It depends on the intended use. For example, if a cabinet is going to be used for things like practice sessions, house jams, casino gigs, the volume and low frequency extension and sturdiness is not nearly as important as when the cabinet is used in a heavy duty gigging environment. Since Mesa has always been associated with the pro touring environment and applications, the builds must accommodate a much higher amount of rough handling and hard high power use than other applications. We are not (nor ever have been) known for practice amps, practice cabinets, or light duty gear.
Then you know wrong... all Faital drivers that we use in the Subway cabinets are manufactured in Italy. We do not use counterfeit or knock-off drivers.
Correct, the longevity under heavy duty applications is critical to all of our products, and the verified history of the line and our warranty backs up our commitment to this. It is a fine balance between many variables in order to arrive at the feature set of any product.
Correct, and they are very high quality but also expensive. It's an example of getting what you pay for IME.
Kinda-sorta... one reason for recycling names is because laws in many developed countries require the use of a trademarked name to prevent losing it through (legal) abandonment. The Subway name is one of our long time trademarks that goes back to some earlier guitar amps, the trademarks are now for "Subway" and "Subway Ultra-Lite" which cover the new bass cabinets.
The ultra-lite refers specifically to the weight relative to our original Powerhouse and Road-Ready cabinets that they ultimately replaced. Once the Subway cabinet were released, the demand for the MUCH heavier Powerhouse line fell to almost zero. While a very vocal minority of legacy players mourn the loss of the Powerhouse (and Carbine, Big Block, etc.) products, in the end they had stopped buying them in favor of lighter cabinets and amps. They did one thing while saying another, so in order to survive as a company, we paid attention to the phrase "money talks, bullsh-t walks".
Also, the grilles are a significant part of the weight, they are a heavy gauge cold rolled steel grille. This too addresses the needs of the pro touring and gigging world over the long haul. We could have saved a couple of pounds by using a lighter grille, but that would have impacted durability for their intended application. Same applies to the heavier handles.
Correct, they are roughly 1/2 the weight (on average) of the cabinets they replaced. For players in the pro world, especially at the time they were developed (started in 2014), they were ultra-lite. The name originally came from the way a couple of our early test players described them.
I have in fact developed some lighter weight cabinets in the past, but not for the pro touring market and not with the same performance specs. They would rank lighter in the comparison table in the first post, geared more towards lighter duty applications.
At several times I have looked at composite construction, the attractiveness is of course their weight, but in every case they would not hold up to the heavier duty touring use that out cabinets are targeted, and the impact of poor of recyclability and biodegradability was a moral non-starter for me personally.
With all of our cabinets, over 95% by weight is either recyclable or biodegradable and this is not accidental.
