Do bass amps really need tweeters?
Tweeters have become more & more common in bass amp combos and speaker cabinets in recent years, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Do you need them? There are several cases and sets of circumstances where I think tweeters are entirely unnecessary. – If you’re the kind of player who just sits in the pocket and plays basic lines, nice & fat & low, never slapping or popping or ‘spanking the plank’. You likely even use flatwound strings. – If you play fretless, in which case also you might even use flatwounds which have very few upper harmonics. Tweeters would tend to over-emphasize the ‘buzz’ of a fretless, resulting in a harsh rasp. – If you play ‘oldies’ & (very) classic rock (Cream, Mountain, James Gang…) But, if you want to emulate Marcus Miller or Victor Wooten on a fretted instrument, you’re going to want that tweeter. Modern round-wound bass strings have a very rich harmonic content in their sound, and for those of you who like to utilize that, a tweeter is just the thing to make those
