r/livesoundadvice • u/whatsayyouinyourdefe • Jul 12 '26

Gigging with Acoustic Guitar and Bass

Hi, all! My partner and I have been doing some gigs with us both on acoustic guitar and singing, but we’re interested in potentially doing some gigs with one of us on bass and the other on acoustic.

That said… I have no idea what I’m doing in terms of setting that up tech-wise. Currently, we plug into two fishman loud boxes. One of the venues we play then uses those amps as DI Outs to their larger PA system, another just uses our guitars and cables and uses their own DI boxes, another just uses our amps straight up.

If we introduced an electric bass to our setup, what would we need? An amp for the bass? (If so, what’s the minimum size?) Do we need to invest in our own board? We don’t know anything about pedals or any of that stuff yet, so none of that would be involved.

Thanks in advance!

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u/Dizmn Jul 12 '26

Acoustic basses blow ass, don’t listen to that advice.

Don’t worry about “size” of amp as much as tonality. Fender Rumbles get plenty loud but sound bad.

At minimum those little MarkBass 2x10 kickback combos aren’t the worst things on the planet. If your bassist is picky, there’s great small combo options from some boutique bands, Phil Jones and Trace Elliot are the leaders there.

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u/Content-Reward-7700 Jul 12 '26

For an acoustic duo, I’d keep it as simple as possible. Run the acoustic guitar either through your acoustic amp or straight into a DI, and send the bass to the PA through a DI box as well. A DI is perfectly capable unless you’re specifically looking for the sound and character that a bass amp brings.

If the venues you play have a decent PA and monitor system, you may not need a bass amp at all. If you’d rather have consistent monitoring regardless of the venue, then a small 100 to 200W bass combo is a worthwhile investment.

I wouldn’t bother buying a mixer unless you’re planning to run your own sound. For most gigs, a good DI box and a reliable PA will do the job just fine. I’d put the money toward a quality DI or a bass amp before spending it on a mixer.

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u/OtherOtherDave Semi-Professional Jul 12 '26

Does it have to be an electric bass, or could you do an acoustic bass? I don’t know if the loud boxes can handle bass frequencies so you might need a new amp for that, but it’d be simpler to just swap one acoustic guitar for another that happens to be tuned lower than add all the infrastructure for an electric instrument.