Studio Caliber takes a tumble

So I bum a ride to the gig with my drummer so that my wife can drive separately and arrive later and not have to sit around during set up, sound check,etc. (Plus now she doesn't have to worry about a designated driver.)

So he opens the back of his minivan (some items have shifted during transit) before I can stop him he opens the hatch all the way. I watch in horror in what feels like a bad dream where everything is happening in slow motion, including me trying to get there in time to stop it, as my Studio Caliber falls out and lands on the lower left hand corner, hard, then flops on it's side. The minivan was packed so if falls from about chest high. After resisting the urge to kill him, we go in and set up and:

It powers on! (yay!)
I get sound from the Lead channel (yay!)
Silence from the Rhythm channel (boo!)

Since the Lead channel works I cross my fingers and hope it's only a 12AX7 and pull the retainer down and most of the glass of V2 falls slides off the innards and into the bottom of my amp. I throw a new 12AX7 in and, woohoo, the Rhythm channel works.

There's a slight crackle that you can't hear when playing, but the amp makes it through the night and we have one of our best shows.

I later figure out that the crackling is from V5 (reverb driver) since it's there in both channels and replace it. Crackle gone. We played another gig last Friday and the Mesa was flawless.

I'm not sure why I'm really posting other than to say I'm pretty impressed by the toughness of this little amp.

Maybe I can clean out the broken tube and glue it back together? heehee :lol:

good to know. Mesa amps are build like a tank. :mrgreen:

Never ever, ever let drummers anywhere hear your stuff! They're the cause of more broken guitars and amps than just about anything else!

I'm kidding about drummers, but I'm serious about not trusting other people to handle your guitars and amps. They'll never be as careful as you want them to be!

Hi

Since the Lead channel works I cross my fingers and hope it's only a 12AX7 and pull the retainer down and most of the glass of V2 falls slides off the innards and into the bottom of my amp. I throw a new 12AX7 in and, woohoo, the Rhythm channel works.

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hell yeah they are built like a tank!

but i'm confused a little bit. just got one of the earlier studio calibers (no dc-2 on the front-panel) and found my lead channel sounding a bit to harsh for my tastes. My plan was to replace a 12AX7 preamp tube in the Lead channel with a not-quite-as-high-gain preamp tube (e.g. 12AT7) so i took a look in the schematics and found out that V2 only affects the Lead channel. this is the exact opposite of your post. V4 should only affect the Rhythm channel.

this was my reference-schema:
http://music-electronics-forum.com/attachments/11215d1286449544-mesa-studio-cal-dc-2-schematics.pdf

any chance you've mistaken the V2 as V4? :?

originalflo said:

any chance you've mistaken the V2 as V4? :?

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You are correct sir. It was the second from the right when looking in the back, if I remember correctly.

Mine is also an early one, pre DC-2 on front, pre-contour. I find the lead channel works much better with some guitars than others (better with my single coil guitars than humbuckers). A GEQ in the loop can really help.

@stone: thanks for information.

not tried an eq in the loop yet, i'll give it a shot.

does yours still have the stock speaker (mesa vintage shadow 50w vs-12 - whatever that is)?

Yes, it still has the original Vintage Black Shadow VS-12.

i'm really happy with the tone of my amp after changing tubes of v6 (pi) to a EH 12AT7 and v2 (2nd and 3rd gainstage of lead channel) to EH 12AY7. now i got the vintage tone i was after but still have enough gain reserves.

i found a good sweetspot in my settings which work for my lp copy and my sss-strat

i also tried the eq in the loop. i've set the parallel mix to 100% and tried a few different settings... i don't really need it atm but good to know what it can do!

anyway thanks for your tips