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Upcoming NAD - Mesa Subway WD-800

#21
Welp.. unfortunately while I anticipated coming home today and sharing how awesome my experience with the amp was.. I didn't feel too well waking up today and one of my guitarists said he woke up with a sore throat. I'm not sure if I'm actually sick but I decided to self quarantine and we called it. Might ask my drummer to leave my cab outside and go pick it up so I can play with it as much as I can within my return period, but there's no real rush.

Will update when I actually get to put it to use in the context I'm looking to use it in. I'm still pretty certain it's a keeper though.

*Edit* so between the highpass filter, and lowering some eq settings just a tad, I'm actually able to get some tastey mild tube overdrive with the zoom r-16 sending a mic level signal without the interface clipping, the peak lights still flash but they don't stay on.. if I pluck too hard I might hear it clip but, otherwise.. I'm just hearing the amp.. and imagining how good that's going to sound out of the cabinet. I have no doubts that the M32 will be able to handle a bit more from it. If I turn the HPF down with the input gain maxed it will clip.. so dialing out just a bit of bass helped too. Likely going to have to order that xlr to 1/4th adapter from the internet to see if it helps.
 
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#22
So.. I went and picked up my cabinet today finally from my drummer's house.. for quick reference - it's an avatar b410, 4 ohms, rated for 800w afaik.

I just plugged the WD-800 into it.. and holy freaking crap. At comfortable/low volumes the tone is just soo freaking good. Then, I turned the master volume up to 11 from 9 o'lcock.. input gain on full blast, my entire house was shaking. I pushed it a little further, because the cabinet seemed to be handling it fine and the limit light on the amp wasn't coming on. I'm pretty sure my neighbors were like "WHAT THE".. I yelled as loud as I could "SORRY I HAD TO DO THAT"

HOLY CRAP. lol.

While the direct out sounds good despite the limitations of my particular interface, as well as the headphone out it just doesn't quite convey the experience of pushing hundreds of watts through four 10 inch speakers with all that meaty low end. Which is fine, that signal is for the sound engineers to make the best of.

I haven't owned many amp heads/cabinets but.. I can safely say the WD-800 gels very well with the avatar b410. The Low C on my 5 string sounded so powerful. That shuttle 6.0 was nice and all but, the WD-800 seems an obvious winner.

As I thought I would end up saying, we have a winner in the Mesa/Boogie Subway series. I'm a little late to that party and all but.. man am I feeling so lucky to have this beast.

Pray for the soul of the poor guitarist that tries to start a volume battle with me. Lest the picture frame hanging above his head come loose from the wall.

And when I don't need to let people know things are getting too loud.. I frankly don't think I could be happier about the tone of this combination.

Honestly I've been tempted to buy an interface and get a separate control surface for my home use with Reaper that will likely be able to better handle the xlr out from the amp, as the zoom is pretty old and starting to show its age anyway in forms of other issues... but I can mostly work around them, and don't absolutely need to drive the input gain so high for recording purposes. I also have several other methods of recording bass at home. So.. notes for the future.


And with that.. I think I'm done with this thread, although I may hit it up one more time to share my experiences when I finally get to plug into that m32. However, with the state of the world we aren't sure how long of a hiatus we're taking. That being said.. Sweetwater won't be getting this one back.
 
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#25
So - ordered an M-audio AIR because I was looking for something with less latency than the zoom to experiment with some online sessions during lockdown... mic level signal barely lights up the -20 light with the gain knob at 4. Line level signal was fine as well.

Just to really push it, I flipped the switch from active to passive and cranked the EQ knobs on my bass.. everything's golden. I can get anywhere from clean, to mild tube breakup, to distortion from this amp on it's own and it's pretty sweet.

K.. promise I'll stop bumping this thread now. Just figured it was worth noting that the -120 db mic pre's on the m-audio are a completely different experience than the old zoom.
 
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#27
agedhorse said:
The -120dB spec has nothing to do with sensitivity or overload.

That's either a S/N ratio spec or an EIN spec.
Click to expand...
agedhorse said:
The -120dB spec has nothing to do with sensitivity or overload.

That's either a S/N ratio spec or an EIN spec.
Click to expand...

No problem admitting i have zero clue what most of the spec sheet means. lol. Looking at it, it is the PREAMP EIN and and I was recalling a different model. Here's a little c&p just for the four mic inputs in the Air 192/14

Mic Inputs 1-4 (balanced XLR)
FREQUENCY RESPONSE 20 Hz – 20 kHz (+/-0.2 dB)
DYNAMIC RANGE 113 dB (A-weighted)
THD+N 0.003%
PREAMP EIN -137 dBu (40 Ω source, A-weighted) -129 dBu (150 Ω source, unweighted)
MAX INPUT LEVEL +14 dBu
GAIN RANGE 62 dB

I don't know what that tells anybody.. but I can at least confirm the mic pre's seem to allow for for lower gain in decibels than the Zoom pre's did. And the -20dB pad you linked should solve that. I'd have just ordered one but the band wanted to try JamKazam and the Zoom had high latency. I don't know how they handle things with their new Livetrack series.. as cool as they seem for the money.

Overall I think it's safe to say this shouldn't be a thing for most users. Just Zoom R-8/R-16/R-24 owners.
 

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