I finally got it - my new Mesa TT-800 amplifier! Woohooo!
I had been gassing for this amp for a while and just after my birthday the stars aligned and I got my hands on one in the UK. Unit 331, with a nice label with all the signatures of the good folks at Mesa building and checking it and a gig bag to boot. The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that some time has passed since then, and I am very grateful for the unbuerocratic and hassle free help that I got from Mark and his team at Bass Direct here in the UK sorting out a baffling intermittent fault. Big thumbs up!
I have now had it in my hands for two weeks and am blown away. Firstly, the manual greets me as "a smart player and intuitive human"
. Thank you! Having spent some time with the pdf manual before the amp arrived I had an idea of the potential, but I was not prepared for reality. The "instant gratification" settings on both channels immediately had "Yes, that's MY tone!" vibes. I kept the bass (Ibanez SR1700) neutral and only played with Amp settings and pickup combinations so far. It is currently paired with my old Hartke Transporter 410 cab without tweeter and in all tweaks I found I preferred the bright boost on. (I have a barefaced Super Compact with a tweeter incoming, but that will be a different story). The built-in HPF took care of the room nicely, too!
So many great sounds everywhere. It will take me a long time to fully explore and hone in on my favourite settings. There is a lot of fun to be had taking our current setlist and optimising the sound song for song. For the next gig, however, I will try to restrict myself to a nice round full clean bass tone on the Boogie channel and a more crunchy modern rock tone on the Subway. I don't like to twiddle too much between songs, but the seamless channel switching should give me all the variation I need live. Recording, on the other hand, now that will be interesting
.
Some pictures, and then it's back to the woodshed.
I had been gassing for this amp for a while and just after my birthday the stars aligned and I got my hands on one in the UK. Unit 331, with a nice label with all the signatures of the good folks at Mesa building and checking it and a gig bag to boot. The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that some time has passed since then, and I am very grateful for the unbuerocratic and hassle free help that I got from Mark and his team at Bass Direct here in the UK sorting out a baffling intermittent fault. Big thumbs up!
I have now had it in my hands for two weeks and am blown away. Firstly, the manual greets me as "a smart player and intuitive human"
. Thank you! Having spent some time with the pdf manual before the amp arrived I had an idea of the potential, but I was not prepared for reality. The "instant gratification" settings on both channels immediately had "Yes, that's MY tone!" vibes. I kept the bass (Ibanez SR1700) neutral and only played with Amp settings and pickup combinations so far. It is currently paired with my old Hartke Transporter 410 cab without tweeter and in all tweaks I found I preferred the bright boost on. (I have a barefaced Super Compact with a tweeter incoming, but that will be a different story). The built-in HPF took care of the room nicely, too!So many great sounds everywhere. It will take me a long time to fully explore and hone in on my favourite settings. There is a lot of fun to be had taking our current setlist and optimising the sound song for song. For the next gig, however, I will try to restrict myself to a nice round full clean bass tone on the Boogie channel and a more crunchy modern rock tone on the Subway. I don't like to twiddle too much between songs, but the seamless channel switching should give me all the variation I need live. Recording, on the other hand, now that will be interesting
.Some pictures, and then it's back to the woodshed.
