Gig report: first gig with Mesa Basis M-2000

[HolmeBass]

I picked it up used for $600 because it matches my Genz UB212 perfectly (600 W @ 4 Ohms) and because it just looked cool. When I first brought it home had some technical problems with the footswitch the volume of different channels. I took it back the store sent it in for a repair, but the repair shop could not reproduce the problems. Today in the store neither could I, so I took it to my gig tonight (in a duck pin bowling alley, of all places- actually a cool venue, and Southern Culture on the Skids played there, so not really as sad as the movie "Crazy Heart", but I digress...).

It sounded awesome! I was very happy with how my spector sounded through it, but was blown away by how good my Jazz sounded through it compared to my Eden Metro. The two channels and two foot-switchable EQs (one per channel) were great. In particular I used the tube chn EQ to solve a problem I'm having with the intro to Tom Petty's "American Girl" where I play the little melody starting on the F# up high on the G string, it was just too quiet and getting lost. I boosted 600 and the surrounding freqs (during sound check I played the F# and moved the EQ sliders around to find which ones boosted that note). I used the EQ on that chn just for that song, and one other where I needed a high D to pop out a bit more, and it worked like a charm. So I'm pretty psyched. The only bad thing was that the DI was scratchy and dirty, so the sound man took my tuner out and ran it into his DI, which allowed me to unplug my bass to tune up without a pop when plugging back in.

[KJung]

Nice head! And yes, one of the negatives to that head is the DI design. I don't remember what the issue was exactly, but that was always the achilles heal of that otherwise very nice head. The Mesa M9 is IMO kind of the 'next generation' of that head.

When I had mine back in the day, I ended up pretty much using the preamps blended 50/50, with the EQ just tweaked a smidge. That ended up being a bit silly (i.e., ignoring 48 of the 50 knobs and sliders!) and I moved on to something else, but that head HAMMERS.

[HolmeBass]

I hope I can get the DI online because I dislike running my tuner in-line with my signal chain. Well in fact I don't even own a suitable tuner for that. Anyway running a DI before the head will be problematic for me. Maybe this will finally force me to purchase a high-class tuner, like a Peterson or the new TC Electronic one.

For the spector I definitely was enjoying the blend of both channels, but on my jazz I liked the channels soloed, with tube chn more aggressive and the FET chn more bassy and smooth. Nice for transitioning between tunes that required a bit of hair, like classic rock and some of the older 50's tunes that had more of a dead-string walking uprightish vibe.