Sometimes you miss things
I am far and away better at spending money on stuff to make new and different sounds than I am at actually playing the guitar. FAR AND AWAY. Case in point: for the longest time I had an amp so loud it could blow women's clothes off, and because of its vacuum tube design it didn't really sound its best at a volume I could stand to be in the room with. I actually spent significantly MORE MONEY trying to put the volume on a leash while simultaneously keeping it cranked for the best sound. Ridiculous.
That amp is a mesa roadster. Originally I bought it for the dirty tons as it turns out that most of my favorite guitarists use a mesa rectifier amp. This roadster is like the swiss army knife version of a rectifier. One of the biggest differences is that roadster sounds really good clean. Mesa lifted the clean from their lonestar line of amps for this particular amp In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best clean. However, this amp is just too fucking loud.
Fast forward to my banker days and in a very banker way, my solution to an amp that's too loud is to blow money on one that's more quiet. I chose the new, at the time, mesa mark V 25. It's a scaled down (both physically and loudness) version of their big badass. Kind of a continuation of the original modded fender that got mesa it's "boogie" branding courtesy of one Carlos Santana.
This is a great amp with one caveat: the clean just isn't as good as the roadster. Now don't get me wrong: it's a very good clean. Very accurate. But that's the problem: it's the warmth the roadster adds that makes it so good.
Last night, I'm laying in bed watching youtube videos, and decide to watch the mesa official demo video for my amp. Why? I don't know. I guess just to see what a "pro" can wrangle from it. As they're going through all the options, the announcer says something interesting: "the fat mode on the clean channel is the circuit from the lonestar amp." Are you fucking kidding me? I've had this thing for a year and somehow missed that!?
Well, short story long: I now I have a practice amp I'm much happier with.
That amp is a mesa roadster. Originally I bought it for the dirty tons as it turns out that most of my favorite guitarists use a mesa rectifier amp. This roadster is like the swiss army knife version of a rectifier. One of the biggest differences is that roadster sounds really good clean. Mesa lifted the clean from their lonestar line of amps for this particular amp In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best clean. However, this amp is just too fucking loud.
Fast forward to my banker days and in a very banker way, my solution to an amp that's too loud is to blow money on one that's more quiet. I chose the new, at the time, mesa mark V 25. It's a scaled down (both physically and loudness) version of their big badass. Kind of a continuation of the original modded fender that got mesa it's "boogie" branding courtesy of one Carlos Santana.
This is a great amp with one caveat: the clean just isn't as good as the roadster. Now don't get me wrong: it's a very good clean. Very accurate. But that's the problem: it's the warmth the roadster adds that makes it so good.
Last night, I'm laying in bed watching youtube videos, and decide to watch the mesa official demo video for my amp. Why? I don't know. I guess just to see what a "pro" can wrangle from it. As they're going through all the options, the announcer says something interesting: "the fat mode on the clean channel is the circuit from the lonestar amp." Are you fucking kidding me? I've had this thing for a year and somehow missed that!?
Well, short story long: I now I have a practice amp I'm much happier with.
Comments
Post a Comment