My friend wants a bass guitar for his birthday, and I'm planning on buying him one. I was just wondering if I could still use my 40 watt Mako Piranha that I use for my guitar for his bass.
I couldn't find any specs on the Mako Piranha but if it's a guitar combo amp, meaning the amp part and the speaker is in the same unit, then it *probably* has an open-back design, which is where the back of the cabinet is open and you can see the back of the speaker inside. Guitar amps have this design to allow a more forward looking focus to the sound. It comes out the front and the back but not from the sides. Bass amps (even combos), do the opposite because of the lower frequencies of the bass guitar. The lower freqs make the speaker cone go further back and forth. Bass cabs area almost always closed-back to give the speaker cone a little 'back-pressure' so it won't blow out.
You might be able to have your friend play the bass through that amp, but only at very low volumes, probably not even as loud as you played it with your guitar. The speaker cone will travel too far and tear, or the voice coil (in the middle of the speaker, which travels in and out through the magnet) will burn out. In other words, a guitar speaker is not as heavy duty as a bass speaker, and add to that the fact of having an open-back cabinet and things may not work out that well.
If you play at low volume it should be okay for awhile.
One thing you might do, if the Mako has it where you can unplug the internal speaker, is to find a used bass cabinet (with maybe a 15" bass speaker in it) with a closed-back cabinet. Just the speaker cabinet and not a combo with the amp already in there. Then you can unplug the Mako's build-in speaker and plug in the bass speaker/cabinet in its place and play at higher volumes. Bass speaker cabs with a speaker already in it aren't too expensive, especially used, so it might be the way to go until your friend can buy another amp.
And since he would already have the speaker box/speaker, he could just get a higher powered amp-head and plug those together. That way each upgrade can be done separately - speaker cab, better head, better cab, ect - and he won't have to sell the whole thing to get another like if he has a combo.
Bottom line, 40 watts is pretty good; just get a closed-back 1x15" bass cabinet for the time being and use that.
Regards
