Mesa Boogie Walkabout Mega-thread Pt. Tres

[pfschim]

+1 I have been trying to talk them into building a 600-800 watt 2-channel amp, with one channel being the Walkabout front end, and the other being the M6 front end. I think you could cover a lot of ground with a head like that.

might also cannibalize a certain portion of both the Walkabout, AND M6 buyer/market. This factor could make them reluctant to do this.

would be cool if they would go this route though.

 

[SJLee]

Wonder if the WalkAbout's missing shine you speak of could be related to the length of cord you're using. According to the manual Mesa recommends using a cord 15' or shorter for the Walkabout.

Use high quality cable from your instrument to the WalkAbout and from the WalkAbout to your speaker. Instrument cable should be relatively low capacitance shielded cable. Whenever possible use lengths of 15 feet or shorter. Longer than 15’ tends to introduce too much capacitance resulting in reduced punch and top end clarity. Speaker cable should be at least 14 gauge (or thicker) unshielded cable and again try to keep the length of cable as short as possible for the best tonal results.

There are only two negatives with the Walkabout, as far as i'm concerned.

1) I wish it could shine on top like the M6. You can always dial that out. You can't really add it in. Using a Sadwosky helps, but I'd really like shinier top end, at points.

2) I wish it was the same 600 watts the M6 is. I prefer using the walkabout clean, clean, clean 98% of the time...and sometimes I just need more headroom than it has when inside the clean tone palette.
At those points, it starts breaking up, and significantly compressing the low notes. I know, I know, this is aprt of the whole tube emulation thing so many people-myself included!-dig about the Walkabout. I just wish it were optional...

With the M6's 600 watts, I could run it clean and big and phat and tasty as I want, input low, master high. If and when I wanted more harmonic content, or wanted to live a little closer to Big Tube Amp Land, I could turn input up, and master down.

Hey Mesa, put that Walkabout front end in front of an M6 or M9 powerplant.
Yeah, I realise it'll get bigger.
I'm ok with that.

Pretty please?

thanks!

 

[Chef]

no sir, that's not it.

 

[pfschim]

Probably not about the length of the instrument cable. The Walkabout is not about a "shiny" SS like top end. Even with the tweet control pushed all the way up and the crossover set to 3k, it does not do the SS sound to a significant degree.

Now, personally, I love that it does not. I do not like that hot SS top end sound at all, so that's why the Walkabout is my amp of choice. The WA has plenty of usable highs IMO/IME, but if you are slappin' maniac, (not sayin' that Chef is one of those ), or want a ton of fret and string noise in your tone, it probably won't fit the bill very well.

 

[Chef]

With he Scout cab, I never could get the top end clarity I dig.

With other cabs, and, when using something like my Sadowsky or Valenti, I can get there.
However, I can dig what it does as it's baseline too

 

[BarStarzBass]

Add one more to the WA legions - got my new-to-me red-face head last night from a fellow TB'er (thanks Xanderbass!). Using it with a home-made sealed 1x15 cab with a Peavey Black Widow, an G&L L-2000 Fretless and (later this week) a G&L Legacy P-bass.

Didn't have a ton of time to play with it last night, but I can tell this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Can't wait to play it a proper volume at our band's practice tomorrow.

One thing though - I'm in YABCRCB (Yet Another Blues/Classic Rock Cover Band). We have a husband-and-wife singing pair, so we cover a lot of ground from Cream to Blondie to STP to Pat Benatar to Zep to The Motels. What it's come down to is I need two basic sounds (with some tweeners by messing with guitar settings) - a classic blues/rock big-and-round P-bass with flatwounds sound, and a Jazz-Bass-through-SVT-midrangey-grinding sound for the more modern/edgy stuff. I found the warm-round sound pretty quickly on the WA. I'm sure with some digging I could find an SVT-type sound - but I need both "on-tap" for a gig and don't want to be fiddling with EQ, Master/Gain etc.

How do others deal with this? An EQ pedal in line? I have a Sansamp VT Bass that I tried into the FX loop, bypassing (gasp!) the sweeet WA pre-amp. Worked great - better than just patching the VT into the front of the WA as they "fought" each other a bit - too much tube-emulation going on, I guess.

So I'm thinking of keeping the WA at the round-warm setting and running the P-bass straight into the front, then with an A-B box running the L-2000-VT Bass-FX return.

The A-B box: in the P-bass setting, it would bypass the VT and just feed the FX send back into the FX return. In the L-2000 setting, the reverse (of course!).

Anyone see a major flaw with this? Or have a better way?

 

[Chef]

Well, yeah...
It ain't "press of a button,'' but if you trim a little 50hz, push the passive mid to 2-3 oclock, and push some 5-600hz, that should be close.
The eq can be changed really quickly, once you've decided what points to make your changes at.

the manual can be downloaded from mesa, and has some other good baseline suggestions.

otherwise, you might need to try something like a two channel radial tonebone.

 

[BarStarzBass]

Thanks, Chef. Just looked at the Radial website and my head is hurting from all those options. Think I'll try your eq suggestions first . . . less is more . . .

 

[Chef]

i tend to make those kind of changes just with right hand position and attack
or
most of the basses i play are "active, but have passive tone"
so it's easy to set the bass from darker to livelier just with that passive tone over active eq...

 

[BarStarzBass]

As I'm sure you've already guessed from my questions, I'm a real noob to bass - only been playing 5 months, from a guitar background. I'm STARTING to be able to get slightly different sounds from hand position and plucking style, but not enough yet to where I don't need some eq help. And the L-2000 has a 3-way passive/active/active-with-hi-boost setting so that helps too.

 

[Chef]

the L2000 has many voices

 

[lpdeluxe]

the L2000 has many voices

Indeed. Prior to my conversion to Precisions, I regularly gigged with an L2K. GREAT neck: 10" or so radius, satin finish on the back, maple fingerboard, just chunky enough. I could (in the context of a dance hall band, where perfect replication of hits is not required) get a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile of StingRay (Joe Cocker, Johnny Lang), Jazz (too numerous to mention) and a pseudo-P sound that was fine until I got a REAL P. When I took my Classic '50s to rehearsal, I hit one note and the entire band turned around and said, "THAT'S IT!" and that was the end of the L2000.

I acquired my WAS a couple of years later, but I can't imagine NOT finding an incredible sound with the Mesa/Boogie.

 

[BillyB_from_LZ]

.... When I took my Classic '50s to rehearsal, I hit one note and the entire band turned around and said, "THAT'S IT!" and that was the end of the L2000.

....

How flattering that the rest of the band actually cares (and can hear the difference)!

 

[Chef]

Those two basses are really quite different from each other.

but yeah, nice to have people that notice.

 

[lpdeluxe]

Had I not discovered the P, I am sure I would have migrated to an L2500. Alas! The road unexplored! I went so far as to talk to a nearby G&L dealer about ordering me one, but he wouldn't give me enough in trade to make it doable.

But the Precision replaced everything else. I ran into the drummer of that band, a couple of years after the band broke up, and he spontaneously said, "I don't listen to the bass player that much, but that orange [fiesta red] one you had put out a killer tone."

As an aside: most of the local honky tonk bassists play J basses through Peavey gear, and they all sound alike and not that good.

My tracking # indicates M/B got my WA head Monday. C'mon guys, I need it back now!

 

[Chef]

swerve:
lp, if you get a chance to try a G&L SB1 P bass, you should.

 

[BBQV]

I've just joined the Walkabout crowd! Mine is a brand new 12", 4 ohm Scout, and I'm in instant bass Nirvana! A friend of mine got one a couple of years ago and I just knew I got to have one too.

The lack of top end zing suits me fine, I'm a bit treble shy, and the tube-like warmth make it sound great with the EQ flat. I've got three Precisions (an original '65, a CIJ '51 Classic and an Allparts Scrapheap Special) that are quite different soundwise, but they all sound fantastic through the little black box. Walkabout and Precision are made for each other!

I've been reading these humongous threads with great interest and I really think this little amp deserves all the praise it's getting!

 

[lpdeluxe]

swerve:
lp, if you get a chance to try a G&L SB1 P bass, you should.

I'll keep my eyes open, but I'm pretty happy with my Fender Ps.

 

[BarStarzBass]

Well, yeah...
It ain't "press of a button,'' but if you trim a little 50hz, push the passive mid to 2-3 oclock, and push some 5-600hz, that should be close.

Ding ding ding!! We have a winner!

Much as I was looking forward to implementing my Rube Goldberg Sansamp VT-into-A/B-into-FX loop "solution" . . . I dialed Chef's recommended settings in last night . . . tweaked a little bit from there . . . and THERE it was - the Tone in My Head!

THANKS CHEF!!! And also thanks to maintaining this great megathread. I'm reading it all cover to cover and just starting on Part Deux.

What an incredible range of great sounds out of this little head . . . anybody want to buy a slightly used VT Bass? Just kidding . . . the VT and a DI will stay on my board as a backup to the WA. But I don't expect it'll be seeing much action . . .

Of course I couldn't resist a LITTLE Rube-Goldberg. I used my Boss Bass Eq in a setting that dials back out the heavy-mid's on the WA for a more "round" sound (basically the opposite of Chef's suggestions), pushed the Eq's clean boost up a little to make up for the volume difference between the active and passive settings on my L-2000 . . . and voila, with one step on the pedal I go from SVT-mid-grind to Motown round! Perfect for me!

 

[BarStarzBass]

Indeed. Prior to my conversion to Precisions, I regularly gigged with an L2K. GREAT neck: 10" or so radius, satin finish on the back, maple fingerboard, just chunky enough. I could . . . get a . . . a pseudo-P sound that was fine until I got a REAL P.

LP, I'm right there with ya. I LOVE the neck-feel of the L2K - it's like my hands were made to wrap around it - it's a perfect fit for me. And the range of tones is incredible, but it doesn't quite do the P Bass sound and, with it's lunar-lander array of knobs and switches, certainly doesn't give a P Bass VIBE at all.

If only G&L made a bass that had the pickups, controls and body of P, but with that great G&L neck and bridge. It would be a sort-of nod to the . . . ummm . . . Legacy . . . of the classic late 50's P design while also updating it with all the other little things Leo learned since moving on from Fender. And if only for some reason that defies logic it would be available used for 30% less than a comparable Fender P-Bass . . . wait, what's this that just arrived on my doorstep last night?