Chris McKinley
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2006
- Messages
- 568
- Reaction score
- 0
I was playing around with my new Triple Rec and wanted to see what kind of versatility the amp offered. Perhaps predictably, I played around with the different modes on channels 2 and 3 first. When I got to channel 1, I noticed that the 'Pushed' mode didn't have enough available gain for much more than lighter blues and the slightly edgy jangle rock of the 60's. Although I realize that's how the channel was purposefully designed...honestly, neither application was anything I was going to make frequent use of.
However, the thing that captured my interest was that, even though the available gain on the Pushed setting was too low for my uses, the voicing of that channel was similar to some of my old Marshalls in midrange character. I would characterize it as a more open, less compressed midrange than the more modern Mesa tone...kind of an open-vowel sound with a slight emphasis in the high mids. Not that the higher gain channels 2 and 3 weren't completely fantastic, but I thought that I might be on to something here if I could get both classic Mesa and classic Marshall-type tone out of the same amp.
Like I mentioned, the voicing was there on the Pushed Clean channel to get some classic Marshall rock and metal tones, but the gain was just too low. So, I started experimenting and found that running a 7-band graphic EQ between the guitar and the amp's input gave me the ability to further refine the voicing, especially in the mids, and also give me a nice 15db gain boost which really helped push the channel into useable harder-rock territory. Now I was getting somewhere. With the EQ, I could now use the channel to get a really great lower-to-medium gain rock tone a la Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, etc. What was also kind of nice about it was that even though I was playing through a Mesa, it didn't sound like somebody trying to play classic rock with a modern Triple Rectifier tone.
However, I still wasn't getting quite enough raw gain to really get into classic Marshall metal tone. So I replaced the EQ pedal with a Digitech Bad Monkey Tube Overdrive pedal. With the level maxed out and the gain control set to minimum, I got about the same amount of gain boost as the EQ had given me with a slight bit of overdrive edge, for a nice, very useable classic rock tone. As I started to dial in the gain control, the overall tone started to move into the beginnings of the higher gain territory while still retaining the more open midrange voicing of the clean channel. However, as the gain control got much past 12:00, it started to muddy up the tone with a little too much fake distortion rather than real tube saturation.
The solution was to add the EQ back into the chain before the overdrive pedal. Along with the level boost from the Bad Monkey pedal, the EQ gave me the additional clean gain boost I needed to push the tubes into true metal tone without having to add in too much of the analog distortion of the Bad Monkey's gain control. By tweaking the EQ, I could now play not only the classic rock mentioned earlier, but also pretty much anything from 80's hard rock and metal, such as Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dokken, Motley Crue, Scorpions...you get the idea. Pretty much anything associated with the Marshall JCM 800 and high-gain mod tones.
These discoveries left me nothing less than ecstatic with my new Mesa amp. Not only could I get the great high-gain Mesa tones of channel 2 and the bone-crushing metal meltdown of channel 3 (or vice versa), I could also recreate the 80's Marshall metal sound without shelling out $2K or more for a restored JCM 800, or I could take a trip down memory lane and dial in the Marshall Plexi tones of my favorite classic rock songs.
All this available in one great hand-made tank of an amp with a tap of a footswitch. Now, I realize that my Mesa is plenty good enough to fire up and play straight, without any effects whatsoever. The point of my experimental tweaking was to find out what I could make the amp do and to explore aspects of the amp to their fullest potential that would otherwise have gone mostly ignored.
However, the thing that captured my interest was that, even though the available gain on the Pushed setting was too low for my uses, the voicing of that channel was similar to some of my old Marshalls in midrange character. I would characterize it as a more open, less compressed midrange than the more modern Mesa tone...kind of an open-vowel sound with a slight emphasis in the high mids. Not that the higher gain channels 2 and 3 weren't completely fantastic, but I thought that I might be on to something here if I could get both classic Mesa and classic Marshall-type tone out of the same amp.
Like I mentioned, the voicing was there on the Pushed Clean channel to get some classic Marshall rock and metal tones, but the gain was just too low. So, I started experimenting and found that running a 7-band graphic EQ between the guitar and the amp's input gave me the ability to further refine the voicing, especially in the mids, and also give me a nice 15db gain boost which really helped push the channel into useable harder-rock territory. Now I was getting somewhere. With the EQ, I could now use the channel to get a really great lower-to-medium gain rock tone a la Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, etc. What was also kind of nice about it was that even though I was playing through a Mesa, it didn't sound like somebody trying to play classic rock with a modern Triple Rectifier tone.
However, I still wasn't getting quite enough raw gain to really get into classic Marshall metal tone. So I replaced the EQ pedal with a Digitech Bad Monkey Tube Overdrive pedal. With the level maxed out and the gain control set to minimum, I got about the same amount of gain boost as the EQ had given me with a slight bit of overdrive edge, for a nice, very useable classic rock tone. As I started to dial in the gain control, the overall tone started to move into the beginnings of the higher gain territory while still retaining the more open midrange voicing of the clean channel. However, as the gain control got much past 12:00, it started to muddy up the tone with a little too much fake distortion rather than real tube saturation.
The solution was to add the EQ back into the chain before the overdrive pedal. Along with the level boost from the Bad Monkey pedal, the EQ gave me the additional clean gain boost I needed to push the tubes into true metal tone without having to add in too much of the analog distortion of the Bad Monkey's gain control. By tweaking the EQ, I could now play not only the classic rock mentioned earlier, but also pretty much anything from 80's hard rock and metal, such as Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dokken, Motley Crue, Scorpions...you get the idea. Pretty much anything associated with the Marshall JCM 800 and high-gain mod tones.
These discoveries left me nothing less than ecstatic with my new Mesa amp. Not only could I get the great high-gain Mesa tones of channel 2 and the bone-crushing metal meltdown of channel 3 (or vice versa), I could also recreate the 80's Marshall metal sound without shelling out $2K or more for a restored JCM 800, or I could take a trip down memory lane and dial in the Marshall Plexi tones of my favorite classic rock songs.
All this available in one great hand-made tank of an amp with a tap of a footswitch. Now, I realize that my Mesa is plenty good enough to fire up and play straight, without any effects whatsoever. The point of my experimental tweaking was to find out what I could make the amp do and to explore aspects of the amp to their fullest potential that would otherwise have gone mostly ignored.
