Mesa Engineering Bass Prodigy Four:88 All Tube Bass Amplifier Review & Demo

[@lonewarrior1549]

Great demo 👍 I recently purchased a pre-owned one from a local music store. New tubes and serviced. Sounds amazing running through a Mesa Powerhouse 2x12. Deep, punchy with a great warm tube sound.

[@dawndark1232]

Awesome video love The detail of different voice settings and basses that you use to show the variety of tones to come out of this wonderful amp. I have this amp and it's amazing and I will Play around with more settings and discover more great tone. Keep Up the excellent work

[@paulschmitz9175]

I absolutely love this amp...sounds spectacular coupled with my Alembic basses!

[@paultraynorbsc627]

Excellent demo thanks for posting much appreciated 👍 Liverpool UK

[@osXcanada]

I actually own this amp! Going on 2 years now. IN this video, I have no idea how you have the gain at 12 and the master at 11, without the walls of your house not being rattled to the ground! Are you using an attenuator?? This amp is incredibly powerful! I am not sure there is a club in town big enough to handle it! I would like to add to what you described. The pull gain knob seems backwards. Here is how I would describe the voicing. Voice one is your Slap Mode! You want to slap, put it in voice 1. PERIOD. Voice 2 is for playing with your fingers. Has a bit more punch. A bit more mid. Voice 3 is flat. Voice 4 has been described to me as a setting for playing with a pick. Voice 5 is another setting for playing with a pick. Personally, when I play with a pick, I usually leave it on voice 1. Seems to have a bit more low end. When I putt my gain to about 2.30 o'clock, I have to dial back the Master volume, but the great distortion one gets is intoxicating! The very first night I took it to my friends studio to try it out, I plugged in at 9pm, and played if for maybe 20 minutes non-stop!! At least that is what it felt like to me....when I was done, the time on the clock was 12.30am!! I was in shock! This is probably true of any tube bass amp, but the natural compression you get from the tubes, makes for an incredible sounding slap tone!! Did I already say intoxicating?? This thing is like a mini SVT. I coupled it with Mesa Subway 12, and a subway 15. INCREDIBLE! I am super happy with it, I just wish it didn't cost so much.

[@mobbinator]

Mine shook the house when I demoed it. Luckily no one complained lol. I use it with a Mesa traditional 2x10 that I have. I love it

[@osXcanada]

@@mobbinator Your shook the house, me too!! That’s why i cannot figure out, how he had the knobs, gain and volume, where they were in the demo. Unfortunately, I have not been able to play in a band situation in a long time, so i have only used the amp, with myself and a drummer. I love it!

[@danwest9900]

@@osXcanada I'm not sure, but maybe the full power / half power switch was set to half power. It's on the back of the amp. I used to have a 200+ watt all tube bass head, and there's no way I could run that thing at full power without seriously rattling the structure I was playing inside.

[@trailblazeratv6306]

Those are killer amps. I have the Walkabout and Carbine M3

[@mobbinator]

I've always wanted to try the carbine

[@dre3261]

Nice video!!!!

[@齋藤誠-b3f]

ありがとうございます 勉強になりました

[@stefanhamilton9413]

They stopped making this amp. My question is…..why? I know it’s heavy but Ampeg, Orange and Laney are still making all tube bass amps. What’s the problem? Don’t take away our options.

[@mobbinator]

A friend of mine told me it's because there are a lot of inconsistencies with KT88 power tubes and they decided to focus on solid state and hybrid amps

[@karlzickrick8483]

The design was made to push the KT88s in a way that current stock of production tubes couldn’t handle consistently. I can speak from experience that I went through a handful of dud tubes in mine in the first few years of owning it- apparently the failures were issues that wouldn’t show up during typical tube testing that Mesa does for all their branded tubes. Fortunately most of my bad tubes were replaced under warranty

[@stefanhamilton9413]

@@karlzickrick8483 thanks man

[@someonesomewhere8805]

Part of the reason is flat out, they just didn’t sell as well as the Carbine series. Less and less tube amps were being sold in general and the demographic of buyers were less likely to purchase a heavy tube amp instead of a considerably lighter SS or Class D head. The Subway series is excellent. I owned the D800+ for a couple years and then switched to the WD800 for more tube like texture. It slays. The lead designer of the bass side of Mesa said that even parts for the older heads were increasingly expensive and many manufactures of different components went out of business years ago. Makes sense to move on with the future.

[@YourCaliBos]

@@karlzickrick8483 yep I’m having the same problems, pisses me off . I know a well known amp builder and he said the quality of kt88 tubes are crap. Plus I don’t think I ever met a amp tech that liked working on Mesa . Mine is fickle and it’s been worked on by an experienced tech. Fingers crossed for all of us