headroom if there is a higher power output than expected. For example, the speaker on this amp will probably be of 15W RMS, while the amp is limited to 12W RMS, being the speaker safe no matter what you plug in it. Putting an overdrive/booster/any-type-of-signal amplification on it does nothing to the power output. The power output is limited by the power amplifier and the signal only distorts. On lower levels of boosting you will hear a volume increase, because the input amplifiers have not reach its limits yet, but after that you will only get distortion and noise, without affecting the speaker.

[@shuruff904]

Thanks for this. I've been blamed for screwing up my friends guitar amps with my basses over the years. This vid will be played to prove my points. Thx! (New sub BTW)

[@BeardedRadness]

Thanks for Subscribing 🤘🏻

[@KaoswareMetal]

Congrats on your first fan mail, that's pretty cool !!

[@r9e5ne]

that was nice

[@outdatedgear5036]

Myth busters. You should do more of these.

[@richardmerriam7044]

1. Remove speaker from amp 2. Connect speaker leads to A.C. plug 3. Plug into outlet. 4. Pop goes the speaker. Sounds like a small firecracker! I did this around 1968. Yup, 13 year old kid with no brains. But it WAS fun...

[@sergejtopic2957]

2:39 look at his left hand😂😂😂

[@dailybaglimit]

How to summon demons with bass.

[@BoomChockolaca]

Once I played 10w fender guitar amp with the bass at the street gig (with volume and overdrive maxed out) - no damage at all, it still sounds like new

[@fish7679]

Love the video man, very entertaining. New sub

[@lp1177]

It is a 12W amp so no matter what you end up doing , it only output 12watts of power, that is too little to blow up a 5 ?6 ? Inches speaker (usually rated at 30w or higher) it design that way because manufacturer don't wanna anything blow up no matter what . For larger amps like 100w marshall jcm, it can output so much power ,they can blow up anything if you plug in bass. Be careful! Anyway Nice video!

[@RynoDoof]

This is a really creative video. His neighbors were probably flipping out when he was recording!

[@paulbeahm3891]

Neighbor 1: "well for heavens sake" Neighbor 2: *moshing*

[@hunterkepley236]

Michael are you ready

[@CJ_YT.]

Yeyas

[@Moss-qe9uf]

Yeehs

[@5roundsrapid263]

Hunter Kepley Heehee

[@vsfvffsg2217]

yeahs

[@stepvanjoe3469]

"I Have a Beard I do what I want!" awesome 😅

[@tylerbrah4676]

4:55 the sound of satan

[@ThunderousThrasher]

at the end, because of the feedback. My dog was "what the hell is that" 😂

[@bluecollarbuddha948]

Try plugging the main out from a small mixer into the amp and play a constant 200 Hz or less tone through it: put the amp on 10 and slowly increase the mixer output. It may just overdrive the input severely, but the constant tone should over-exert the driver pretty quickly.

[@roaddogrob9102]

I think Cliff Burton and Danny from Nuclear Assault might approve of this awesome abuse. lol

[@nicholas72611]

2:25 you can hear the partials of the overtone series in those long sustained notes. Pretty cool

[@emersonsrandomvideos248]

I hope no animals were harmed while you try to destroy an innocent guitar amp hahaha

[@anusrepairman]

Next dopesmoker album

[@hateall-an]

Like Nº100

[@lucasgondim9833]

Next Melvins album

[@MinichaudBerkimilov]

Dope smoker is the name the song, the band is Sleep, check is out, they also made good song.

[@unsenorllamadoukko5795]

Minichaud Berkimilov Dopesmoker is a band too

[@anusrepairman]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gGSai2dsaL19h7M but sleep is pretty much the same

[@MrLemondog]

2:35 I’ve never had someone give me the finger for so long before

[@elpeluca7780]

I was reading the description to see if you wrote the bass model but I could only find beard products... .

[@BeardedRadness]

Ibanez EDB600

[@elpeluca7780]

DrkSydeB thanks, it's a beautiful bass

[@TheSoxmania]

I once succeeded in nuking the output stage on a little 10w transistor amp... All it took was an active jazz bass and a boost pedal for it to go pop...

[@vapporiesat3125]

if you dont mix guitar amp and bass speaker or vice versa there should be no problem. some people even djent on guitar amps. or some plug in organs.

[@adrianbass09]

All you need is a 50 Hz sine wave signal at max volume to blow that little being. xD

[@outdatedgear5036]

You should start a gear myth buster series.

[@MusicStudent1]

My bearded friend, you probably could’ve smoked that speaker with some Hendrix-style feedback on your bass. Not microphonic squeals but the kind of feedback where the string vibrates endlessly. I SMOKED a Crate powered set of speakers doing that in the ‘80s. You’d have to roll back the tone pots on he bass, hit the right note (it’ll probably be higher than you think), stand in the exact right spot and let the feedback begin. It’ll be louder than a regular note. After about a minute, you’ll see a smoke show that Ace Frehley would be impressed with. It looked so cool, I seriously thought about sacrificing more speakers in front of an audience. ...I just never did it. Great video!

[@aidanburkholder19]

Why don’t more people like your videos, the views are decent but no one hits that likes button, it’s not that hard to press like after u view it. Come one people.

[@dingo3905]

For me, the like button is like a playlist. I only like videos I'll want to return to repeatedly later

[@ido_levy]

yea same

[@Ndlanding]

Er, I didn't like it. I wasn't going to comment until I saw this post, but for me it was like a cute cat video. In fact, when I think of the beard, it WAS a cat vid.

[@freedustin]

Aidan Burkholder yeah but it fills my liked playlist which i don't want...I only put stuff there that i will definitely watch again.

[@iMadrid11]

Unless your a jazz player who only plays clean. The bass guitar will just break-in your guitar amp speakers for better dirt tones. In the old days before distortion pedals were invented. They used to run razor blades and poke holes into the speakers to make the amp distort. That’s how The Kinks got the first ever distortion tone recorded in “You really got me”

[@ThZuao]

That's it. I'm going to buy me a bass now and hook it to my old 15w guitar amp/speaker. Thank you, Bass Jesus.

[@aarondavis4341]

Life dont get much better than star wars and bass guitar

[@anderssvart3257]

Yes, this test is really useful for me. I'd like to buy a bass, but I'm a guitarist though. And I didn't wanna buy special amp for bass guitar. Now I know that it's completely not necessary. Guitar amp is enough :)

[@trevor4533]

Pretty neat. Reminds me of the stories of running an over drive pedal in front of a cranked marshall major. Except those things did actually blow up lol.

[@RayFinkel_1]

Cool but dammit I wanted to see that amp blow out.

[@dukemakesmetal4544]

2:36 his giving us the finger 😂

[@jackries2554]

I've never blown a speaker, but I've blown the circuitry on a solid state.

[@dasdndaan5999]

bear with me, i might be wrong. If the bass is active, that means there is a 9 volt battery in the guitar itself. that means if you want to get a wattage higher than 12 watts (that is whats needed to blow the amp), you need more than 1 1/3 ampère in order to reach the 12 watts. that is WAYYY too much for a single 9 volt battery, so this might be the explanation why it didn't break down. I am not even close to being a guitar technician, so this is probably dead wrong.

[@FKJBSDK]

Hey love your beard man! ❤️ from Malaysia 🇲🇾

[@thisseagamer8165]

What did your neighbors think when you recorded this?

[@mikeroadblock]

Reminds me of my first amp in my BF’s basement back when I was 15 years old. Keep on rockin’

[@rileyjewett2539]

I used to use a Yamaha tube amp before I got an Ampeg bass amp, and the Yamaha held up really well

[@stephanopapadimitriou4789]

I'm really looking forward to learning how to play bass but so many options I don't know where to begin

[@Dre-nr3je]

Now this was worth the watch!

[@festival3051]

Thought devin was gonna send him a friendly package of Anthrax

[@alwaysopen7970]

If you can't pop the voice coil out of the motor it is OK as only a limited amount of power is going to that speaker. Make it 50W and try it again.

[@BOnEhEAdD]

Trying to blow a speaker by distorting the signal is completely backwards. The things that actually blow speakers are wavelength and amplitude, so you're looking for a clean, low frequency wave - the exact opposite. I know you don't claim to be a sound engineer or anything like that, but a good bass player should know this imo... Your video title actually has a better point than the video itself - having a very hot bass, preferably with a B string, really helps (an active Ibanez is probably ok). However, the amplification is still the key here so a combo with a small amp is very unsuitable for this. This is the very reason why speakers typically get blown in big cabs by big heads :)

[@reliczslayz]

Are you secretly John Krasinski? Lol

[@tilmanwolff-moore276]

You guys got it wrong. The 4 inch speaker can't reproduce the frequencies needed to rip the cone, nor is there enough watts to drive. All you're doing with the distortion is compression the signal into a square wave which would easily fuse a 1000w bass bin. Not 12w.....

[@mattbauckman9907]

I gigged my Ergodyne (EDB500) with a Roland Blues Cube 30 watt 2x10 guitar amp for a while and it never blew. In fact, it sounded rather good, to me anyway. It’s funny that when you try to blow something up it won’t but when you’re just using it not even thinking about it that’s when it’ll blow. That’s been my experience with cars, musical gear and condoms. 😜😁

[@DerpySnake]

Everytime I hear him say his name I feel like he's gonna say DarkSide Phil.

[@MpSniperM1911]

Maybe u did no damage because distortion is a compression, but distorted, so try to use some volume pedal or everything that make the dB higher

[@MrWuggles]

The way to get the most powerful signal from a bass is on the e string around the 7th fret, not just banging on a low D.

[@laynefuller]

That feedback actually sounds sweet. Sunn O))) vibes

[@vlaoo]

A guitar speaker is not designed to handle the low frequencies that a bass guitar can produce, so the most likely outcome would be a mechanical damage to the speaker.

[@grahamdolsen8507]

Yeah the gain would actually save the speaker because it would never reach max amplitude. Best bet would just be to pump a very loud sine wave into a clean channel.

[@rex8958]

I gotta try this. Get a distortion pedal, overdrive and boost pedal, gotta do the job. Surprised it didn’t break

[@bertrandmajorik6589]

Distortion will cushion the blow, try using an octaver pedal, mine gave troublesome distortion and felt like it was going to pop the guitar speaker....... Guitar speaker are not supposed to handle low freq..........

[@tusekofficialyt8995]

Ohhh hahaha I was expecting some big explosion😏😏😂😂😂

[@gorlagOv]

That Ibanez you got was my first bass.

[@logangreen697]

We have a new genre of metal 12 watt bass metal

[@slysendice]

I think the concern is more about running a bass head (Ampeg SVT, etc) through a guitar cab (1960A, etc). Running a bass through the preamp & power sections of a guitar amp aren't going to hurt anything because the guitar "head" isn't designed to get all of the low frequencies that the bass produces anyway, thus eliminating the risk

[@cameronjenkins6748]

I did a similar thing to a cheap 2 watt First Act amplifier to test this claim, and even though I beat the heck out of that thing with really low frequencies and strong signals, it worked just fine afterwards. Heck, I probably actually just gave the speaker a good break-in.

[@smithatyler]

I play my bass through a Fender Frontman 10W on full gain, full bass, no treble, half volume, overdrive on. Hasn't showed any signs of even getting close to blowing the speaker or "breaking."

[@murphymoe753]

I am so careful esp.on volume when using my bass on an old yamaha G100 II. Thanks I'll crank it up now

[@allanlimaverde6201]

Distortion takes away from the low end and puts more on mid and high end - effectively making the tone closer to an actual guitar

[@DeadKoby]

If an amp and speaker are properly matched, it's virtually impossible to blow the speaker. A distorted amp will likely need a speaker 2x the rated wattage. So a 50w amp needs a 100w or better speaker and it should live.

[@SpencerBrennt]

Do the test again but with a DOD Meatbox!! Those pedals can blow PAs up!

[@chrisbkream3209]

U look like Jim from the office but with a beard

[@penazorotmg7421]

I love your vids bro, and your beard is amazing!!!

[@AbdillahDidi]

Destroy a 12 watt Guitar Amp with ContraBass :v

[@harrysouter2304]

hey man , i didn’t know you were in electric wizard!

[@elliotpuckett8734]

Love the accidental flip off 2:40

[@cotoco2012]

really digging this new death grips stuff

[@greyfoxzero]

Depends, some studio flat style amps can handle bass, keyboard amps too. Some guitar cabinets can handle it but in general no, guitar speakers aren't designed for it. Hell, most cheap bass amps aren't really well built to handle it either.

[@zibbezabba2491]

I paused the vid at the start to say, you cant damage anything by simply plugging a bass guitar into it. Not a guitar amp, not a hi fi, not a bluetooth speaker with a line in socket. Nothing. You can turn any of these devices up as loud as you like and it wont do anything more than sound awful. The device you plug into controls the envelopes, gains, speaker handling capabilities, everything. It would have to destroy itself by bad design only. Let's see if I'm right. (unpause))

[@herothehedgefox]

i don't see any ear protection, mister! ...oh nevermind

[@xxXthekevXxx]

Shoulda done some slaps. I had a buddy damage my solid state Peavy with 12s by slapping it on the clean channel.

[@phillwainewright4221]

Try again playing right up the fretboard on the G string ... get that speaker cone vibrating much faster. That might do the trick.

[@unrefined5156]

So is it confirmed at this point that the whole “don’t run ur bass through ur guitar amp” thing is a myth? I’ve only ever plugged it in on low volume and no distortion.