What happened to Mesa Boogie cabinets?

[/\/\3phist0]

I drive a Dodge Magnum. No space issues.
60th birthday this year.

I used to have Mesa 112 /115 cabs. Had also a TC15, RS41vt.

love my WD800.

these cover both ends of the spectrum.

The LABSeries 215 is loaded with Kappalite 3015’s is less than 100 lbs,on tilt back wheels, with towel bar handle. 800 watt 4 ohm beast . Hauling the 2x15 and the SVT is less weight, and less effort than the full PA I used to haul to every gig. 2 mains 3 monitors, a Sub, lights etc.

SVT and the Mesa both work well with this beast.

the Phil Jones c8 is a joy to haul with its built in cart, under 60 lbs
Sounds great and way bigger than its diminutive size.

what happened to Mesa big cabs?
Obsolete. No market. Less efficient.

 

[agedhorse]

Lightweight drivers have been revolutionary in amplification, at least from a user's perspective. Is there anything on the horizon that comes close to changing the game to a similar magnitude, or do you believe that advances will be small and incremental in the foreseeable future?

That's the million dollar question. My expectation is that it will be incremental yet significant.

 

[g-dude]

The demand for the older Road Ready and Powerhouse cabinets fell like a rock as soon as the market said no and hell no. There's almost no demand for 100+ pound cabinets these days, and with the higher quality lighter weight drivers that are available recently, there's really no reason for the average pro player. The Subway cabinets outperform the Powerhouse cabinets model for model. For those who want the old cabinets, they are available on the used market for less than it would cost us to build them.

There are 6 Subway models: 210, 410, 112, 212, 115 and 215.



Yeah, you are not remembering this right. The Subway cabinet replaced the Powerhouse cabinets in 2014-2015, a full 7 years before we were acquired by Gibson. In fact, the Gibson ownership of today wasn't even around ~5 years ago.



The number of 810's being sold throughout the industry is pretty small. I did design (the electo-acoustic part) a custom 810 for Rex Brown (Pantera) last year, it was a custom shop tour support model and I also designed a 412 for Justin Chancellor (Tool) in approximately the same sized package (but much closer to the Subway family design), also a custom shop tour support model. It's not that we can't produce them, but the demand is really small and from the arena touring market. Clearly size/weight aren't important but the specific look was.

Rex's current tour rig:

Justin's current tour rig, the 810 is a customized Road Ready, the 412 is close to 2x Subway 212's (not exactly, but the differences were for his specific application in the O/D signal path):

My gut tells me that the 4x10 doesn’t sell as well as the other cabs.

I think it’d be cool to have one, but I don’t feel I need one.

 

[/\/\3phist0]

I seem to remember a plethora of options available from MB but when I just went to their site it shows a total of 5 cabs called "Subway Series". What happened to the 8x10 & 6x10 cabs? Their best feature IMO was the "Road Ready" versions, I can't believe they stopped making the RR series and the bigger sizes, I wonder what happened?

Gotta share that OP username is ironic considering the post content
@Direct Box Rox

 

[Calebmundy]

Our bass player has an Ampeg 810 that hasn’t left the garage in 3 years. He just retired his 410 Ampeg cab and SVT head last summer. He now uses a Markbass 210 combo that he can carry with one hand, bass in the other. This guy’s pretty muscular too but just has no interest in lugging super heavy gear anymore.

I think that’s pretty much the trend now. If you play once a month maybe you deal with heavy stuff but doing a lot of gigging where the band provides backline the lightweight stuff is a winner.

Totally. Any time I see a bass player with a giant amp or a drummer with a giant kit, I assume they don’t work a lot.

 

[Old Blastard]

When I bought my Genz Benz Contour combo 50 pounds was light and I was 10 years younger.

now I'm looking at combos just as powerful that weigh 20 pounds less and are easier to tote up stairways.

This is The Way

 

[agedhorse]

My gut tells me that the 4x10 doesn’t sell as well as the other cabs.

I think it’d be cool to have one, but I don’t feel I need one.

It’s pretty popular as a modular cabinet for players looking for the larger footprint without the extra weight. If it was 20 lbs heavier it would have been a non-starter though.

 

[40Hz]

What I don't understand is your objection to this. I promise you that there are ZERO students clamoring to going back to the old system. Just because you prefer paper doesn't mean that the current crop of 18-22 year olds do.

Where was I speaking for anyone but myself earlier?

I don’t recall saying anything other than I’m glad I attended college when I did and that it’s a different world then it was back then. And those two statements have ZERO to do with what today’s students prefer.

I know there’s a tendency these days to l treat any critique or difference of opinion as judgement on the part of the person raising such points. But that was neither my intention - nor what I actually did.

Also, speaking as as an IT professional involved in enterprise level technology for well over 35 years, my feeling was (and is) that much of the technology deployment in schools was motivated primarily for the purposes of institutional and administrative convenience rather than as something specifically meant to help students.

And to reiterate, my first post and this one are purely my tuppence and worth exactly that.

 

[40Hz]

I remember when I was college we had these thick, very expensive textbooks that always seem to get updated for the following semester so we could never return them.

Yep. Been there myself.

 

[40Hz]

students who thought nothing of copying and pasting from the internet, and considered intellectual property theft no big deal.

The whole concept of “intellectual property” has reached a point beyond ridiculous. But in a country such as ours - which mostly prefers to outsource and license production rather than produce anything for itself, things like copyrights, licenses, and patents become increasingly critical in order to maintain its economy. Which is why we’ve doubled down on the whole questionable legal argument that nothing of value can exist without somebody owning it. Hence our efforts to classify virtually everything as dome form of intellectual property and therefore deserving of legal protection.

 

[Jack Butler]

Still not seeing how a pair of subway 4x10s or 2x15’s would be giving up anything to the road ready line, except weight.

That's too bad because those road ready cabinets were awesome. They should have left that line available or an option to order. They could have the Subway Series for those who want to carry a cabinet on a subway and & not have to worry about dust getting on it for the older folk & then have the RR series for younger guys that want to load in/out quick and just shove the cab in the back of a pickup truck without worrying about it getting scratched (and who perhaps are used to moving around 8x10's).

 

[Barticus]

Welcome to TalkBass!

Ha, agree… lots of yelling at the clouds about the “good ole’ days”

 

[Jazzdogg]

The whole concept of “intellectual property” has reached a point beyond ridiculous. But in a country such as ours - which mostly prefers to outsource and license production rather than produce anything for itself, things like copyrights, licenses, and patents become increasingly critical in order to maintain its economy. Which is why we’ve doubled down on the whole questionable legal argument that nothing of value can exist without somebody owning it. Hence our efforts to classify virtually everything as dome form of intellectual property and therefore deserving of legal protection.

So are you in favor of plagiarism? Couldn’t tell from your post.

 

[Jeff Scott]

I remember when I was college we had these thick, very expensive textbooks that always seem to get updated for the following semester so we could never return them.

Yep. Been there myself.

They did come in handy on cold nights and a fireplace.

 

[Jazzdogg]

My gut tells me that the 4x10 doesn’t sell as well as the other cabs.

I think it’d be cool to have one, but I don’t feel I need one.

Yeah, my ankles don't need more sound; I'd prefer to stack two 2x10 cabs as a vertical array than to use a conventional 4x10. Besides, a 4x10 would be overkill for me, and I like the flexibility afforded by two identical or compatible cabs.

 

[40Hz]

So are you in favor of plagiarism? Couldn’t tell from your post.

Not at all.

But I am not in favor of how often IP laws get abused by the people with deep enough pockets to use as a competitive weapon or as a means of meritless harassment by the malicious. You see this happen YouTube all the time. And some of the ridiculous claims being made about what constitutes infringement in many cases beggars belief

 

[40Hz]

They did come in handy on cold nights and a fireplace.

I actually kept a few that proved useful after I graduated.

 

[Lance Bunyon]

The whole concept of “intellectual property” has reached a point beyond ridiculous. But in a country such as ours - which mostly prefers to outsource and license production rather than produce anything for itself, things like copyrights, licenses, and patents become increasingly critical in order to maintain its economy. Which is why we’ve doubled down on the whole questionable legal argument that nothing of value can exist without somebody owning it. Hence our efforts to classify virtually everything as dome form of intellectual property and therefore deserving of legal protection.

Intellectual property rights are pretty important to creators, they delineate authorship and might be all the difference between eating and not eating.
Personally, I don't worry about what you do with YOUR creations. Mine will get copy written just in case they sell.

 

[Jeff Scott]

I actually kept a few that proved useful after I graduated.

I do have quite a few, the ones I didn't keep I was able to resell at a couple of campus bookstores (this was way long ago in another century).

 

[Parzival]

OP: What has happened to Mesa Boogie cabs?

Mesa: