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Mesa Subway D-350!

#748
DJ Bebop said:
Is this right?

Wattage
350 Watts @ 4 or 2 Ohms / 175 Watts @ 8 Ohms
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The D-350 should not be operated with less than a 4 Ohm load. This was a deliberate design decision to facilitate "silent/passive" thermal management, small size, and still offer a good amount of power (with headroom) that hit a feature sweet spot many players had asked for. IMO it was good trade decision as I would imagine that most people using this head would not be in a playing situation with stacks of cabs running below 4 ohms...there are higher power SW heads for that use case.
 
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#752
Michael Vee said:
Hopefully, Mesa will publish the D-350 owner's manual PDF soon. Checked again this morning, and it is still not available.
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That’s odd, I will work on this too.
 
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#754
instrumentlevel said:
Just noticed this at the end of the “Features” list:
  • Optional rackmount kit available
I’m guessing that will be of interest to some folks who wanted that before for the smaller Subway amps.
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That’s not correct either. Grr.
 
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#755
Al Kraft said:
26542830[/URL], member: 293360"]The D-350 should not be operated with less than a 4 Ohm load. This was a deliberate design decision to facilitate "silent/passive" thermal management, small size, and still offer a good amount of power (with headroom) that hit a feature sweet spot many players had asked for. IMO it was good trade decision as I would imagine that most people using this head would not be in a playing situation with stacks of cabs running below 4 ohms...there are higher power SW heads for that use case.
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Even though I’m not one of the people concerned about fan noise, I’m extremely impressed with a passively cooled 350 Watt amp.

It also occurs to me that it eliminates the component most likely to fail under normal operating conditions, and almost certainly well beyond the warranty period. For someone like me, who expects a new amp to be capable of at least a decade of service, that’s likely more of a long term value than operating below 4 Ohms.

As you’ve already pointed out, you can make a lot of noise with a 350 Watt amp and a pair of relatively small modern cabs. I upgraded from a 150 Watt amp to 350 Watts to improve headroom, tone, and weight, but not volume. My 210AV stack already made more noise than I needed without the extra power.

On the flip side of that, I tend to mentally derate those cabs from 200W to 125W, because I play a 5 string. In theory at least, that makes a 350W amp pretty close to ideal for 3 of them. In reality, I’m unlikely to ever buy that third cab, so 2.67 Ohm capability is unlikely to ever matter to me.

Irrational human that I am, I’d probably still opt for 2.67 Ohm operation over passive cooling. However, of the two, I think passive cooling is more likely to become an industry trend.
 
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#759
Rich Fiscus said:
Irrational human that I am, I’d probably still opt for 2.67 Ohm operation over passive cooling. However, of the two, I think passive cooling is more likely to become an industry trend.
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I think about this from time to time and I'm still not sure. Personally I would want an amp as quiet as possible but that's because I play at home, where the fan and other random amp noises can be distractingly audible because I'll be sitting less than six feet away from it in a quiet room. In a performance those noises don't matter as much because they'll be drowned out by ambient noises before they reach the audience. So my guess is it comes down to where most of a given model of amp will be used, and I would assume that most people not playing out will prefer lower-powered amps. But then again there are people who buy SVTs and keep them in their basement, so I really dunno what the market wants.
 
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#760
ardgedee said:
I think about this from time to time and I'm still not sure. Personally I would want an amp as quiet as possible but that's because I play at home, where the fan and other random amp noises can be distractingly audible because I'll be sitting less than six feet away from it in a quiet room. In a performance those noises don't matter as much because they'll be drowned out by ambient noises before they reach the audience. So my guess is it comes down to where most of a given model of amp will be used, and I would assume that most people not playing out will prefer lower-powered amps. But then again there are people who buy SVTs and keep them in their basement, so I really dunno what the market wants.
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Very often the market doesn’t know what it wants, or even individual customers. I didn’t know I wanted the Genzler until I played through one.
 
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