Hollis said:
So what are you using now Tommy_G?
Studio Preamp into any kind of power amp you care to mention. Meh. Thats the Ch2C+ circuit. Clean Channel...Meh. That's ok, I have other gear, and I've outgrown 80's glam. No biggie. It may have had its day but i missed it.
An "Andrew Mod" Formula Preamp into the heartbreaker effects return....That
sometimes makes me smile, if you have the tone controls set just exactly perfect. The clean is very warm and round and "Sweet" as it should be. Ch3 gives that ethereal swirl effect when everything is cooking. Ch2 is muddy and inarticulate. That preamp has potential, but didn't before the mod. Every person with a Formula who is fanatical about their tone and who knows how to hold a soldering iron did the Andrew Mod, because the bass (on the ld channels) flubbed sooooo bad that it was a virtually unusable piece of gear. Why do we need to do mods to the amps of a 40 year old company's products? Bias the F'ing preamp tubes right, already. Over the course of its life, I probably rotated 30 preamp tubes into that preamp to find a combination that improved the tone. And you wince everytime, because the tube sockets are mounted on a flimsy PCB that bends every time you pull or push. Do that 30 times, and tell me if you still own a functional Formula Preamp.
I think those units were pretty close to $1000 new. Ugh.
Mesa Nomad 100 Head, I sooo want to love that design. Its soooo close, yet sooo far. I just don't get it. Great sounding clean, with no feel. If you don't have Ch2 at super high gains (eg. 1:30+), its inarticulate - if you can say with a straight face that OTT gain even can be considered "articulate". If you have Ch3 any more than the signal just poking through (eg. cutoff), its tonal mush comes on pretty fast. No body=no tone. I'm convinced most of the problems are in the NFB loop. Note the big "mod" threads around that amp. It'll get there soon - if you want to take a $1300 head and turn it into a $500 modded head, or keep it the rest of your life as a boat anchor, or if by some miracle, modded Nomad amps start becoming the rage of every pro musician.
Mesa Heartbreaker. Love the platform. It sounds best as clean as you can make it on the preamp, and if you have power tubes that push nice. You can't use an MC90 with acceptable results, and that was stock - not enough character in a C90. The less gain, the more tone with that amp. So much for the brilliant idea of switching in an extra triode for high gain tones....With the exact right tubes in the preamp & power amp, and a non MC90 speaker, the Love Channel Lo Gain is pretty good impersonation of a high output Fender with aggressive lower mids. Its a stiff feeling twin. But it sounds acceptable. Lust Channel Lo Gain is acceptable, sometimes I like it better than Ch1 Lo, but you have to think of the 'british' Lust channel as stiff feeling Bassman, not Marshall, to get your head around it. The marketing doesn't live up to the reality. Overdrive some EL34's and you get o.k. Hi gain Brit tones, but the Love channel falls apart. Nomatter what you do to it tube or knob-wise, the Heartbreaker isn't sweet, because its too punchy in the low mids. It melts your face with sonic punch. You feel like you've OD'd on brain numb pills after you play that amp at the volumes you need to hit tone. I'm serious. The Physiological aspect of the tone will shorten your life. Its called the Heartbreaker, because it may just blow your heart apart. On the gain channels, it has to be cranked to about 10,000 dB so that the harmonics from everything vibrating in the room makes its dark tone disappear, and then at least you feel like you're in a pleasant sounding military situation, or an noisy industrial plant.
Ok, some of allvthat is an exaggeration exactly in contast to the over the top positive rhetoric Mesa uses in their product manuals and brochures.
The thing I like about Mesa is that they offer a lot of channel switching. Great concepts, poor tone, or at least very difficult to find the magic formula to hit paydirt. I've tried so hard, invested so much $ in Mesa stuff, and I'm still not there. Of course it's all 'vintage' stuff. You know, the *last* run before the new one.
I get very bitter about my Mesa stuff. I spend most of my playing time trying to figure out how to mod them, whether it be tubes, eq's, gain structure, or voicing.
), and if you do have to lift it, the even weight distribution and smooth edges with no sticking-out knobs that dig into you in awkward places make it actually less of a bear to lift than a Twin.
