Is there much difference in reverbs for guiter and bass?

[Earthscum]

pretty much in the title. I'm wondering about tank reverbs. Most reverb setups look fairly similar to me, as far as the circuitry concerned. Seems fairly straight forward until you go look at tanks. Is there a general preferred setup for Bass vs. Guitar? Or is it just a 'here are the options, have fun'?

[runmikeyrun]

I had an old Ampeg V4 about 10 years ago.  In the 70s Ampeg made two different versions of basically the same amp- the V4 and the V4B.  The difference was the V4 was the "guitar" version and the V4B was the "bass" version.  Only difference? Reverb.  I played bass through a V4 and out of curiosity tried the reverb a few times.  I didn't notice anything different about it.  So i don't see why a guitar reverb circuit wouldn't work for bass.

[Earthscum]

pretty much everything for bass is just a guitar product modified. That's why I'm wondering about reverb.
For instance, chorus for guitar is just too wet for bass. So they put a high pass at the chorus out as a compromise, or just blend it differently. Most manufacturers focus on guitar and just modify existing designs to suit bass (in the name of being cost effective).
I imagine there isn'nt much difference, but is there a preference for shorter or longer decay, tank size or spring weight or length, or even plate vs spring vs digi?

[amptramp]

Reverb is an attempt to add simulated room resonances to a signal.  The room resonances do not change regardless of whether you are playing a guitar, a bass or a piccolo.  You may have larger coupling capacitors for a bass amp and all of its effects in order to pass the lower frequencies and you may need to manage the gain differently to avoid saturating the reverb tank with bass, but the amount of delay should be the same.  Bass may require higher amplitudes, so redced gain in and increased gain out may be a good idea.

[tubelectron]

Hi All,

Well, using a spring reverb for bass guitar is questionable, IMHO. I made numerous trials to understand how can a reverb sound good and bad.

Look at reverb guitar amp circuits : you will find hi-pass caps to cut the bass (typically the 500pF at the grid of the 12AT7 reverb driver on Fenders) and also treble roll off caps (2nF across the grid of reverb recovery 12AX7, again on Fenders). This is not the case on every reverb-equiped amp, of course, but these caps are intended to avoid boings and danglings of the springs when driven by bass notes, which are not well reverbered moreover, and too much metallic sounds with driven by the high notes, which are more easily reverbered and can resonate ingraciously. Usually, the amps with these features and a good condition spring unit have a deep and present reverb sound.

With bass, I would suspect a "springy-exagerated" sound, particularly on the attacks, but I may wrong... So you would probably need a special design circuit for bass, with smoother driving of the springs than for a guitar, I think - or choose a numeric unit, maybe... I have no real experience with spring reverbs dedicated to the bass guitar, and I have never been asked for in 30 years ! So it is interesting for me to learn here...

A+!

[StephenGiles]

What on earth does a bass player need reverb for???

[tubelectron]

What on earth does a bass player need reverb for???

Well, it is also the question I was akeen to ask, but I am not a bassist !

A+!

[slacker]

Same reason a guitar player, or a pianist, or a sax player, or a vocalist, or anyone else needs/wants reverb, to sound like you're in a space you're not in. Admittedly in a rock and roll context bass players don't generally use reverb, but not everyone plays rock and roll.

[Mike Burgundy]

I think the real question here is *why* reverb is very, very rarely used for bass. IMHO it's mostly because in most settings it only adds mush - the lower frequencies get smeared out, losing definition and drowning out and pushing everything away in the mix. It also tends to create "standing waves" on lower frequencies, making some notes boom like crazy or fall dead, and mechanical (ie spring) reverbs don't fare well with low frequency soundwaves/vibrations at loud volumes. You'd have to put the unit far, far away or and/or isolate the heck out of it if using it live. Most "room-effects" caused by (natural) reverb are something we always try to kill/remedy for bass, while it is common practice to actually *use* the room characteristic for higher register stuff. The boominess on some notes and chaotic sound (while not sounding like reverb at all) are why.
Most real rooms have a bit of low frequency roll-off, simulated by high-pass filters on electronic units, killing the bass in the reverb. You could try and let it handle more bass, but might run into trouble with the higher energy bass carries, and your sound may be heavily compromised in the mix.  With bass roll-off you have a thin-sounding reverb on bass (which tends to not be pretty, doesn't blend well) or all kinds of trouble and chaos (which tends to not be pretty, but in some cases interesting). I've tried a lot of weird stuff on mixes, but never seriously went with reverb on bass. It does however work for percussive low-end instruments (kick,floor) so if you adjust your playing for effect, you may have something here! Be prepared to add some sophisticated EQ to get it to sound good though (perhaps 3-5 bands of sweepable, variable EQ), and maybe a gate.
Hmmm. I'll have to try giving this a go on the AKG BX20's when I get done refurbishing them.

[tubelectron]

Being only a guitarist and not bassist, I would rather agree with your statement about reverbering the bass guitar, mike.

A+!

[Earthscum]

Thanks a bunch, guys.

So, I'm starting to think here that a heavier spring, maybe a little bit more than normal dampening, may do something towards the way of better sound. I wholly agree that, for the most part reverb on bass sounds bad. I am resorting to using a Little Angel and my onboard chorus together to get a "big" sound.

Here's an example of how I use (or want to use) reverb. We have a song called "The Spanish Song" (which has nothing to do with Spain, but I regress...). It starts off almost lounge and ends up getting to "stadium" big. We all start off fairly dry, Fred and I bump up to distortions, then when Fred goes into a solo with chorus, I hit the (chorus), which drops me into the background a bit, enlarges the overall sound, and follows him through. Yes, it's definitely a reserved effect, and the ironic thing is my plan is to end up using it for the purpose of a "softer" bass.

So, I guess plate is out... I didn't think much about the high end content. I may just look into the brick, although it didn't seem to have much in the way of flexibility.

I actually considered making coil-driven sympathetic strings of the bass variety, but I should start with something a little more established.

[Nasse]

There was Graig Anderton "mudguard" circuit for reverb processing, steeper than usual hi pass filter to get the lows out the mix. Have not seen it online but it was two opamp filter. Music shop salesman did show me Roland D20 in multitmbral mode and how he did get reverb off the kick and bass

EDIT they say bass is full range instrument, though not always done so. But maybe cutting low end from the reverb and processing upper harmonics let you have more reverb on bass