Cool setting for Mesa blues channel

[David Garner]

So I've been trying to "tame" the burn channel on my 5:50 1x12 to be more vintage sounding, and I've had some trouble with it. It kind of goes from "not dirty" to "really gainy and distorted." On a lark, I decided to set the blues channel up for crunch. Treble and mids at noon, bass at 10:00, gain dimed, reverb low (and usually switched off in favor of some light delay in the loop), master to taste. It's a REALLY cool setting. Very touch sensitive, and can get Black Crowes tweedy/old Marshall-ish. Pick easy, it's pretty clean with just a touch of hair. Dig in and it's AC/DC crunch all day long. Hit the contour switch (contour at about noon) and you can get into 80's territory. Not Poison or Def Leppard, but cool '80s like Guns n' Roses. Hit the tubescreamer for singing leads.

The lead tone isn't as liquid as on the burn channel, but the tradeoff is well worth it. I have channel 1 set on clean, with treble at 2:00, mids at 9:00 and bass at 10:00, with the gain at about 3:00. That works for dead clean country or blues, and the tubescreamer puts just a touch of hair on the tone. Very versatile for country, blues, even RHCP style funk. Yellow Ledbetter sounds great. Anything Hendrix-y really sounds great.

I'm thinking these are going to be my base settings. I'm able to cover just about anything our band will ever play with these 2 channels, and I'll very rarely switch between them. In fact, the chief advantage of the blues mode on channel 2 is that you can get all the gain you want by digging in, but if you back off the pick attack it cleans up nicely. Very much like an old Marshall. Here's a pic of the settings (masters are set low because I was playing in the living room, but turning them up just gets you more of the same):

 

[ddmeburger]

I'm in the same boat at you. The Blues mode is more organic than the Burn mode. But, I have my Blues mode gain set at about 12:30, not dimed like yourself. By itself at that gain level of 12:30, it gets into light Tweed territory, but with my Tube Driver or London Fuzz, they sound EJ-type glorious.

I noticed when I dimed my gain on the Blues channel, the TD's and London's character didn't quite make it through the whole way, which is why I have it scaled back to almost the halfway point. I like the fact that I can get three different shades out of this channel. Actually, when I play the above pedals/channel, I am on my bridge pickup. If I switch to both pickups combined with the neck split, or just the neck split, I can still get a really clean tone with a tad of hair on it at this Blues setting, so little hair I could use it as a clean. And that is before I switch to the Clean channel with the gain set at about noon, which is pretty Fender-ish bounce-wise with the contour set at about 11 o'clock.

My Keely DS-1 is almost there with the TD and LF, too, but the TD and LF really shine in this setting. This amp is so versatile it is worth experimenting with things like this. You never know what you'll come up with.

 

[David Garner]

I'm in the same boat at you. The Blues mode is more organic than the Burn mode. But, I have my Blues mode gain set at about 12:30, not dimed like yourself. By itself at that gain level of 12:30, it gets into light Tweed territory, but with my Tube Driver or London Fuzz, they sound EJ-type glorious.

I noticed when I dimed my gain on the Blues channel, the TD's and London's character didn't quite make it through the whole way, which is why I have it scaled back to almost the halfway point. I like the fact that I can get three different shades out of this channel. Actually, when I play the above pedals/channel, I am on my bridge pickup. If I switch to both pickups combined with the neck split, or just the neck split, I can still get a really clean tone with a tad of hair on it at this Blues setting, so little hair I could use it as a clean. And that is before I switch to the Clean channel with the gain set at about noon, which is pretty Fender-ish bounce-wise with the contour set at about 11 o'clock.

My Keely DS-1 is almost there with the TD and LF, too, but the TD and LF really shine in this setting. This amp is so versatile it is worth experimenting with things like this. You never know what you'll come up with.

The clean up is what shocked me. If you pick lightly, it's really, really clean. It reminds me of the intro to "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution," where he's picking really lightly and then when he digs in a little the tone gets a bit of hair on it. It can really go from nearly dead clean to pretty heavy distortion just based on pick dynamics. The other song that comes to mind is "Seeing Things" by the Black Crowes, where he picks lightly in the beginning and then it gets hairy when he digs in.

I posted this precisely because I figure most folks who are new to this amp use the burn channel for gain. It can do a lighter gain than full-bore heavy distortion, but it's not nearly as dynamic as the blues mode. The only sacrifice I made was that really singing, liquid lead tone you can get with the gain channel and a TS pedal, but this gets close, and for my use, I'll take it.

 

[David Garner]

Sorry, DP.

 

[Newysurfer]

Hey thanks for the voice settings David.
I've not really experimented much with high gain on the clean channel
Your ideas have opened up even more possibilities on this super versatile amp.
Keep up the good work :mrgreen:

 

[David Garner]

Hey thanks for the voice settings David.
I've not really experimented much with high gain on the clean channel
Your ideas have opened up even more possibilities on this super versatile amp.
Keep up the good work :mrgreen:

Actually, high gain on the clean setting for channel 1 just makes it more articulate. Very little overdrive, but a very punchy, round tone.

 

[edward]

When I first got my 525, I was fussin with the Burn for days ...gave up on it as it was just too "modern" voiced for me; I wanted more old-school OD. I realized that the Crunch channel is what really delivers. The Gain knob here delivers serious versatility and depending on whether you have buckers or SC pups, you can get some great edgy tone to full-on swirly OD. I love this channel, and it is what ended up "selling" me on keeping this amp.

And my cleans is the Blues channel ....yeah, seriously rocking voice that Blues channel! Set the gain low to med (below 1100 depending on your pups) and you get mild hair around the edges to downright furry bluesy goodness! Yet it all cleans up beautifully with the guit vol knob and lightened attack. A much better "clean" setting than the Clean channel, IMHO: more warmth, more defined mids and sparkly top whereas the Clean channel was simply too spanky and scooped for me. (I supposed if I played country then...).

So there you go: I play my Express channels "reversed," as it were. It seemed a bit counter-intuitive at first, but glad I spent the time to explore the amp's voices at it really paid off.

Edward