- jpleong
If the direct out defeats the speaker, in most bass amps, that probably means it's just a headphone output or the effects loop output. Most, if not all the bass amps I see under $300 are outfitted this way. Not all is lost, as most sub-$300 bass amps don't have enough power or a large enough speaker to be useful on a loud stage anyway.
With the $300 and above price range you get a lot more options and most come equipped with an XLR-direct output that does not defeat the speaker. The Fender Rumble 75 is $250 and has a 1/4" jack line-out but you'd need a D.I. box to get it into your soundboard. Which leads me to the next point...
The easiest way for a church to do this is to use a high quality direct (D.I.) box. Simply tap the signal coming from the bass guitar into the direct box, then use the D.I. Box's output to run it to the input of whatever bass amp you want. This is actually ideal for the sound person, as he or she can get a clean signal while the bassist can use the amp controls to dial-in whatever tone he or she likes. A nice, high quality D.I. box is generally $100 or more.
JP
Currently I'm playing at my church and they want to look into buying a new amp. Its a small setting and mostly all I need is a good direct out, however my music pastor wants an amplifier that does not defeat the internal speaker when using the direct out to the board. This however doesn't match up with pretty much everything he's looked at.
Looking for some pointers or ideas for what to look at. Again the main issues are we want to run direct to the board but still have a little "stage volume" as there are no real monitors avaliable where I play from.
Thanks in advance for any input.