Is there a way to hook up a bass guitar to a powered subwoofer?

[danny1436]

I need a way to hook up my bass guitar through my sterio. I have a yamaha home theater receiver and two KSW10's. Is it possible to hook it up through either of the two?

[michael hurd]

Since no one else has answered your post, I'll take a stab. Yes it can be done, there are adapters available ( try radioshack ). I am unsure as to why you would like to do this, but that is up to you. Basically what you need to do is to adapt the 1/4" phone plug to the rca plug that is used in home equipment. They may have just what you need in stock, or you might just have to buy the connectors and build one yourself.

The only thing that I am usure about is the amount of voltage that the pickup in the guitar will produce. It may not be enough to drive the input of the powered subwoofer(s) correctly. If this happens, then you will not achieve full output of the subwoofer even with the gain set at it's maximum setting. You might try a rca y-adapter to put voltage to both the left and right jacks on the subwoofer, this will in effect double the voltage to the preamplifier stage, as the preamp section combines both left and right signals.

[dblue]

I have hooked my Bass up through my stereo before, all you need is a 1/4" to dual RCA adapter, then hook it into one of the inputs on the back of the receiver (or front if you have them). DO NOT hook it up through the PHONO inputs.

as for hooking it up directly to the powered sub...you're not going to get much sound out of it. A bass produces frequencies high above what any sub can handle, only the lowest frequencies are going to come out of the sub. Example:

The low E string on a bass is tuned to 40Hz, but you're gettting frequencies and harmonics coming off that string that extend high into the 15000 Hz range. This is why most Bass amp stacks have a tweeter, to take care of the high end of each string or note.

Anyway, hooking it up through the receiver should sound OK, but it's not gonna give you much volume. It'll sound nice if you're just messing around, but you need a LOT more power to play in a real situation.