NAD!!!

[spawnofthesith]

It’s here




Obligatory Mesa tower


This thing is AWESOME. Never played a Mesa that was this straight forward to dial in. Dead simple, but also tons of different sounds available every knob seems to be usable across the range

Cleans are nice, not as good as a mark but beats the 5153 for sure. Lots of cool breakup sounds going up the the gain knob. The high gain tones are just though. What a rocking amp. Certainly doesn’t sound like your traditional rectos but I knew that going in. Bottom end is sick though that’sthe Biggest similarity to a rectifier imo. Plenty of gain for “modern metal” so not sure who started that rumor lol. Briefly experimented with boosting but honestly I just rarely prefer it. I automatically went to crush mode to get my high gain tones going but after some playing around found that I like crunch mode with the gain wide open was sounding epic for the brootz:love

I won’t comment on any “Marshally-ness” I’m not really a Marshall guy. My Marshall experience has mainly just been the jvm210. Which is an absolutely awesome amp but these gain tones tickle my fancy far more I can tell off the bat.

I spent most of demo time so far with my ce24 which is my de facto #1 at this point in time. But then I plugged in my Les Paul and holy shit it was like Zeus himself came down to nut lightening and thunder into my ear holes

Now my grievances:

1. No reverb. I know that’s a plus for some but I prefer onboard reverb even if it’s middling. All good though I can just add some simple reverb blocks to all my patches on the stomp and I’m good to go

2. Mesa makes my favorite tones but they always gotta have SOMETHING up with the loop that presents challenges for my hyper specific use case regarding looping. For my loops to be the same volume when changing channels the masters have to be set almost identical. There’s a little bit of wiggle room but not much. The thing is the modes definitely get louder progressively. I was able to get a “good enough” balanced levels but it did require running the gain knob for cleans slightly higher than I’d prefer so that I’m not losing too much volume. I’ll keep fiddling but I may just have to get more accustomed to tweaking volume knobs on the guitar to get my more pristine cleans when using this amp

[maggotspawn]

Congrats. Looks killer. Clips please.

[spawnofthesith]

Congrats. Looks killer. Clips please.

Thanks! Trying to figure out how to get my IRs onto the cab clone… the stock ones are comically horrible sounding lol

But this thing is killer

[RaceU4her]

nice dude. definitely do a couple comparison clips of all of em

[I'MAPUNKROCKERDAMNIT]

You da Boogie Man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congrats and HNAD!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Guitarbilly]

Nice man this amp does sound great. I think if I'd buy a current production Mesa, that would be the one. It does have a bit of Marshall DNA to it.

You can balance out the channels a bit better with an EQ or clean boost last in line in the loop, basically creating a "return" level.

[spawnofthesith]

Thanks dudes! definitely will try and get some clippage ASAP.

Cranked it up probably too loud for my apartment during lunch boosting with an SD-1 and it was just glorious. Very much an instant gratification amp, tone is thick and mean as hell

Nice man this amp does sound great. I think if I'd buy a current production Mesa, that would be the one. It does have a bit of Marshall DNA to it.

You can balance out the channels a bit better with an EQ or clean boost last in line in the loop, basically creating a "return" level.

I was thinking about this, but the channel masters come after the FX loop so they already are each basically returns for each channel, so I don't think that would work? Or else I'm just not wrapping my head around this properly lol

I was already having better results today with my finicky looper response demands though, think I've found a pretty good sweet spot for the gain level for the cleans but I'll have a better sense after band practice on thursday

Also want to try 6L6s in it soon as I feel like that might give me even more leeway on the gain level on the clean mode

[Guitarbilly]

I was thinking about this, but the channel masters come after the FX loop so they already are each basically returns for each channel, so I don't think that would work? Or else I'm just not wrapping my head around this properly lol

Oh they are? That's different. Yeah so that wouldn't work since the pedal would have the same effect as the master. So what's setting the Send level? The gain knob?

[spawnofthesith]

I was thinking about this, but the channel masters come after the FX loop so they already are each basically returns for each channel, so I don't think that would work? Or else I'm just not wrapping my head around this properly lol

Oh they are? That's different. Yeah so that wouldn't work since the pedal would have the same effect as the master. So what's setting the Send level? The gain knob?

I guess it must be the gain?

Yeah I was a little surprised tbh. I was kind of expecting for once I might finally get a mesa with a normal god damn loop situation, but...

I think I've got it dialed in though. And this "problem" would be a non issue for 99% of people that aren't me

[spawnofthesith]

Finally got to use this with the band. I was running it through my EVM loaded thiele. It performed excellently and sounded awesome, it’s really hard to dial in a bad sound in this amp, very usable sweeps on most knobs across the entire range. Mic’ed up very nicely. My concerns regarding the post fx loop masters and my looping when changing channels have completely evaporated as well. They’re actually surprisingly balanced going from clean to crush with the exact same master settings. That’s the only thing I have to be mindful of is that they’re set at pretty much the -exact- same level or my loops will get wonky sounding while changing channels

I will say, I don’t think the EVM/thiele is the most suited cab/speaker combo for this amp. It was really nice for the clean channel, guessing that the high headroom of the EVM helped out there. For distortion, the amp is super thick and it seemed almost -too- thick with the EVM. It still sounded awesome but I think other cabs are a better match. So far I think the EVH cab with H30s is in the lead for me

Very satisfied with the results though. Taking some time off of shows now to record an EP and work on other new material but looking forward to taking it out live for the first time. I have the day off work tomorrow I might try and have a go with 6L6s and see how I like that