Why Using Practice Amps Are A Guitarist's Or Bass Players Best Advantage In The Studio, And How To Tweak Them Just Right

By Mark Grove

The picture is of Errick Lewis, a well known Bass Bottom Feeder who is with the band "The Vibe Project" in Portland Oregon and is a well known session bass player as well. erricklewis.com

I was going over an old article in a Bass Guitar Mag, and thought this would be perfect for all the Bottom-Feeders out there. The Bass player talking about amp setup and volume was none other than the Old Man himself, Geezer Butler.

A Bass Players goal of the ultimate tone is nowhere near as important as when it comes to amp setup. First of all, playing loudly in the studio all the time can decimate your overall sound, and give it a tone that makes for a long day of tweaking that sound just to get it down right.


Keeping this in mind, there are a combination of things at work here. First of all your volume is what's at stake here mainly. Now using huge honkin' amp with 100's of watts is useless unless you're playing heavy metal.

So using a small 15 to 30 watt amp for blues, jazz,or hard rock along with just one or two stomps for a pounding tone, will do the trick.

No more no less, depending upon the situation.


You want amps with maybe two speakers at the most, and are 2x10's. But stick with one speaker and you're doing just fine for the blues and hard rock. Another thing is getting the right tone with your bass may mean either using your fingers or a pick so you can cut through drums or guitar work and still be heard.


Going back to small low watt amps. You can turn up these babies and tweak your bass axe pickups so they give you the sound you want and need. And your sound is based not just on the amp or bass setup by themselves.

Using the Right Bass Pickup combination:

Your bass should have at least two Humbucking Pickups and a single coil. Want you want to do is stick the single coil in between the Hum's for better overall tone depth--and the range of tone is better because of it. Having two Humbuckers in parallel, or one above the other would not give a tone that's suited to even heavy metal in a lot of cases.

So in ending, by cranking with 200 watt amps or Marshall stacks is useless in a studio situation. And you tend to lose the right tone as well. So by using low watt amps or practice amps--you can get pretty much the same sound yet it's not as loud or offensive. You also tend to get a better recording whether you're playing a club gig or in a studio setting above all else.

Want to hear great bass from a studio and live bass player who is going places? I know you do.

 erricklewis.com