Can You Use A Guitar Amplifier For A Digital Piano?

Most electric pianos do not have good built-in speakers. If you want to use them on a stage, you always need external speakers.

Good speakers are expensive, of course. That’s why it would be cool if you could use your guitar amp (which you already have anyway) as a speaker for the digital piano as well.

Can you use a guitar amplifier for a digital piano?

You can use your guitar amp for your electric piano. To get the most natural sound possible, you should not activate any effects on your amplifier. Basically, you have no problems using your electric piano through an amplifier.

Of course, this is just the short answer. If you also want to know how to best use your amplifier, which cables to use, and what to look out for in general, you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s get started right away!

Why you can use your amplifier as a speaker for your electric piano (and when you should)

In principle, an amplifier is not much different than a normal speaker. When you feed an instrument, your amplifier will play it. It’s as simple as that.

The problem with many instruments, however, is the frequency range: guitar amps are designed for guitars, not for your voice, for example.

If you want to know if you can also connect your microphone to your guitar amp, you can click on this link.

Guitars are very much designed for the mid frequencies. Neither the lows, nor the highs play a big role in guitars.

It’s the same with amplifiers. They are also designed for the midrange frequencies.

That’s why they work very well with instruments that play in similar frequency ranges as the guitar.

Your digital piano or stage piano is strong in relatively similar frequencies as a guitar.

Therefore, you won’t have any problems connecting your electric piano to your amplifier (and getting a good sound).

When should I connect my stage piano to a guitar amp?

The answer is really quite simple: you should use your stage piano with your amplifier when you have no other speakers.

Of course, the sound will be even better if you connect a keyboard amplifier, but there’s the problem:

Amplifiers and speakers for electric pianos are usually much more expensive than guitar amplifiers.

Especially in the beginning you can save a lot of money by using your guitar amplifier for your electric piano as well: And that’s perfectly okay, too.

Now let’s take a look at the differences between a guitar amp and a keyboard amp.

What are the differences between a guitar amp and a keyboard amp?

Actually, we have already discussed the most essential differences. Here’s a quick overview for you again:

1: A keyboard amp sounds much clearer than a guitar amp. The reason for this is that your stage piano should sound as clear as possible. Your guitar, on the other hand, should (very often) sound a little overdriven.

2: A keyboard amplifier can reproduce even more frequencies. The reason for this is that your keyboard or stage piano covers much lower and higher frequency ranges than your guitar.

3: A keyboard amplifier reproduces the sounds as clearly as possible and (usually) does not add any effects. With your guitar amp, it adds overdrive, for example.

4: Because of the higher frequency range and more natural sound, keyboard amps are usually much more expensive than guitar amps.

Now let’s finally take a look at how to use your guitar amp for your stage piano!

How do I use my guitar amp for my stage piano?

To get the best sound out of your stage piano, there are a few tips you should follow.

Tip 1: Settings on your amplifier. To get the best possible sound, check at the very beginning that you have turned off all effects.

Tip 2: Mono or stereo. Your amp is set to mono, while most keyboards and electric pianos are set to stereo. To get the best sound possible, you should always use mono. (Your piano has different outputs, definitely one for stereo and one for mono).

Tip 3: If you are not playing classical music, you can of course try out the effects. Maybe you will create your own special sound.

Tip 4: If you use the mono output of your keyboard/e-piano, you only need a normal instrument cable. Most amplifiers use a TRS connector. So your cable needs a TRS connector as well.

Now there is nothing standing in your way to connect your electric piano to an amplifier.
To create a very special sound, you can for example turn up the overdrive of your amplifier.

To see how this sounds, you can watch the following video:

Let’s now look at how it looks with the technology:

Which amps are particularly well suited?

Of course, the general rule is that a keyboard amp is more designed for an electric piano or keyboard than an amp for a guitar.

However, we will now first assume that you explicitly want to connect your guitar amplifier to your keyboard.

To get the best possible sound, you should consider several things:

1: The amplifier should have a good bass. Without bass, your electric piano will sound very flat and lack depth.

2: Your amplifier should have very good mids. Although your piano naturally covers a much wider frequency range than your guitar, the mids are the most important here as well.

3: Enough power. Your amp should have enough power to achieve a usable volume. What that means, of course, depends on what exactly you want to do with your amp.

4: Special effects: Your amp doesn’t need to have any effects. The important thing is that you can turn off all effects to get the clearest sound possible.

Tip: Use a practice amp. The advantage is that they usually have fewer effects than “normal” amplifiers. This will make the sound of your amplifier even clearer and more natural.

If you are looking for maximum sound customization, you can of course use a normal amplifier. Here you have even more possibilities to play with the individual effects.

You can now look for the perfect amp for you on Amazon by clicking on this link.

However, if you want to get a keyboard amplifier directly, then you also need to consider some things.

Tips for choosing a keyboard amplifier.

1: Volume. Of course, your amplifier should also have the volume you need. What volume you should have depends on what you want to do with the amplifier. The louder the places and the more people you want to reach, the louder your amp needs to be.

2: Unaltered sound: You should make sure that your amp (even with keyboard amps) reproduces the sound as clearly as possible and changes it as little as possible.

Everything else is not really relevant for you, since the vast majority of keyboard amplifiers are designed to transmit the sound as clearly as possible anyway.

If you want to search for the perfect keyboard speaker for you, you can check out Amazon with this link.

Summary and Conclusion

In this article, we looked at whether you can use your guitar amp for your electric piano as well.

The simple answer: Yes, it is basically possible!

The more detailed answer: yes, but you should definitely keep some things in mind. Always remember to turn off the effects (if you want to have the most realistic sound possible) and remember to always connect your stage piano to your amp on mono.

In general, though, especially at the beginning of your musical journey, it’s definitely recommended to save your money for more expensive keyboard amps at first and use your guitar amp for your electric piano instead.

Now I wish you a lot of fun and success with your music!