agedhorse

3 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

True, but it is an easy way to implement Muting.

 

This is very true, In the UK, Profusion PLC are the ICEPower distributors in the UK. They will sell one unit.  However, I agree that you will be throwing away money if the unit is not faulty

It’s one way to implement muting, but not the most common way by far. It depends on what is happening throughout the amp as to how muting is accomplished and where. Sometimes, more than one method is used in an amp too. 

There are several ways to mute the amp. You want to be darn sure the module is really the problem or you will be throwing money away.

Also, beware of these modules sourced from China, there are counterfeits of this series coming from there. 

6 hours ago, Sean said:

Mesa/Boogie 400+ Update

 

I picked up my 400+ from The Amp Hospital today. It looks fabulous, it's all working perfectly, has a full set of chassis screws and just feels great. It's such a lovely thing to look at, handle, use, feel, smell, hear (it whirs, clicks and buzzes). 

 

The conversation covered how these are one of the 3 GOAT Bass Amps, how military spec and robust the 400+ is and that along with the B15 and SVT it's modelled by all the digital effects companies. But most of all that, as long as components are available, these things will last forever. The 400+ is one of my favourite products ever, to me it's up there with the Audi Ur-Quattro or Porsche 959. A lot of products that push the tech to extreme iterations fail, become white elephants but like the 959 and the Ur-Q, the 400+ is an absolute classic and a gem in all respects. 

 

Putting my money where my mouth is, the 400+ will be sitting atop a pair of Monaco cabs at two gigs this weekend. The GKs will be in the bench.

 

Warm it up and let it rip is what the manual should say 😉. 

 

In the words of Lt Col Bill Kilgore, "Get yer boys back, it's gonna be a big one!"

Excellent, this is why I always recommend the best service you can find… premium service, even at a premium price is always a better value.

If the bottom passive radiator is too close to the floor it will change the tuning of the cabinet. That’s (partly)what the feet are for.

5 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

VAT is a sales tax and in Europe/UK it is around 20%. 
 

It is some while since I was last in the USA but then, individual states levied their own sales tax. Annoyingly, the tickets price was without tax so you got a shock at the checkout. The last time I visited Sales tax was around 5-7%. That would have either been Nevada or Louisiana. 20 years ago. 

 

Taxes are higher in the UK than then USA but we generally have better public services. In Scandinavia, where taxes are higher, they have even better public services. Sadly taxation does not subsidise amplifier repairs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agreed, everything gets paid for one way or the other. 
 

In the US, in most states, there is no sales tax on the labor. Only parts and materials are subject to it but only if the parts were purchased by the service business and sales tax wasn’t paid at that point. 
 

This is why comparing costs is so difficult, you pay more overall in taxes, but you have universal healthcare and we have an expensive mess run mostly by private insurance companies. 
 

Pick your poison… 

3 hours ago, Sean said:

The Brutal Truth About Owning Big Boxes of Bottles

 

My 400+ has been in The Amp Hospital in Guildford.

 

It costs £84 for an inspection and diagnosis. Then you get a full report and a quotation. Small repairs are done within the £84.

 

Here's the quotation for the work. Note that there's no valve replacement in this cost. 

 

You can buy a very good high end used solid state or Class D amp for £454.80 i.e. the £84 plus the repair charge.  

 

Slipknot sends its 400+ amps to the same place. The work and knowledge of Mesa products is what you pay for. 

 

I'm sure that I could get it done cheaper but this is a relic and it needs the TLC that Surrey Amps gives. 

 

One thing is for sure now, this thing is going out gigging to earn its keep.

 

The point of this post is, just understand what you're getting into before adopting one of these beasts.

 

 

@Beedster @agedhorsefor interest, Chris, Andy😉  

A couple of comments that apply here…

1. much of the additional labor applies to correcting previous repair work, and removal of the PCB for the additional work (including cleaning residue and contamination, which is important to minimize leakage currents)

2. 20% of the total repair cost doesn’t go to the shop, it goes to the all government to pay for the costs of running the country, including social heath programs. 
 

The pre-VAT amount is similar to the cost of factory servicing. 

Depending on the year, the 15's were usually EVM-15L's, the 10's could have been one of 3 or 4 different drivers (the one in the picture is NOT a CA-10 nor is it an Eminence, it may have been a Precision Devices driver). The 6-1/2" driver is a customized Eminence driver, there were at least 2 versions, one with an unvented motor and a vented dust cap and the one pictured that has a vented motor (because the dust cap is not vented). I do not know what  the customizations were, but it it likely that it was related to the mid voicing and extension.

If everything is working, I would leave the drivers alone.

You will probably need to order a replacement horn with a new driver at this point. I haven't seen the old style is years.

2 hours ago, Sean said:

I shall say hi from Andy. But he's a tough one, not what I'd call very "front of house" but that's where all my amps go now for that level of expertise and it's nearly 2.5h each way, which for the UK is a long drive 😉 

He is tough, but he gets things done right. That’s what you are paying for, not his personality!  😂

5 hours ago, Sean said:

Years ago, I went through the initial 400+ owner bewilderment but this thread on Talkbass gave me some good direction https://www.talkbass.com/threads/mesa-400-settings.268322/

 

I shan't regurgitate what it says.

 

My 400+ is off to see Stan @ The Amp Hospital soon. It's got an electrical fault that trips out the consumer board at home every time I plug it in and turn it on. 

Stan’s a fantastic service engineer, one of the best I have worked with. Say hi to him for me.

38 minutes ago, shug said:

I'm keen to check one of these out, for sure, but I wish you'd asked ME what features to include as then this otherwise perfect looking amp would have at least one 9 volt output on the back to power a tuner ( or other) pedal. That's got to be a good, useful and relatively cheap feature, surely? I don't want you to feel too bad about it, though; I've been playing for 50 years, owned scores of amps and only just thought of it myself...

Next time, maybe...

There IS a USB power source on the back of the amp, you can use it with whatever converter cable you wish to get the necessary voltage and polarity. This feature is on the D-350, WD, TT and BD-800 models. This feature and application is also described in the owner’s manual

4 hours ago, Russ said:

I guess I must have been using the Bass 400+ wrong for all those years I had it.  Not going to make the same mistake with this one! 

 

Played with it a bit more today. Volume issue seems to be sorted, so I retract what I was saying about the volume! The challenge right now is to add volume without adding much in the way of additional "fur". I like a bit of fur, but not loads. The EQ controls add fur-free volume, it's just a case of balancing that with the input gain, I think, so I'll be playing with that some more. I'll get there! 

 

 

Where do you have the master volume control set?

8 hours ago, Musicman20 said:

That common trick! I always remember when you guys at Genz discussed this and that your volume controls are much more 'honest'.

Ultimately, we lost some sales from this but gained a life-long following from those who appreciated it.

6 hours ago, Beedster said:

 

I struggled at first with my Bass 400+ for that very reason, i.e., I was using controls as if it were a standard hifi amp! There's a reason the amp is so iconic, and that is the eq, so I'm guessing it's well worth persisting with the tone controls on the 880D also. Of course, if anyone tries and fails, I'll be happy to take it off their hands given it's looking like a 3-month wait minimum 👍

Yes, the Bass 400+ was also a fairly extreme example of this which is why we refined the original circuit to make it more player friendly but it still has some of the iconic quirks. 

Almost all of the voicing on both the 400+ and Bass 800D is done within the tone stack eq section, that’s why it’s so important to understand how it works. 

2 hours ago, Russ said:

If I use the high gain switch position, it gets very furry very quickly - can't turn the input gain above about 3 without it getting hairy. I'm using an active bass with pretty high output though. I'll keep experimenting. 

 

I've got the EQ controls all pretty much centred right now at around 5, but, again, I'll play with it some more and see what I can come up with. 

 

It's still early days, basically. 

 

EDIT: I dialled down the HPF a bit and dialled up the bass and mid controls, and left the shelving switches off. Kept the input on low gain, and it's much better. It is starting to shake the doors a bit now.  

Remember that this is based on the Fender tone stack eq which can benefit with the eq controls higher than you might expect. Also, the master volume control applies gain evenly throughout its entire rotation, many master controls do 90% of their work in the first half of the rotation (which makes people THINK they are more powerful though they are not).

1 hour ago, Russ said:

So I got mine yesterday.  Only just had a chance to plug it in and put it through its paces. 

 

First impressions - it does sound like a Bass 400+. In that regard, job done. It's got that little bit of inherent dirt from the valve preamp, and a very similar character in terms of the overall frequency curve (a bit middy, but in a nice, smooth, detailed and slightly furry way).

 

Here's a pic of it sitting on top of my Ashdown RM800 - you can get a good idea of its (small) size. 

 

 

Downsides? Sadly, it does seem to have a big one - it just doesn't seem very loud. My RM800 is louder when turned up to about 9:00 (see pic) than the Mesa is turned up to about 7 or 8. This is with it going into my Barefaced BTII (which can handle 1600W). Maybe I'm doing something wrong with it, but that could potentially be a dealbreaker - if I can turn it up to 8 in my house and not shake the doors off their hinges, then there's something not quite right here. The Ashdown is too loud for the house once it gets to about 11:00, with loads more volume to go. Which is weird, because they probably use the exact same ICEpower modules for their Class D power sections. 

 

I'll keep playing - will report back with more findings. 

1. Turn the gain and volume up more

2. Turn the eq up more, it’s based on the Fender tone stack which functions like volume controls (especially the mid band)

3. Use the high gain switch position. 
 

Knob position means nothing, the gain structures (and gain stage architecture) are entirely different between the two amps.

9 minutes ago, Obrienp said:

Reading through this I have gained the impression that you won’t get full power out of most power amps using pedal preamps, because their (preamps’) output is insufficient. However, there are some power amps on the market specifically aimed at pedals, modellers and preamps for guitarists/bassists. Examples being the GRBass Pure, Seymour Duncan Power Stage series, Harley Benton GPA-100, Fryette Power Station, etc. Are these not designed to match the output levels of typical pedal preamps? If not, their marketing promises are very misleading.

 

Personal experience of using the (cheap as chips) Harley Benton GPA-100, is that I seem to be getting the full oomph out of it driven by my Bass Flyrig II into an LFSys Monza. The Monza does seem to have great sensitivity, which may explain some of the apparent volume I get from it. It works fine as a combo for rehearsals and coffee shop/bistro type gigs (our drummer uses an electronic kit, so can be turned down). This positive experience had encouraged me to consider a more powerful (and expensive) preamp like the Palmer Macht 402, or even the GRBass Pure. Reading this thread has made me question whether I might be very disappointed with the resulting output. Any thoughts?

Depends entirely on the particular pedal, some can and some can't. If all pedal manufacturers included the necessary information in their specifications, specifically the maximum output level, it would be a LOT easier to determine this.

4 hours ago, shug said:

I'm keen to check one of these out, for sure, but I wish you'd asked ME what features to include as then this otherwise perfect looking amp would have at least one 9 volt output on the back to power a tuner ( or other) pedal. That's got to be a good, useful and relatively cheap feature, surely? I don't want you to feel too bad about it, though; I've been playing for 50 years, owned scores of amps and only just thought of it myself...

Next time, maybe...

We stuck with USB-A for a reason... there are a variety of USB-A to 9V, 12V, 15V and 18V converter cords available for use with pedals, but also the USB-A to USB-C and USB-A to lightning cables are readily available and very inexpensive so you get the best of both worlds.

https://lovemyswitches.com/usb-to-9vdc-power-cable/?srsltid=AfmBOopZVrbjs29mAccByIl4AMwGF66xRajKnUtln5fc-rE7Rd5RIkAR

3 hours ago, shug said:

@agedhorse Are you involved in writing the manuals? Mesa manuals are consistently the best I've seen - low on marketing -speak, NO bullshit acronyms and full of actual useful pointers for real-world use. Well done , whoever it was.

I can see one of these featuring heavily in my life very soon.

Yes, I write all the basic outline and structure of the manuals, and then I have a couple of our outside test players who help with the editing process. One is a very experienced aerospace mechanical engineer who writes operations manuals for NATO compliant equipment (the big stuff) and the other has outstanding communication skills combined with really good intuition. Both are also excellent bass players (I'm a somewhat-mediocre keyboard player), so the goal is a technically complete manual written and edited from the perspective of bass players, to be accurate, clear, concise, useful and free from the vomitous marketing babble that makes manuals virtually unreadable. 

Thank you for appreciating our efforts. ❤️   We figure that if you are going to pay for a premium product, you also deserve a premium manual.

39 minutes ago, goonerjoe said:

Seriously tempted by this, but my D-800 is incredible and keeping my GAS at bay.

 

@agedhorse sorry for the segue - are there any plans to release something similar to the Prodigy again (all valve lunchbox head)

Good question, I really don't know. We have tossed this idea around before but it's never gained enough traction.

1 hour ago, Sean said:

Being a shameless Mesa fanboy (I've had a Mk IV guitar combo and a Stereo 2:50 power amp) gigged a Carbine M6 for years, currently have a WB Scout and a 400+, I'm interested in @agedhorse view or the industry take on new solid state analogue amps. The new Gallien RB Legacy heads were a huge surprise, they're big, heavy and really expensive and seem to be bucking the trend that we're seeing with the move to class D. 

 

I thought the Fusion 550 would be the last big analogue GK but was wrong. I look at the RB Legacy (I own 3 GKs) and wonder what customers, that don't have a road crew, touring budget and trucks, are going to buy them. 

 

Mesa must've gauged the market and conceptualised, however briefly, doing a modern take on a Carbine/BigBlock/Titan? Like a WD/TT/BD-800 front end with a big analogue power section? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good question... Of course we looked at our legacy models, the first one was the Walkabout and the weight was one of the biggest complaints (and it wasn't a very heavy amp compared with say the Carbines). Moving up to the heavier amps, size and weight very much factored into the decision because our players placed this very high on the "wanted list". Back in the day, I did design a number of substantially sized, heavy amps like the GBE-750 and 1200, but these found their way mostly to those who were either touring with big rigs or didn't need to worry about transportation. 

The older models sales had fallen to almost nothing even before we released the first Subway model, was better for what our evolving player base wanted and had asked for. Listening to a large number of players provided a huge level of clarity here.

There are now some player produced videos and audio clips of the amp, some really good ones actually. They are on TalkBass  (amps & cabs, new boogie release thread, pages 17-19-ish), I can't link them here unfortunately.

I would like to hear what you can do here once they start getting into your hands, please post your videos and clips.

7 hours ago, Russ said:

Just saw this. As someone who owned a Bass 400+ back in the day (probably the best-sounding bass head I ever owned), I love the look of it and I'm looking forward to trying one out. 

 

Now, how can I persuade Mesa to make a lightweight version of the old 1516 cab?  

@agedhorse How about a downsized version, with 1x12”, 1x8”, 2x5” and a tweeter, with lightweight neo speakers? With the proper Mesa/Boogie badges, not the Mesa Engineering ones.  

I have actually designed some Subway multi-driver cabinets but there wasn't much interest even though a couple of the designs were really quite good (articulate while retaining some flavor). Oh well, the customers drive this ship, not enough customer interest equals "pull the plug". 

It's unlikely to see the old Boogie badge on the bass cabinets, The Mesa Engineering was selected starting about 25 years ago. We do have some Boogie badges on our factory store website so that you could customize your own cabinets however.

2 hours ago, Mudpup said:

Does the amp use an Icepower module or is it a proprietary design?

The same ICEPower module used in all of the other Subway 800 watt models, but they all use different control algorithms for managing overdrive, therefore they all feel differently.

7 hours ago, Sean said:

Well, I've learned a lot. I didn't know the WD-800 is based on the Walkabout.  I've got one (a WA) and it's one of my favourites. It's currently waiting to be picked up from The Amp Hospital after having some TLC. When I pick it up I'll be dropping off my 400+ for investigation. Now, the Amp Hospital is about a mile or so from Andertons and with a following wind they'll probably have an 800D there by the time I go. 

You can see where this is going...

 

A question (or 2) for @agedhorse if I may. BD-800 or 800D? What do the letters stand for? D, BD, TT, WD? 

 

D is the original solid state preamp, compact chassis. 350W or 800W

WD is Walkabout, class D, 800W

BD is Bass 400, class D, 800W

TT is Tri-Tube Topology, class D, 800W (I wanted to name it TD, but that name is already trademarked by Lab Gruupen, used in class TD) 😥

3 hours ago, Sean said:

I think it must be a 'trading as' situation

https://amphospital.co.uk/

 

Anyway, they are authorised repairers of many leading brands, have an excellent reputation with lots of touring bands and since MJW Amplification ceased trading (retired), it's the only place I trust with my Mesa amps. Dennis the Legend is just too far away for me although his reputation is on a par with Stan. 

I have known Stan for years, he’s one of the best service engineers in the UK and maybe all of Europe IME.