By Jonathan Herrera
Mesa ’s new PowerHouse cabs are the result of two years of research aimed at completely revamping the company’s bass-cab line. Mesa sought wider frequency response, smoother treble, gig-worthy durability, and reduced weight, and the resulting cabs represent a big departure from Mesa’s previous offerings. We checked out a PowerHouse 1000, which adds a single 15" speaker to a 4x10 + tweeter design, but the PowerHouse line (and roadcase-incorporating RoadReady* *Out-of-Production in 2010) is available in an wide array of speaker configurations.
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| The cab’s interior is extensively cross-braced, with firmly secured supports glued to the interior’s top, bottom, and sides. |
Among the most notable structural changes to the PowerHouse line are its redesigned bracing and porting layout, the utilization of new custom-designed Mesa PowerHouse drivers, and a revamped crossover. The cabinet is constructed from 11-ply, void-free Baltic birch. This high-quality cabinet material is exceptionally stiff, to prevent unwanted resonance. The cab’s interior is extensively cross-braced, with firmly secured supports glued to the interior’s top, bottom, and sides. For improved low-frequency response, Mesa utilized newly designed “Tuned Tri-Port” front ports, placing deeper ports near the cab’s bottom and shallower ports near the top. Mesa touts this design’s deeper tuning and improved punch, balance, and clarity. The crossover allows the player to choose among a 5kHz (normal), 4kHz, or 3kHz crossover point. The lower crossover points send more of the signal to the PowerHouse’s neodymium tweeter, resulting in a brighter, more forward treble attack. A 50-watt Lpad provides tweeter attenuation, while a resettable rear-panel fuse protects the tweeter.
With a variety of amps, including the Big Block 750, an Aguilar DB 750, and a Demeter/Crest CA9 rig, the PowerHouse revealed itself to be a viciously punchy cab. It retains pleasant high-frequency detail and upper-midrange fidelity, but its strong low-mid and bass response is its dominant personality trait. The 1,000-watt cab handled everything we threw at it with aplomb, even a Modulus Quantum 5’s woofer-wincing B string. It’s a particularly righteous rock box—the Big Block’s overdrive was a great match—but it also has good treble tickle for slap, and super-gut-punching burp for back-pickup fingerstyle. It’s big enough for a big tour, and Mesa provided all the durable features I like to see in large cabs, like tilt-back casters, fat and well-placed handles, a reinforced kick-plate, and skid rails.
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Jonathan Herrera
Bass Player Magazine,
February 2005 |
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