Crayon Sky Music

I have some questions about the features of some bass amps.?

What does contour do? What does a compressor knob do? What does a horn do? What is the tuner out for? What does the line out do? I’ve been playing bass for a few years and need a new amp. I am currently looking at the Fender Bassman 150 combo. I was just wondering. *The Fender Bassman does contain all of these features.

Ok so:
Contour is usually the equivalent of a “one knob EQ” that comes after the regular eq settings. Explaining it in any more detail would only be confusing…just consider it part of your EQ.

Compression does exactly what its named after…it compresses or “squeezes” your signal. Notice as you turn up the compression the volume difference between softly plucked notes and hard plucked notes becomes less and less. It makes the notes you play sound more consistent and uniform in volume…but while it does this it tends to take away from the “dynamic” of playing, which is the softness or loudness you choose to play at certain times.
It also tends to make the lowest notes you play more clear and defined.

Tuner out is a jack that you can plug a tuner into so that you can leave the tuner on at all times and it wont change the tone (or turn off) your signal.

Bass amps have two stages of amplification…pre-amp and power amp.
The pre-amp is the area where you EQ your tone and compress it…then the power amp makes it loud into the speakers…. the Line out jack taps in after the pre-amp, but before the power amp…so its a quiet signal thats already been eq’ed. This is usually used for either recording or live instead of mic’ing up the cabinet, or sometimes guys that need more power will buy just a poweramp and then use the pre-amp out from their old amp in series.

And the horn is a type of speaker….its the equivalent to a tweeter in your car system. It handles all the high frequencies coming out of your amp. If there is a knob on the amp marked horn it is just a volume controll for the horn in the cabinet…turning it up will make the highs more clear and “stingy”. While turning it down or off will make the overall tone more bass-y and warm.

Jammin on my bass with my distortion pedal