So I spent a lot of time comparing and playing the WD-800 that came in yesterday - I'll try and be as objective as possible with my thoughts.
When I first plugged into the Mesa, I had to tame it a bit right away. I play an Ibanez EHB 1005SMS that has a maple fret board, stainless steel frets, and Aguilar DCB pickups - it's a very clear and bright/mid strong bass. On top of that I use S.I.T. Rock Bright nickel strings with a pick. For anyone else looking at the WD-800, if you have a bright instrument it's going to shine through right away. Dialing in the "Tube Grind & Punch" setting from the manual helped a lot, and I used that as a base to build off of.
I'll say right up front that the OB1-500 is going back. This is not to say that I don't like the tone, quite the opposite. When going back and forth I'd always think "Damn! This rocks!" when playing the Orange...but ultimately that's what I realized as well. It felt like I was playing the amp and not my bass. I meant to try another bass through it, but I have a feeling (I could be wrong) that it would sound similar. It was also a very narrow spectrum of the amp that I was playing, so it's just not worth it money wise. At this point, I think the Orange tone is one I'd maybe want in a pedal instead.
With the WD-800, there is a bit of Mesa flavor (my first time playing one so I think I'm identifying it correctly), but it truly felt like my bass coming through. I wouldn't call it completely transparent, but I would say that you could easily EQ it to be a more hi-fi amp. This amp definitely brought a smile to my face numerous times as I searched through the dials, but it's not like I plugged in and fell over.
Tone wise, is it better than my Peavey MiniMax? Yes, the Peavey probably gets about 75-80% of the way there (and would be an excellent cheaper backup amp IMO), but its the details that the Mesa adds that make it the clear winner. Now, would an audience be able to tell the difference? Depends on the music you are playing, so maybe, maybe not. Another musician? I would think so. The Peavey is a pretty clean amp but does have some baked in mids, which give it a tiny bit of that "playing the amp" feel but not anywhere near the Orange level.
Playing through the WD-800 has a unique feeling of gluing together all the components of your setup. A very "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" sort of feeling. Another thing that really caught my attention with the Mesa is the presence of all the harmonics (I think that's the word I want to use) the strings generate when normally struck really coming through. It wasn't harsh and helped give it an open/airy and "live" feeling.
While there are a lot of knobs, they do make sense and once you start to understand their interplay it's a very well thought out setup. For example, if you want the gain all the way up to O/D, switch the damping to med or high to compensate and vice versa. Each EQ knob really compliments and meshes well with the others - boosting or cutting can make a big difference, but you never feels like you are running into a wall from one frequency to the next.
Here is what I am running right now for solo practice:
For playing along to music/in the mix, I dial back the input to tighten up the B string. Even if I kept the input all the way up and was a bit loose/lost in the mix, the bass presence was always there and it made a huge difference whether I was playing or not. This was one of those things that made me smile - on other amps, if you get lost in the mix, you might as well not be playing.
Now, is the WD-800 worth the $600 or so more than the Peavey MiniMax? For me, yes. If you go down the line and compare the stats, the WD-800 would get the nod on every single line. The only thing the Peavey would win on is having a built in chromatic tuner. That said, I recognize that I am extremely fortunate to be able to afford an amp like this, and others shouldn't feel like they can't get a good tone without one either.
The one thing I still need to work out is getting a bit more crunch/grunt in the low mids/keeping the B string tight all the time. I guess part of the Mesa sound is sort of a soft warm pleasing background tone throughout, which sounds great, but I do feel that I need to work around it a little bit. I'll probably need to play around some more with the HPF and bass knobs, but any pointers would be appreciated. Also, with the tube-pre is there an amount of time it takes to hit "peak tone"? I've heard with all tube amps that they don't sound the best until they warm up all the way - is this the same here?
I think this is the start of a very good relationship! Now excuse me while I go sell a bunch of stuff I won't be using anymore.
