Is the express 25 plus the right amp?

Hello there, firstly I am new to the forum and a mesa noob so I thought it would be best to ask you folk for some advice befor I make an amp purchase.

I've been looking to buy my first tube amp and the express plus 25 has caught my ears the most the only issue is weather it will meet my gain needs. I've been playing for a number of years and been playing on a boosted solid state randall amp mainly to get a simular tone and gain to dimebags. That's the max gain and tone I'd want to go for, not really towards a heavy djent over saturate fuzz tone. The rest of the tones from the amp have been right up my street.

So can the amp do that out of the box or is it needing a boost or pedal, if it's a job for a pedal has anyone tried a 6 band EQ infront of the amp ... Which leads me to another question where in signal chain does the on board EQ sit ?

Cheers for any help or advice .

Well, I'm not that familiar with Dimebag's tone (didn't he use a lot of solid state stuff in the signal chain to accomplish his sound?), but I do gig a 5:25+ regularly, and I think it's safe to say that it's a very high gain amplifier; I'm quite sure that with the right EQ tweaking you could get a pretty good approximation of just about any high gain tone you want out of it, within reason... The Graphic EQ follows the Preamp gain/tone stack and is just before the effect loop I believe (someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure)... The Graphic EQ is an extremely powerful toneshaping tool, and the reason why I sold my Mini Rec to buy the 5:25+.

Thanks for the reply Jimi D.

Yes dime used a solid state randall that was boosted with a mxr 6 band eq (infront of the amp), then it was eq'ed again with a parametric EQ in the loop. It's a bit of a pain that set up but I just want to expand my tones and have the gain there if I fancy playing high gain stuff. I looked at the mini rec too but I think the express was more tempting because of it's EQ section.

It seams that this is the right sort of amp for me I think I'd spend most of my time in the bluesy rock tones anyway but I just needed to make sure becuase I'm looking to sell off my other gear to buy this. It's been a long time since I've gotten an amp and I wanted to get something new that's going to cover me for years to come.

Thanks for the reply