I will second this and have posted before that my Carbine M3 and two GK Neo 112II's are a favorite pairing. For me, GK and Mesa gear mixing always has a good outcome.
I will try to get some time this evening with my two GK cabs and the TT-800. I was able to do a quick plug in and play last night with a Berg CN212 and one of the TT-800 prototypes - it's an impressive head. Below is my first impression and I will share what I learn tonight as well.
Let me just say that I hadn't expected to be as captivated with a dual channel head as I am with the TT-800. This thing is very intuitive with controls that seem to feel very musically integrated - it never gets unbalanced even when experimenting, even though there are two unique sections to experiment with so it takes some time to really find out everything it can do.
So I did what any bass player is going to do, I set this thing on a cab I know well (my CN212), plugged it in and tried all three of my basses. They're all 4 bangers, two German Warwicks (a Fortress 1 and Corvette Standard) and an EB MM Sterling (single H).
The SW channel feels and sounds familiar (a little more WD betwteen medium and low damping than D/D+ to my ear - I like the DF choice on this amp). The SW semi-paremtric mid is MUCH better most than any other semi-parametric I've used - effectve and non-intrusive. The deep and bright switches are very useful and add a lot. The deep provides a fullness that is not an annoying sub boost kind of deal. The bright opens up the upper mids and top end very musically. They seem like very broad, smooth shaping approaches that add quality to the tone, not just emphasis on certain frequencies.
I like the high gain input position a lot. At least with my basses, it seems to realy wake-up the pre-amp and give me a fuller sound. I suspect that very hot, especially 5 string basses could have greater success in the Boogie channel with low gain position - high will probably sound best for many of us though.
While I'm not doing any kind of OD kind of playing, I think having the symmetry control more toward noon or beyond (towards the ASYM setting) just sounds warmer and smoother. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be noticeable if you're not overdriving the amp, but it seems to make a difference to me. The Boogie channel mid controls seemed odd at first, but once you start to use them they just work!
I'm going to try some other cabs and impedances tonight, but when listening carefully last night I would say the SW channel has rich notes that are more tightly focussed around their center frequency with clean harmonics that have a well-defined punch. The Boogie channel to me also has rich, full notes but with a wider, not as distinct/focussed center frequency that is less defined around the edges and almost has harmonics that spill over (in a nice way).
I like both channels, but will need some time to really understand the Boogie channel's capabilty better. This is an unusal amp for me, because I typically like heads better with most of the "special voicing switches" off (high gain, deep, bright) - they are almost always "too much of something" for my purposes. On the TT-800 they are almost too good to run without. There is a lot of headroom in the preamp and the power amp feels massive.
It's also interesting that every knob when turned to the right tends to add quality, depth and dimension to the tone (not just more of something specific) and everything interacts very musically. In fact it dawned on me as I was writing this that the head behaves more like a musical instrument (in terms of how things interact sort of seamlessly) than it does a piece of electronic equipment. I find that very inspiring.
Overall this does seem to feel and sound a bit more like an old school tube head than the WD (which took its inspiration from the WA). My initial impression is that you can hear a little more 400 in this than you can WA in the WD. For the record, the WD is still a stellar amp that isn't repaced or made obsolete by the TT IMO. This head clearly had different design and tone goals. I think folks will be even more excited than they are now when they get to play one.
These were my original impressions and I''ll get deeper into speicifcs tonight as I get to be a better operator and try out different cabs. For now I am off to some meetings.
-Al
