Once he passes or retires, however, anything's possible with Mesa. With the genzification of their entire bass line and complete dissociation with the large full tube rack bass heads (and associated cabs) that their bass pedigree was completely built upon for nearly 40 decades, literally anything is possible.
Mesa has sold plenty of bass amps with solid state output sections before the Subway line was introduced. M2000, Walkabout, M-Pulse, B-Block, Carbine, and Titan for example. These are great amps, but many of them had major reliability problems.
I own the M9 Carbine and Titan and both required major factory updates. The Carbine was covered under warranty. Shop cost would have have been about $450 if it was on my dime. I had to pay $117 shipping. Unfortunately the Titan was all on my dime to the tune of $600, due to monkey business with a dealer. For some reason, the dealer refused to provide proof of purchase despite confirming verbally that he had had sold the amp new 13 months prior to when I bought it. I gave him the name of the original purchaser and the original purchase date and he confirmed it against his records. Without proof of purchase Mesa goes by the manufacture date, which was at six years; so no warranty. My only consolation is the dealer was no longer Mesa authorized the last time I checked.
Also the claimed reason for abandoning the Strategy and Prodigy is because tube quality is not sufficient for reliable operation in such aggressive designs. In other words more major reliability problems.
My personal take is the current direction of the company's bass line is consistent with major market forces. and also the reliability issues are gone. As you may or may not down. The Subway line has been developed through crowd sourcing right here on Talkbass. There was also a long thread exploring the idea of a new Mesa tube amp, but I suspect the company is probably pretty gun shy after making a huge investment in the Strategy and Prodigy and having to discontinue those amps long before their intended time. Considering all of the warranty claims the company has had to deal with, I am actually sort of surprised they have survived at all.
Tube amps are expensive to make and I suspect profit margins are pretty thin, so it does not make sense for the company to sell them unless they can sell enough to turn a profit. In today's market selling a lot of tube amps is probably pretty difficult, although I really thought the Strategy and Prodigy were going to be home runs....they probably would have been if it were not for the reliability issues.
Mesa may not be able to give all of use everything we want, but I think the company is at least on its way to solid ground now where it will sell eloquent designs that are reliable, and also highly serviceable if anything does go wrong. IMHO a huge improvement over the previous direction.
Dom seems a little too excited about all the new "Merch" they are pushing out.
