F-30 in a Mesa Head-Rack?

Hi. I am looking into an F-30 combo or head. I owned a couple of Mavericks and the dirty wasn't doing it for me but the cleans where amazing. It seems that the cleans are good on the F-Series as well as the reverb.

I have played a number of F-Series amps through various cabs and thought they where ok. The amp would just be a back up/practice amp for me. Has anyone ever put an F-30 in one of the newer Mesa Head-Rack cases? I would imagine that the standard Mesa short head (The Maverick short heads fit as well as the Lonestars) would fit the 4 space newer style Head-Rack case. If anyone knows let a brother know. Thanks.

p.s. Its been a while since I have heard the dirty channel on the F-Series amps. I know when I tried it I didn't care for it much since I am a Dual Rec (TOV) guy, but it's been years and I don't exactly dial in that "metal" tone anymore. Anyone care to compare/describe the dirty tone? Thanks.

I have the f-30 at home rehearsals and I gig with it. If you still are the TOV guy, the f-30 is not going to do the same type of distortion. Think of fusion to aggresive style of distortion full of mids, some sizzle and punchy but not chest thumbing. The f-50 has much better headroom and a bit different drive channel? More majestic, bigger but for me it doesn't have the rawness and street punk attitude of the f-30. Plus those mids crancked...

I have to add two things though, don't understimate pushing/not exactly boosting the clean channel on the f-30. It does have a less thick but wide open sound that cuts very good and a-lot of distortion on its own with the gain and master high. Add an overdrive/drive pedal to that and experiment on top of the "clean" channel distorting! For me it is a second drive channel instead of clean-clean.

Secondly if you do play at home, the f-30 preamp is really good on giving some of the fullness of high volume tube amps and even though it doesn't move that much air (in low low volumes) you can copy many mesa styles of distortions. I find that without volume loop attenuation and a lot of bass dialed you can easily do recto in a box on the modern mode of the recto (contour on the f-30). If you do attenuate the loop (and bring its tube and circuit into the game) crancking mids and cutting down bass and treble almost gives you a mark IV fat type of sound. Perfect for offspring dream theater or metallica load/reload sound. If you do add more treble you can thrash in low volume all day long without hurting your ears.


Here you go!

http://netmusicians.org/?value=Mesa%20F ... ection=amp

Some are direct but the first one is miced. But those direct sounds are achievable.

And here is an f-30 user that makes it sing!

http://www.soundvenue.com/artist/mandenmedhegnet

The clips are down to the left in the music player.

Here is some f-30 variety youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj1Mx5HB ... 65vzGMuIbo

Good, with eq in the loop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVJIrOgA ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6QLZpMh ... re=related

This guy tries a bunch of guitars with the f-30. I like how they all sound very different and the amplifier responds to that. Sounds vintage cool with a strat, sweet and fat with a les paul and grungy metal with a PRS with a jeff beck like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtYU4nB7Jpc

It really is a versatile amp due to its front-end unique gain structure (the eq section shapes tone and adds subtracts gain but with a different way from the DC-line for example).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwPHuSIs ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjrMud6C ... 7V1ybLB8dw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf9Q0NxM ... Wzolv6dSF8

em...metal.