The Prodigy is voiced fairly aggressively, but it depends on which specific qualities you are looking for. For example, do you intentionally overdrive your amp into distortion? Do you play very loud or at moderate levels? What speakers do you use?
Most of the classic gain and overdrive attributes come from preamp gain and preamp voicing. In the case of the legacy Mesa amps (both guitar and some bass), this comes from multiple preamp tube stages with voicing elements in between. The power tubes aren’t responsible for “gain” but contribute to the feel.
In the bass amp line, we started moving away from tube power amps as players wanted more power in smaller, lighter packages, and additional features resulted in the hybrid platforms like the M-Pulse, Walkabout, Carbine, Big Block, etc.
The Strategy and Prodigy were the last of the bass amps with power tubes, there were reliability/consistency issues with the KT-88 tubes that the two manufacturers could resolve adequately for our needs so we were forced to discontinue them. Those who were fortunate to get a good set of tubes (most of the earlier ones were pretty good) had no problems.
The current amps aren’t voiced as aggressively, especially for distortion, but the D-800+ can get reasonably close when using the bright switch and voicing control.
That said, you should try one first since it’s ultimately a personal decision.
If you are looking for the overdriven, distorted, aggressive tone, you might also try Darkglass as that’s the basis of their original products.
