ZZZzzzttttt Bass Distortion??

[idsnowdog]

I put a Bill Lawrence XL-500 in my Mustang Bass and when I play it through my guitar amp I get an odd rough distortion on the clean channel. I get it when I play hard. It is a square wave zzzzztttt sound. Anyone have any ideas why this would happen and what I can do to fix it?

[baritone]

If you are playing through your guitar amp, just make sure you are not frying your speaker. It's possible that it could be harmful speaker distortion.

[idsnowdog]

I thought it might be distortion within the electronics, but it sounds like it is coming from the speaker. Like somehow its a waveform the speaker can't reproduce.

[JB_From_Hell]

What kind of amp is it? I play my bass through a modeler into a really small guitar amp at low volume, and have no issues.

[idsnowdog]

It's a crate, I know very shocking for a crate to act odd!I should drag out my other bass and see if it does it with that one too?

[baritone]

Yeah, seriously, it's just not safe to play a bass through guitar speakers, unless you keep the volume really low, as JB said, or if you just jack up the EQ properly. I used to play my bass through an old guitar practice amp, but I just kept the volume low to minimize speaker distortion. Eventually I put a pro-audio speaker in that amp, so it can handle those low frequencies, and it sounds awesome. It's an old 25w solid state Epiphone amp, and the distortion always sounded kind of junky, but with my bass, it totally rocks.