Bass Guitar

How To Make Any Electric Guitar Sound Like a Bass

By · 12 min read

How To Make Any Electric Guitar Sound Like a Bass

Bass guitars are the cornerstone of any rock band, taking center stage in sub-heavy genres such as metal and punk. But have you ever wondered what it would sound like if your electric guitar could also function as a bass? It’s possible to turn virtually any electric guitar into bass and make it sound like one. 

Here are a few ways to make your electric guitar sound more like a bass:

  1. Switch to thicker strings.
  2. Turn down your tone control knob.
  3. Add an amplifier to your setup.
  4. Adjust your amplifier settings.
  5. Use your Daw’s built-in bass effects.
  6. Use an octave pedal to switch to a lower tone.

If you’re on a tight budget and already own an electric guitar, you don’t have to spend more money on a bass guitar. In this article, I’ll show you how to make your electric guitar sound like a bass without buying an entirely new instrument or other hardware. Bassists have their own favorites. See the best bass pedals.

Related: best bass guitars and how to play bass on an acoustic guitar. For the full overview, see our bass guitar for beginners guide.

👇😀👇NOTE👇😀👇

If you want to find out what my recommended guitar gear is, then here is what I recommend on Amazon:

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1. Switch to Thicker Strings

The thickness of your guitar’s strings determines its tone. Thicker strings produce a deeper, bass-like tone. So, instead of playing the higher strings on your guitar, focus your picking on the lower strings (EADG).

Another way to make your guitar sound like a bass is to install thicker strings on your guitar. Thicker strings give you a lower sound and make your guitar sound like a bass. The best thickness for making your guitar sound like a bass is a .040 gauge string or higher.

Pro Tip: Thicker strings require more pressure to sound good. You will have to press down on the strings harder to get a clean sound from them.

Although picking thicker strings is probably the easiest way to make your electric guitar resemble a bass, it doesn’t always yield the cleanest signal. Some parts of your song will still require higher tones that cannot be achieved by ignoring the higher strings. If you want a much more advanced way to make your ordinary electric guitar sound like a bass, check out my next trick.

2. Turn Down Your Tone Control Knob

Another way to make your guitar sound like a bass is to turn down your tone knob. Turning down your tone knob will make the highs on your guitar quieter while sustaining the mids and lows. When you turn down the tone knob, you’ll notice that your guitar will have a darker, mellow sound.

Your guitar’s tone knob controls the frequency response. It adjusts how much high frequencies (treble) and low-end frequencies (bass) pass through your signal as it leaves the guitar.

This simple control can dramatically transform your sound, allowing you to take it from bright and jangly to dark and sinister, with everything in between. Best of all, it’s easy to use – all you have to do is turn it up and down.

Tone control knobs are calibrated from 0 to 10, with zero having a minimum impact and 10 having minimal change on the tone. Lower frequencies are accentuated when the tone is turned counter-clockwise, while higher frequencies become more prominent when the knob is turned clockwise. The result is that you can choose between two different tones from the same guitar by adjusting this control.

turn down your electric guitar tone control knob

Pro Tip: Lower the volume slightly when adjusting the tone control knob. The lower frequencies you’re trying to achieve don’t come out well at extremely high volume.

3. Add an Amplifier to Your Setup

The electric guitar is a very dynamic instrument, capable of both subtlety and raw aggression. To capture the character of the electric guitar, you need an amplifier capable of delivering great clarity and a heavy crunch. 

An electric guitar amp will boost the signal from your pickups and send it through pre-amp tubes before hitting the main amplification. Several different types of amps are available, including tube amps, hybrid amps, and solid-state amps. That said, how will an amplifier add to your bass?

An amplifier takes the guitar signal and boosts it (makes it louder by increasing the voltage going through the circuit). Any tone adjustments you may have added with your music processing software or tone control knob will also be boosted. The result is a cleaner output. However, you’re not done yet. Next, you need to adjust your amplifier settings.

4. Adjust Your Amplifier Settings

As you may already know, all guitar amps almost always have the same controls: 

  • The bass. 
  • The mid. 
  • The treble. 

With these controls, a guitar amplifier can boost the signal’s low, mid, and high frequencies. You can also adjust the gain to boost the volume of the signal input with the gain control knob on your amplifier. Any other attributes included in the signal (e.g., bass plugins before amplifications will be included in the output).