Which U Bass/amp combo?

[KitKat1]

This would be for living room bluegrass get togethers. The double bass player might drop by more often if there was a bass for her to play! I'd fool around on it too no doubt. I'd appreciate recommendations thanks!

[Rudy4]

Originally Posted by KitKat1

This would be for living room bluegrass get togethers. The double bass player might drop by more often if there was a bass for her to play! I'd fool around on it too no doubt. I'd appreciate recommendations thanks!

I have a good friend who is a serious upright player. A few years ago I went to see the bluegrass band he was playing with at an outdoor venue. They had already started before I arrived and I thought about how good his bass sounded as I approached where they were playing.

I was more than a bit shocked to see him playing a Kala U Bass through his Acoustic Image bass amp. I'm not sure which model he was playing through, but it had a bottom-firing driver. The combination was a totally convincing upright impersonation.

Your bass player might be much more quick to adapt to a fretted bass, though. There are many to choose from, like the Taylor GS Mini bass or others in that short scale fretted size.
Any short scale bass would be an easy thing to play, and something like an Ibanez Mikro would also do nicely. I picked up an almost new Mikro for $50 on Craigslist and was very pleased at the quality and how easy it was to play.

[FrankHudson]

I play a U-Bass sometimes, mostly plugged directly into my recording interface.

My kid is a bass player, and they've got on indefinite loan from me a Fender Rumble bass combo that serves them well for punkier stuff at informal garage band level while retaining a headphone jack for practice. Mine's the 100 watt model and it can be set to provide clean sound with good headroom. At lower volumes, like a living room jam with acoustic instruments, I'd think the 40 watter in the line would do fine too.

Two things attracted me to it: the light weight and Steve DeRosa's recommendation here on the AGF.

For very small fretless short-scale options, there was a U-Bass sized DeArmond nylon string bass sold around the turn of the century, the Ashbory. I have one, but my pitch sense meeting a short-scale fretless made me favor the U-bass. The Ashbory had its own Fender strings, a sticky translucent rubbery material that has their own sound, but many who still play them have converted to the more conventional nylon type U-Bass strings.

[columbia]

I like the Fender Rumble amps. The 25 watt is probably fine for your purposes but you might want to spring for the 40 or 100. I think the 40 weighs less than the 25 and the 100 weighs like two or three pounds more than the 25.

As far as bass ukes go, I think they're all essentially so similar that I wouldn't (and didn't) hesitate to get a cheap one off Amazon or eBay for $150 or less. The ones I've seen are the same or similar preamp and piezo pickup grafted onto the same or similar baritone uke body, and even the cheaper ones come with the Aquila strings. I would suggest fretted as the benefits of fretless would be limited at such a short scale.

[jwellsy]

I have a Fender B-DEC 30 that I use at the house with my U-bass.

[Dave Hicks]

I've used a Rumble 40 for rehearsals with an electric band. It was underpowered but audible.

D.H.

[Nymuso]

I heard a Bluegrass band playing around a corner and remember thinking how good the bass sounded. When I came around the corner I saw it was a young girl playing a Kala U-Bass through a small bass amp. Sounded great.

[leew3]

I've played mine through a Fender rumble 15 for acoustic practices-too small for gigging but a bigger Rumble should work well. I play it in church through a TC electronics BG 250 with a 15" speaker. It sounds good but this is really too much amp as I have the master volume at about 2!

My favorite review of the Kala UBass was from a guy in a bluegrass band. He said their bass player was a 'bigger gal' who when asked whether she was playing a mini bass always said 'no it's a regular bass...does it make me look fat?"