Poor man's Mesa

What Mesa amp tone are you going for?
(I own a couple different Mesa models that sound completely different from each other)

 

I never played any of the solid state powered Mesa's but If you want a fat tone kinda similar to your old V4B (but louder and on a budget), I'd suggest you haul your GK rig to a shop that sells Sansamp VT pedals and try one into your front end first, and then also try it into its Effects Return jack to completely replace the GK's preamp.

 

The GK Fusion has a TON of natural low end.

 

Have you thought about buying Mesa....used?

 

Doesn't Tech 21 make a character pedal based on Mesa?

That might be one to check out--if it does exist, and works as well as the VT bass, then you'll probably find what you need right there.

edit: looks like they make two, the US Steel, and the California:
http://www.tech21nyc.com/products/sansamp/characterseries.html

 

No, the VT bass is modeled after Ampegs... (hence the name VT, as in SVT).

 

Those appear to be designed for guitar. At least that's what I get from reading the descriptions.

 

Anything in the L6 XT Live suitable ?

 

I bet you're one of those people who think you can't use guitar pedals with bass, either.

 

Most guitar pedals wind up attenuating the low end or screwing it up in some fashion, or emphasize the wrong eq points.

On the upside, that is easy for a good tech to fix. Modding a pedal for bass is not too expensive in most cases.

 

Mighty condescending of you. Your post tells me a lot more about you than my post could ever tell you about me!

Anyway, I was just pointing out that those pedals were not created to replicate a Mesa bass amp.

 

Sorry for that--rereading it, that post comes off a bit snippier than I'd meant to. You're absolutely right that they're not intended to replicate a Mesa bass amp, but they may still give the OP what he's looking for.

On the other hand, I don't know how well the GK Fusion would fix the problem -- I'd imagine that amp (regardless of the presence preamp tubes, which says absolutely nothing about the tone) sounds much different than the Big Block.

 

How different are Mesa bass amps from Mesa guitar amps?

Mine was intended as both. Not sure if that means anything.

 

Randall Amplification.

 

My Mesa F-30 guitar head (30w, 2 EL84s) sounds KILLER for bass through my 2x12. It's obviously a bit short on headroom, but the clean and distortion sounds are great and can be very similar to a Bass 400 that I tried a while back.

 

I mean, obviously my D-180 is no triple rectifier, but it was meant originally for both bass and guitar, and does sound pretty good for guitar. Whether it sounds similar to other Mesa guitar amps, whether its guitar sound is typical for them, I have no idea.

If it is, I can see a Tech 21 character pedal modeled on Mesa guitar amps working quite well for bass.

Also, IIRC, JimmyM sometimes uses their British character series pedal for bass and says it sounds pretty good.