“A small yet mighty gig bag hero”: Mesa/Boogie launches powerhouse preamp/DI with all the tone-shaping capabilities of its high-end Subway line

Mesa/Boogie has just expanded the Subway line with an all-singing, all-dancing sequel to its super high-end DI and bass preamp pedal.

There are many reasons to get excited about the launch of the Subway+ Bass DI‑Preamp II. For a start, this thing is compact. The picture up top gives you an idea of the scale – this comes in at some 40 per cent smaller than its predecessors.

Also, it’s stacked with features.

And we mean stacked. Fully kitted out for life on the road, everything you need to dial in a bass guitar sound in the studio. You know the drill; it is fundamentally the front end of a Mesa/Boogie Subway bass amp in a pedal format, complete with studio-quality DI and more EQ controls than the desk at Abbey Road.

Well, not really, of course, but you’ve got ample tone-sculpting capabilities with its 4‐band Baxandall EQ offering you plus or minus dB of Bass, Low‐mid, High‐mid, and Treble.

This being a Boogie design, you’ve got control over those battleground frequencies, with the low-mids adjustable between 150Hz and 1.8kHz, and the high-mids sweepable between 300Hz and 5kHz. You can really get forensic detail on this thing.

There’s also a Deep switch, so you can, y’know, get a deeper sound (but seriously, that ramps up the chonk considerably), and a Bright switch to tease out those high frequencies. A variable Hi-Pass filter (30Hz to 150Hz) can tighten up the low-end. There’s a footswitchable boost with level control, too, while the all-important mute switch allows you to tune your instrument silently – your audience, and bandmates, will thank you.

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And it is designed to play equally well with active and passive bass guitar pickups. Under the hood, you’ve got an “extended-range” JFET preamp doing the heavy lifting.

Around the back you’ve got a cornucopia of connections, including the XLR with ground lift, power input (it runs on 9V to 18V from a pedalboard power supply drawing a minimum of 40mA), headphones output for silent practice and monitoring, preamp output, auxiliary input, and your 1/4” in for your bass guitar cable.

And last but not least, there’s a pre/post EQ switch that allows you to send either a wholly unprocessed signal straight to the desk – allowing you to easily reamp it later when recording, or to give the sound engineer full control over it – or to give you your settings through the PA. It’s a useful option to have.

And this is one useful bass pedal to have. The Subway+ Bass DI‑Preamp II is available now, it’s priced $199, and you can find out more over at Mesa/Boogie.