New mesa subway amps and cabs!

[redstrand]

Also my old-school drummer would have babies if he saw me play with that 2x15....

(I don't need cabs, I don't need cabs, I don't need...)

There is no need, only want

 

[Daniel Piper]

As an elementary school teacher in New Zealand, I concur!

Wait- what are we concurring?


Maybe it’s a company that announces products at the exact time the YouTube/sample clips are done, and the damned things are pretty much shipping, and pricing is set,

And features are all known, and carefully thought through and justifiable.

That also sound great with an immense track record of reliability and quality behind them.

Mesa freakin’ Boogie!
Awesome.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

If I'm not mistaken I think Jim Bergantino also uses popular on his Neo loaded cabinets, and so did Carvin. Used both of those cabinets for years. Lighter weight but never ever ever an issue with the cabinet developing buzzes or rattles. I will agree that popular seems a little easier to dent on say, a corner compared to birch but the differences seem rather incremental.

I can agree that the biggest risk is physical damage cause by dropping (granted, a risk lowered by being lighter), or being bounced around in a truck or car. Btw, you do realize I’m not talking about occasional usage here?

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Although considered a hardwood it is around the same hardness as Okoume and only a third as hard as Baltic Birch at two thirds the weight/ sq ft. It is mostly void free and quality depends on the supplier. It's screw holding properties are weak and It dents easily but if the cabinet is braced and fastened properly it will not come apart and should provide years of service if taken care of. It should never be used for a baffle on a large cabinet. And, that is not a guess. It comes from 50 years of making cabinets; sometimes with anything I could get my hands on.

As I said, I’m not an engineer, and heaven help me if I had to make a living working with wood, but what I learned about durability was when I was touring. Stuff happens. So I’m going to ask a question, when “stuff’ happens, and it does happen, which would you rather have?

 

[agedhorse]

I can agree that the biggest risk is physical damage cause by dropping (granted, a risk lowered by being lighter), or being bounced around in a truck or car. Btw, you do realize I’m not talking about occasional usage here?

We design and sell cabinets that go out on tour duty far beyond "occasional use", we are very aware of the rigors of the road. I've got almost 40 years of that experience in the pro audio world myself.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

We design and sell cabinets that go out on tour duty far beyond "occasional use", we are very aware of the rigors of the road. I've got almost 40 years of that experience in the pro audio world myself.

Sometimes, I don't know how you do it. ;-)

 

[agedhorse]

Sometimes, I don't know how you do it. ;-)

I've finally retired from that, before becoming permanently retired due to too many miles and not enough time

 

[nostatic]

I've finally retired from that, before becoming permanently retired due to too many miles and not enough time

I don't think that's what he was referring to

 

[MultiScaleMale]

I don't think that's what he was referring to

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that he got it.

 

[nostatic]

As I said, I’m not an engineer, and heaven help me if I had to make a living working with wood, but what I learned about durability was when I was touring. Stuff happens. So I’m going to ask a question, when “stuff’ happens, and it does happen, which would you rather have?

When did you last tour, and how many shows a year do you play now?

I don't tour, but have averaged about 100 gigs a year since 2010. Have slowed down the last couple years, did over 140 shows in 2011. That is a lot of load ins and load outs, all done myself. While I'm not tossing stuff in the van next to a case of PBR and the drummer's girlfriend, there still is wear and tear. I have good, lightweight gear and it doesn't fail me.

All good gear is not lightweight, and all lightweight gear is not good. But there is plenty of stuff that is both. If you haven't tried it, then hard to claim otherwise...

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

I don't tour, but have averaged about 100 gigs a year since 2010. Have slowed down the last couple years, did over 140 shows in 2011. That is a lot of load ins and load outs, all done myself.

Sometimes I don’t know how you do it. ;-)

 

[agedhorse]

The last couple decades was mostly operating a theatre that handled mostly touring acts, easier on the travel side but still working with the same guys. Averaged 125-150 dates a year, typically 12-14 hours a day as either an A1 or TD. Before that it was a variety of acts, starting with Kate Wolf (who passed in 1986). Then there was all the system design, system builds, and gear design. Fun times but 80 hours a week got tiring for sure.

 

[BadExample]

As far as denting easily, the hardness of the Poplar that we use isn't all that different from Douglas Fir

My 100 YO fir flooring has no wear.

I would think if you made the cabs out of void free ebony, they would weigh a ton, cost a fortune and crack when dropped or maybe break a driver. IME harder woods are less forgiving than softer (quality) woods. IMO polar is pretty durable and hard enough, but butt ugly for furniture making.

I've finally retired from that, before becoming permanently retired due to too many miles and not enough time

Thank God. If you kept up the pace you had a couple years ago, you could have ended up at the glue factory.

 

[Fab Superlative]

Speaker cabs are not simply just klutz proof boxes built to protect speakers, they also affect and function as sound reproduction instruments in and of themselves. In a nutshell, they resonate along with the speakers to contribute and produce their own unique sound/tone.

This is a well known fully vetted, field tested and accepted concept and practice.

Some of the most desirable toneful, resonant cabinets produced were made with 'soft' pine.
I'm referring to the widely coveted Fender Tweed, cabinets that were manufactured in the 1950's - these cabs are 60+yrs old and are still resonating and going strong. And they weren't even shod with very tough durable modern tolex.

The argument in this thread about poplar not being a suitable material for cabinets is an amusing red herring flopping about like a fish out of their depth of water.

I salute Mesa Boogie, for going the extra distance to engineer and produce some of the most durable and toneful speaker cabinets available to gigging bassists today.

When did you last tour, and how many shows a year do you play now?

I don't tour, but have averaged about 100 gigs a year since 2010. Have slowed down the last couple years, did over 140 shows in 2011. That is a lot of load ins and load outs, all done myself. While I'm not tossing stuff in the van next to a case of PBR and the drummer's girlfriend, there still is wear and tear. I have good, lightweight gear and it doesn't fail me.

All good gear is not lightweight, and all lightweight gear is not good. But there is plenty of stuff that is both. If you haven't tried it, then hard to claim otherwise...

You are way more polite in calling BS then I am LOL!
And I bet you don't even use 'bona fide touring pro grade' Anvil cases Ha!

 

[mmbongo]

Just checked Sweetwater's site.

Actually quite relieved that they are not doing 36 or 48 month financing on Mesa. That would have been bad. Reeeaalll bad. But then it would have been all good!!

 

[nostatic]

Sometimes I don’t know how you do it. ;-)

particularly when I have a day job that is usually nuts as well. It helps to also be nuts

My wife often wonders how I haul myself out of the house at night to go play. But she's going through her own stretch of insanity. She hopped a plane to Venice last night to scout the installation site for her solo show in the Bienalle next year. Comes back Mon. Then 2 weeks later off to Hong Kong to do press junkets. She's been turning wood and 3D printing non-stop, and it won't slow down until March when the shippers come. Then she heads back to Italy for at least 6 weeks of installation, opening, press, etc.

I'll stick with my local gigs...

 

[Pbassmanca]

2x15?! finally! I'm gonna need a fresh change of clothes.... drool

I know how you feel buddy. I feel like if I'm going to Splash out to upgrade my cab from my current awesome Mesa 210 I might as well go big or go home just get the 215...

 

[BadExample]

Oh, man, y'all are naughty, naughty men. Rock on!

 

[Lowendtech]

I can confirm that the WD concept started years ago and I recall many discussions on TB and via PM with agedhorse about how to tackle the design challenge associated with satisfying all the pleas and requests for a higher powered WA. Unfortunately it simply took some time to fully appreciate the unique system dynamics/interactions responsible for the WA tone at a level that even brainstorming on how to reasonably scale it up could begin. And most will recall that nothing else with more power in the M-Pulse line sounded like a more powerful WA - which one would have logically expected. If it was an easy nut to crack, Mesa had lots of monetary incentive to do it a long, long time ago.

Mesa wanted to give us what we all asked for, but the path to doing that was anything but clear - in fact it was considered by most to somewhere between impossible and impracticable. After a lot thinking and experimenting, agedhorse finally formulated a design approach that brought some new puzzle pieces into the equation to replace pieces that would not scale up. Unfortunately they were not exactly a one for one replacement because it was an un-scalable interaction that was producing the unique WA tone. Wanting to stay totally analog and not use digital modelling or emulation (which IME would have fallen short of customer expectations) simply required time. As I said, most assumed the problem was not solvable and the WA results could not be replicated at higher power.

Since invention and innovation are rarely instantaneous, and even miracles often take time, it just took a while. Many of us were in conversations with agedhorse along the way, and I was one of those folks. He would have loved to be the hero who delivered this the moment it was asked for. And I suspect he would have rather not read all my wild suggestions and comments along the way.

The new architecture here IMO is more of WA+/second generation WA design than it is simply a Subway with different controls and a tube pre-amp. While agedhorse may have told the story differently (and usually hits the facts more accurately than me), I wanted to provide my perspective as someone who was an occasional participant along the entire process.

As someone who trusts Mesa's ethics and an engineer myself, I'm pretty comfortable that if Mesa could have produced this even one day earlier, they would have. They have had folks clamoring for it for many years easily bordering on a decade. Just look at the response here! Who in business would have kept this hidden in the backroom with demand like this knocking on the front door? Good engineering takes time, especially when the problem is considered unsolvable. IMO the real question in my mind should be how was this even possible, not whether the timing is suspect.

A final thought from someone who has played the prototype head along side my WA and my SW. This head didn't make my D-800 obsolete (or shorten my 5 year transferable warranty if I want to sell it) and neither did the 800+. The WD-800 does eclipse my old WA, but that was what we had all been screaming we wanted for 10 years or more. I like my D-800 as much as the day I bought it. As people played that head and expressed interest in new features and capabilities, Mesa responded to that demand with a D-800+. We can either accuse them of listening too closely to customer demand and responding too rapidly, or of having ulterior motives,...I think the answer to this one is obvious!

Very respectfully,
-Al

Yep. Thanks for the eloquent quotient Al. I’d have used less words.

 

[Pbassmanca]

If I'm not mistaken I think Jim Bergantino also uses popular on his Neo loaded cabinets, and so did Carvin. Used both of those cabinets for years. Lighter weight but never ever ever an issue with the cabinet developing buzzes or rattles. I will agree that popular seems a little easier to dent on say, a corner compared to birch but the differences seem rather incremental.

Poplar is a very hard wood, much more so than people think. I use it all the time for trim installs and it is much harder than softwoods like Pine. I installed poplar trim in my home and painted it and it does not dent very easily at all. My kids run things into it, doors hit it, and yet I have no dents. Fret not (sic) my bassy friends ; the Subway cabs will take the punishment and deliver without fail.....