Educate me please> Subway Blues?....

[UltraGary]

Is the Subway Blues a good small amp for around the house? The 20watt set-up is attractive....but it's lack of pre-amp has me concerned about it's flexibility.

Anyone out there have any info to share on this rarely mentioned Boogie?.......

Any info is appreciated! Thanx......

 

[MrMarkIII]

Well, it doesn't have a master volume, and 20 watts is still dang loud in the bedroom. You're gonna need a pedal for high-gain but very quiet volume levels.

 

[GD_NC]

I haven't played a Subway but if you are looking for low wattage and a killer preamp check out the .22 Cal or DC-2. Those amps are both really flexible and there are plenty around at reasonable prices. I'd lean to the DC-2 if you can find one. The DC's have individual channel volumes and has a master output level that can keep it pretty quiet. These amps can do most anyting from high gain to crystal clean.

 

[Chrissmoth]

Yep it's a killer amp - I've used mine as my main amp for years - 20 watts is still VERY loud

Sounds great at low volumes and with stock Mesa tubes is loud enough to play with a drummer - I say this as I've tried other pre-amp tubes and lost a lot of headroom - so I stick with Mesa tubes

As MrMarkIII says you'll need pedals if you want to overdrive at low volumes and even at high volumes you won't get anything approaching metal sounds

I use a Chandler Tube Driver (for some overdrive) and a USA Big Muff (for kicking ***) - both for leads

It doesn't seem to like the Boss DS1 or 2 - but that might just be me...

Clean it's got a lot of voxish chime probably due to the EL84 output valves add a delay and play for hours

Definitely loud enough for gigs - Played a hall (capacity approx 300) without being miked and the volume set to 10 O'clock - No problemo!

Watch out for the humm problem - do a search of this forum

There you go - one satisfied customer.

 

[polotska]

Chrissmoth summed it up nicely. It's a really cool amp, but very different from almost any other Mesa ever made. (The notable exceptions being the Blue Angel, which it is almost like a smaller version of, and maybe the clean channel of the Maverick.) It's really nothing at all like the Subway Rocket, despite the similar names.

 

[tiktok]

I gig with mine all the time, but I use an overdrive for dirty leads. For louder shows, I just add an extension cabinet.

 

[UltraGary]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the info.
I know someone selling one and need to try it out, but wanted some Boogie-Board-Wisdom. I have a feeling I'm going to try that new little 15w Vox and forget about this though... We'll see.....

 

[polotska]

Forgot to mention before that I found that my Subway Blues benefitted hugely from substituting some lower-gain tubes in certain preamp positions. Putting a 5751 or especially a 12AY7 in V2 made a tremendous difference; I found the tone far too midrangy and "barky" with the stock 12AX7 in that position. I also found using a 12AT7 for the phase inverter (V3) to be helpful as well. These changes do make it a bit cleaner and quieter, but I don't find that to be a problem for my purposes. A 12AT7 for the reverb driver (V4) also was an improvement to my ears. (The reverb in the Subway Blues is excellent, and this just makes it a bit better still.)

 

[tiktok]

Forgot to mention before that I found that my Subway Blues benefitted hugely from substituting some lower-gain tubes in certain preamp positions. Putting a 5751 or especially a 12AY7 in V2 made a tremendous difference; I found the tone far too midrangy and "barky" with the stock 12AX7 in that position. I also found using a 12AT7 for the phase inverter (V3) to be helpful as well. These changes do make it a bit cleaner and quieter, but I don't find that to be a problem for my purposes. A 12AT7 for the reverb driver (V4) also was an improvement to my ears. (The reverb in the Subway Blues is excellent, and this just makes it a bit better still.)

Does anyone have a duty chart for the Subway Blues?

 

[polotska]

http://www.freeinfosociety.com/electronics/schemview.php?id=294

This schematic is all I can remember finding.

(edit—fixed link)

 

[tiktok]

Forbidden

You do not have permission to access this document.

 

[polotska]

Hmm, it was working when I posted the link.

http://www.tubefreak.com/schema.htm has the same schematic, as well as many other Mesa schematics.

 

[JW123]

Is the Subway Blues a good small amp for around the house? The 20watt set-up is attractive....but it's lack of pre-amp has me concerned about it's flexibility.

Anyone out there have any info to share on this rarely mentioned Boogie?.......

Any info is appreciated! Thanx......

I have the Subway Rocket which has a master volume, the Subway BLues doesnt have a master volume.

If you like a gainer sound find the Rocket. Mine is my go to amp for recording dirty guitar.

 

[rockboy999]

Express is awesome. Goes from Mark tones to Rectifier tones. Studio .22 is awesome too. Had a chance to by both....bought the express instead.

 

[cbkuck]

Might as well jump in here, as I just picked up a Subway Blues last week and have some questions. I don't know the date yet, but I'm going to do some inspection and light cleaning in the next week or so. The amp has the Bright/Fat switch, but no half-power speaker jack; this is 2nd generation? Do any of the Bright/Fat switch models have the 1/2 power jack?

I know the amp was modded to take care of a noise problem, but the fix involved disabling the FX loop. I'd like to pull the chassis out of the box and look at/photograph it, does anybody have instructions or a procedure for doing that safely? I do have an EE background so I'm not totally inept at this sort of thing, I just want to avoid stupid mistakes.

I normally wouldn't care about the FX loop except that I've seen reference to using a volume pedal in the loop as a master volume control. Usually they refer to a stereo pedal, I can't see why/how this would make a difference vs. a mono pedal. Thanks!

 

[tiktok]

My Subway Blues has both the fat/bright switch and the half-power jack.

 

[cbkuck]

My Subway Blues has both the fat/bright switch and the half-power jack.

So there seem to be at least 3 versions of the Subway Blues: dual input jack, Bright/Fat w/half-power jack, Bright/Fat w/o half-power jack; does that sound right? Is that in chronological order? If so, any ideas why Mesa did away with the half-power output jack? That seems to me like it would be pretty useful.

-- Carl

 

[polotska]

My Subway Blues has both the fat/bright switch and the half-power jack.

So there seem to be at least 3 versions of the Subway Blues: dual input jack, Bright/Fat w/half-power jack, Bright/Fat w/o half-power jack; does that sound right? Is that in chronological order? If so, any ideas why Mesa did away with the half-power output jack? That seems to me like it would be pretty useful.

-- Carl

There were two versions of the Subway Blues: The original two input version (which has no half-power jack) and the later single-input version with bright/fat switch (and half-power jack).

The reason that you see many Subway Blues with a single-input and bright/fat switch but without a half-power jack is because the two inputs were problematic, and part of the fix was replacing the upper input with a bright/fat switch. There's a thread on the board that talks about this—if I find the link I'll post it here.

 

[cbkuck]

There were two versions of the Subway Blues: The original two input version (which has no half-power jack) and the later single-input version with bright/fat switch (and half-power jack).

Thanks! I'll do some more searching. If that's the case with this amp, whoever did the fix/update did a great job - the front panel lettering looks good.
-- Carl