MESA/Boogie® is the original boutique Home of Tone, handcrafting amplifiers of uncompromising quality from the world’s finest materials in Petaluma, California, USA. Today, with reverence and pride, MESA/Boogie has announced the arrival of the Bass-800D. The MESA/Boogie Bass-800D is a Class D-powered reimagining of our Bass 400+™, with its sound and attributes combined with highlights from our successful Subway™ line of bass offerings. The new MESA/Boogie Bass-800Dis now available worldwide to the public for the first time at authorized dealers and onwww.mesaboogie.com.
During its 20-year build cycle, the MESA/Boogie Bass 400+–an apex model of MESA’s long-running and storied tube bass amplifier line—reigned supreme throughout the 80s and 90s with those looking to upgrade their tone with a boutique-class all-tube head. With a supremely musical tube preamp, powerful 7-Band graphic EQ, mighty bank of 12 x 6L6 output section, and a power supply ready to deliver instantaneous pitch, punch,and power on demand, it went on to become a classic used by the world’s most talented bassists for two decades. Top artists from jazz to R&B, funk, and blues to stadium rock, including Sir Paul McCartney, chose the 400+ for tone on stage and in the studio, citing its defined attack, clear pitch, and exciting, lead-the-band, dynamic content. Now, the updated Bass-800D keeps pace with modern bassists’ needs while retaining the nuanced tone of the original, without the cumbersome size and weight.
“Honoring Mesa’s long history of listening to what players want in their amps while respecting our past heritage was the foundation of the Subway Bass series,” says Andy Field, Product Development Engineer for MESA/Boogie. “The Bass-800D is a reflection of this commitment to our own legacy products, respecting the past while addressing the evolution of music, features, playing styles, and a player’s own needs. We listened, we developed, and we built the next step in our new Subway Bass series legacy with the Subway Bass-800D.”
The MESA/Boogie Bass-800D tube preamp follows the architecture and cues from the Bass 400+, along with Boogie® Channel topography from our popular Subway TT-800. From there, added gain and further tweaks are included to achieve an expanded tube-enhanced character and further capabilities for subtle, musically relevant overdrive tone and texture. The 400’s graphic EQ has been retired in favor of more relevant, simplicity-minded switches, offering proven voicing options preferred by customers of our Subway line. These include a LOW/HIGH preamp gain switch, plus DEEP/BRIGHT switches, all perfectly positioned on the front panel and tailored for adding just what you want quickly and succinctly without the finicky tweaking that Graphic EQs can call for. These savvy features are joined by the addition of our popular variable HIGH PASS FILTER control, which allows the dialing out of sub-lows that can muddy up a mix or pull down cohesiveness in the overdrive, with a friendly, musical approach.
Explore the new MESA/Boogie Bass-800D HERE.
“We’re all really excited to have even more Bass 400+ DNA back in the mix with this new Bass 800D,” adds Doug West, Director, Tone Lab, Gibson Amplifiers and MESA/Boogie. “We already had a healthy amount of it in the Boogie Channel of our TT-800, yet this model is aimed more squarely at the essence of the 400+, both in sound and its simplicity to drive. Fat, round notes with a supremely musical character and a bit more gain on tap than our other Subways, served up in a format that’s clean and intuitive, make it a clear choice for bassists who need warm, old school bass tone, regardless of genre. For those who need some rock growl, the 800D delivers big time and big venue. And perhaps best of all, along with the critical Subway upgrades, you don’t have to carry the weight of the 400+ for all this 400+ goodness, which is a win/win for any Bassist!”
Further welcome upgrades from the original include speakON® style locking Speaker Output jacks, a comprehensive Impedance switch offering 2, 4, and 8 ohm operation to cover your cabinet choices, a HEADPHONE output, a MUTE footswitch jack, AUX IN and TUNER OUT jacks, EFFECTS LOOP, as well as a handy USB DEVICE POWER jack.
With the new MESA/Boogie Bass-800D, you can now have the Bass 400+’s iconic tube tone and warm, musical character with expanded overdrive potential, mated with the stunning power, clarity, and time-domain accuracy of our other Subway line’s top models. All these benefits arrive in a compact, travel-ready head that won’t hurt your back to move or destroy the interior of your ride en route to gigs. The MESA/Boogie Subway Bass-800D brings forward tube design and Boogie bass tone for bassists in a way that honors and inspires the musical creation that we all share together as musicians.
