Mesa Boogie 400 Plus Valve Bass Guitar Amplifier

Description

I have used Mesa Boogie 400 plus amps as one on my main gigging bass amps since the mid-1990 and this is certainly one of the best and most flexible bass amps ever made. If it good enough for Sir Paul McCartney then it is good enough for the rest of us.The amp has two instrument inputs for two channels one for active bass one for passive bass, both channels have dual function pots to add brightness and both have separate volume controls.The tone controls consist of bass, middle and treble with each control specially voiced for bass guitar. The treble and bass controls also have dual function pots. The Bass control shift allows the bass frequency to become wider and louder. This I use when using multi cabinets to improve the fatness of the bass on stage.

The treble shift takes the frequency towards the upper midrange providing both warmth and punch. In addition to this the Boogie has a 7 band graphic which can be controlled from a footswitch. This works really well when you solo so you can have a differed solo sound to cut through the mix.I tend to use the graphic EQ when the venue has a particular poor sounding stage to remove certain frequencies so I can get a good stage sound. All the controls interact and the sound possibilities are huge so there is no issue with being able to get the right sound for the style of music you are playing.

The amp has two speaker outputs for each impedance (8, 4, 2 ohms) so that totals 6 which makes multi cab arrangement easy, two FX loops, one XLR output, one jack line output, one footswitch connector to activate/deactivate the graphic EQ. The amplifier will deliver 400 watts regardless of the speakers’ impedance. The amplifier comes in a lightweight cloth covered Flight case. This amplifier was totally re valved in 2013 with very expensive Svetlana 6L6GC and has been fully checked prior to this listing.

This was number 2 of my Boogie heads and this is in the best condition. I used two of these with Trace Elliott 4 x 10 cabs on large gigs. The two best features of owning this amplifier is that when the guitar player is playing far too loud and needs a little bit of volume discipline, simply add a few notices on the master volume setting and he will quickly realise that you are drowning him out and this in most cases makes him to turn down. This is a great feature.

The second thing is if you are spending a considerable sum of money on a bass amplifier you will want it to sound good and be able to cater for any musical style. The Mesa 400 Plus provides this regardless of what bass you are using and all the Mesa 400 plus amplifiers were handcrafted in Petaluma, California USA.

The Mesa 400 plus comes with the flight case as pictured which make it very portable.