using guitar as bass?

hi, im sure this is a really dodgy question. can a guitar be used as a bass? i understand about downtuning it by an octave, but does anyone know if it would actually be decent enough as a bass?

When you try to tune down the lower E,A,D-strings one octave, they won't have any tension anymore to make a sound whatsoever, so a guitar can not be used as a bass, unfortunately!

I can remember many years ago that you can use a slap technquie on the lower string to creat a bass sound. I have done it myself however you must be carful not to create string noise or it will sound sh*t. But, as for tune down no way it will sound sluggish and your pick ups will contect to the strings due to it been magnic caused by eltric.

They you go

I suppose you could get and Octave pedal but this still makes the guitar's original sound come through with the octave below in the background. Other than that I'm not sure it can be done.

I think using a guitar as a bass w/out changing the tuning or anything can be very cool in some cases.

yeah, you can still use bass techniques, without lowering the tuning. pitch shifter pedals can give the octave below, mixed in with the original signal, but a Whammy pedal (made by Digitech) can slide between the real note (toe up) and the octave below (toe down). You can keep the toe down to have just the octave below. Fiddle with the settings and you can have the octave above, two octaves above, and other stuff. I'm not entirely sure of all the stuff it can do - I have a whammy pedal built into the Digitech RP200a, and that is pretty versatile.

http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/whammy/2453

This is it. I'd imagine that pitch bend means that it can be up to two octaves above, or 3 octaves below. These would make pretty extreme sounds, such as those Tom Morello is known for.

Personally, I recommend you buy the RP200a - It was £110 when I bought it two years ago, and now I think it is about £80. It does so much stuff. If you've got a small rubbish amp, then you can use the many amp settings to give yourself the exact sound you are after. Acoustic simulator, compression, delay, reverb, expression pedal, wah, pick up simulator, EQ, cabinet simulator and noise/swell gates, loads of other effects (chorus, phaser, tremelo, etc to the more unusual choices like whammy, synth talk and ya ya), drum machine and a built in tuner. Extremely good value and excellent sound quality. Also, it is made of metal and is therefore very durable.

It looks like they may have discontinued it now as its not on GAK.co.uk anymore but if you looked on ebay then im sure you could grab yourself a bargain.

I know that you can on the GNX4 it has a program on that is guitar to bass and it is pretty good you can add effects or whatever you want.

im sure you guys already know this...but a bass is 2 octaves lower than a guitar, in standard tuning that is....i just saw reference to one octave and wanted to clear that up...

Up the bass down the mids and treble, play on with the switch on the neck pickup, get the thickest strings you can handle and maybe a pitch shifter as blackholesun mentioned.

Never tried it - might sound terrible and won't be as good as having a bass. A super cheap bass will probably pull it off better than any guitar anyway.

I used to have this one pedal but i cant remember the name of it but it had like 300 diffrent affects on it and one of them changed the guitar into bass, it was okay but like doz said you can pick up a bass for $100.00

Though I'm pretty sure it is still inadequate compared to using a real bass guitar and bass player, however I believe the purpose of this thread is to give an alternative option aside from the obvious solution of using a bass guitar. I found that using a preset specifically for the purpose of modelling a bass sound from guitar using a Boss BR-600 digital recorder to be workable in laying recorded tracks. Latency, or real time signal delay can be somewhat an issue but tweaking the tracks by quantizing can alleviate this problem. I posted a song in my My Space page using the technique described above. http://www.myspace.com/joelkops. I hope this helps...

I found the same as Lordjoel with both the BR-600 and the Digitech GNX 3. Good copy of a bass but a slight delay in response.

Until I got a bass I used my acoustic guitar to learn bass lines. it sort of worked, but you are better off just getting a used bass. I tried it and didn't much care for it so i traded it for an amp... it's ll about personal preference...

I wasn't impressed enough with the sudo bass effects when it came to recording, so I bought a cheap, cheerful P. Bass copy (Tokei I think) and I've never looked back!

I've got a hartke bass...i started off as a bass player in my friends' band before i switched to guitar...its a four string Hartke and its f***ing incredible...nothing sounds more like a bass than a bass. period.

Well said GS, and your right.. how can like, a trumpet sound like a bass ? Hmmm...
Oh and I used to own a Peavey Milestone III bass, it was a blue 4 string. it was really nice and played nice. i just didn;t like playing bass, if you know what I mean.

Thing about playing bass is, you either have a 'feel' for it or you don't. Like GS, I started out on bass (many years ago!) and I still like to go back to it from time to time. I find it very uncomplicated and relaxing.

The bassist in my band has some cool bass guitars. He occasionally (very rarely) leaves one of them around mine and I do think bass is fun to play. But no, you won't get a decent bass sound without using a bass...

i agree with deefa...a lot of people told me i was good bassist, i think im terrible for two reasons...one-i play my bass like a gutiar most of time and two, its harder for me to "feel" what im playing. playing bass is more than just playing bass. you really need to be able to get into your groove otherwise you just wont sound as good.

I had a great advantage in the old days when I played bass. I couldn't read a note of music, so it all had to be done by 'ear' and 'feel'!

Who here is like me ?
Played bass with a hard guitar pick.
I did that every so often and I, too, have played it like a guitar.

Using a pick with a bass isn't entirely uncommon. Rex Brown (Pantera), Fredrik Larsson (Hammerfall), John Campbell (Lamb Of God), and Barry Dunaway (Yngwie Malmsteen) have been known to use a pick. Picked bass lines sound brighter while fingered bass lines produce a thicker tone.

Wow I thought using a pick was like pretty rare :o
Pantera Rocks !

if the band has two guitarists, chances are the bass player is gonna use a pick, because like lordjoel said, picked bass lines do sound brighter and cut through more.

I hate bass players with pick xD Suddenly it's not as cool as it's supposed to be, being a bass player

Using a pick isn't a bad thing at all. It all depends on what style of music you are playing as to whether you would use a pick or not. Picks are used quite a bit in metal and punk, but in jazz and funk they are very rarely used. Not using a pick can give greater scope because you can switch between fingering and slapping to vastly alter the timbre. I like playing bass, although I don't do it very often. I tried playing bass before I tried guitar (although I bought a guitar because it had more potential I thought), and when I first started playing guitar I more or less just played basslines, and now I suppose I think equally as much as a bassist as I do as a guitarist. That's not to say I still only play basslines! but as Guitarslinger said, you need groove to play bass, which I think I have a fair bit of.

My bassist uses his fingers. We're a punk band, but we started to introduce funky basslines and not just yer average punk root note bass line or fast arpeggios.

I did notice that they do cut through more, probably because the pick is much harder than your fingers so you get more sound.
A groove with bass is something I don't have, I couldn't get into it... My dad could play it though, pretty well I must say. He could take like an efx pedal and start playing like some Pink Floyd, it was cool. He used distortion with it sometimes, I could care less for distorted bass though, but I do like Breed by Nirvana.

You ca get a great comedy sound effect out of a bass by running one through a wah-wah pedal! Listen to what Greg Lake does with it on ELP's 'Pictures at an exibition' live album (very early 70's). I nearly wet myself the first time I heard it, it was like a cat talking!

Lol.. I might try that. The bassists guitars are here after a gig last night and I have a Crybaby somewhere.

The bass during the bridge of Power Of Equality by RHCP on their DVD Live at Slane Castle - Flea slaps whilst using an envelop filter/auto wah. Luckily there's a video of this on youtube. The bridge starts at 2:50, the bass enters 4 bars later.

Woah, BHS, their bassist is really freakin' good ! I never knew he was that good lol

And that bass with the wah is awesome !

Wow! there's a fella that can play bass. Mind you, if he slaps his bitch around like that he'll have to just settle for the drugs and R&R. There won't be enough of her left for the sex!

Lmao deefa, that remind me of something I read on UG Forum:

"If playing guitar is like having sex, that means Guitar hero is like masturbation."

Which is very true. Lmfao

Until you realise playing guitar isn't actually *that* similar to sex. :D




And before anyone throws out some bad comparisons and relations, I'm talking the act is not a similar act.

Not like you would know Doz...
Aha I'm just kidding with ya !

But,
Sex - Playing guitar is really fun, a lot of people do it at a young age, if they are in a band ( especially a famous one ) they do a lot of it. Guitar can be loud, and make many noises.

Masturbation - Guitar hero pretty much simulates the real thing, but in some kind of cheap way. It is fun sometimes, and a lot of people, especially teenagers, do it at a young age. It too makes many noises and can be loud (if you're the screamer type.)

See where I am going with this ... ?

I really aught to keep my mouth shut shouldn't I fella's?

And no 666.That's not an invitation to a bj!

lol wow strange conversation....from bass playn to sex? lol

yeah, can we kept the discussion to music rather than sexual acts please.