Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Can I plug in my Bass guitar to my Axiom system?

I just ordered an Ibanez SR300 and had the wild idea that I could really rock the house if I could plug into my HT...

Scott

I wouldn't do it unless you run through a processor that puts out a line level signal (something like a Line 6 bass pod). If you run the bass direct into your stereo your speakers probably won't take the transients the bass will deliver and you risk blowing them.

I wouldn't suggest it since musical instrument speakers are generally much heavier duty with bigger speaker magnets and larger voice coils to be able to take the pounding. They are also designed to operate in a much more limited frequency range. That is why you still see a lot of 12" and 15" size speakers in musical instrument cabinets and PA's but you don't see them that often anymore in A/V speakers. Not that many years ago I tried an electric guitar(not even a bass) thru my A/V speakers in which nowadays the largest are usually 8" in diameter and it didn't require much volume before they started to distort.

Alan explained a while ago how Ian had a live band playing through an array of M80's at his home for a party. All I remember is that they had them hooked up to high end pro amp, other details of the setup I can't recall other than it sounded awesome.

I do not remember the specifics of the post but I know Axiom would not recommend you doing this because of the risk involved in damaging the speakers. I believe Alan mentioned something similar to that effect in his post regarding this.

Ah huh!!

Can we say Factory Outlet!

OK. So much for bright ideas.

Thanks all.

Ians probably got M80's scattered over the entire house. Maybe he has M80's setup even in his washroom . It would be nice to own a successful speaker company now wouldn't it.

I have tried several guitars through my system (including my bass). I used an interface (M-Audio Black Box - no longer sold). The biggest problem is playing with any processing on. There is always a delay (even when playing stereo). I hit a chord and hear it a half second later. Not cool.

I was able to use the "Pure Audio" mode on my Onkyo receiver (bypasses all the processing). Doing this I got just the mains (no sub), but it did sound cool.