Frustrations with Mesa... What next?

[creative]

Also, the tone feels so incredibly 80's-ish. I mean, THIS is the Mark sound (to a certain extent) and it's really NOT what I want for my rhythm tones, whether high gain or not. For leads - yes. For cleans - absolutely. But not for the vast spectrum of tones in between.

weeeeell, let's just say that the GEQ is one of my favorite features on the Mark IV. A very, very, very, very, very frustrated me.

Any suggestions?

i have the same frustration,i just sold triaxis+2.90, f50 and mark2b. mark iv i dont know yet. i find my grail tone and just ordered bogner 101b. engl has great metal sound but it has too thin voice. have you tried bogner or diezel? best amps.

 

[shredi knight]

A big +1 to everything jdurso said about the Axe FX.

Forget what you think you know about modeling, it blows the doors off of everything Line6 and everyone else has done.

 

[jdurso]

A big +1 to everything jdurso said about the Axe FX.

Forget what you think you know about modeling, it blows the doors off of everything Line6 and everyone else has done.

yeah it's ashame some people just throw some ideas to the wind..... i went the line 6 road for a while and i was pretty happy with the vetta.... of course there were certain things i yurned for that at that time i thought only a tube amp could provide, there have definitely been advances in modelling with the axe-fx..... i dont think its for everyone because some people just like having 1 or 2 core sounds and a bunch of pedals.... and if that does the job then thats great.... but people like myself that like a whole bunch of flavors (especially for cover bands) something like the axe-fx is an awesome option....... especially considering the fact that your style using the power amp of your choice and the fx can compete with eventide

 

[Rush]

More code != better amp

 

[Jak0lantern01]

What about a Stiletto? I just played one this past weekend and decided I'm going to buy one in the near future. Total crunch machine, and more versatile than I imagined. It was funny, cuz my testing the unit was interupted by a salesman who had a buyer for the amp. Another happy player......

 

[Mr_You]

I've only had my Marshall JVM for a couple days, but I'm liking it. Will be better when I swap the crappy 12AX7s out and add another cabinet. Haven't taken it out of the Celestion V30 1x12 since my first tries with the Celestion C90.

With the EQs at noon, rhythm or lead (Marshall) tones: nice clean, nice mid-gain distortion (Crunch Channel Red), high-gain distortion (OD1 Channel Orange)
With "upside down V" EQ ie. mid cranked: mid-gain distortion-crunch (OD2 Channel Red). Like this, no thats not me.

Like I said, only two days but having fun with true Marshall tone.

 

[Bruce Dickenson]

What about a Bat Cat- Hot Cat 30R, those things are bad. Also I hear the Bad Cat Lynx is the bee's knees.

 

[metalblitz84]

MESA FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[jtb226]

what about bogner? been talking about them lot on the board lately, and just thought i'd suggest it. they also make the "fish" preamp if you want to go more with a rack setup. might be something to think about.

 

[abe]

Well that's quite the dilemma, isn't it? From what I hear, EL-34's will give me more edgy crunch I'm looking for, but will also degrade my clean tone and my lead/solo tone. A bit of a tradeoff, isn't it?
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Have you tried anything in the Stiletto series? They have, in my opinion, better than Hot Rodded Marshall tones, great in between sounds, and good cleans as well. Not Fender type cleans, but definately not what you would expect from EL 34 cleans, and way better than Marshall cleans.

Not to bash Marshall, because I like them and have owned a few, and the Marshall sound was my starting point before I finally discovered the Ace.

 

[nomad100hd]

That loser feel your talking about comes from power tube distortion. More specifically the relationship between the power supply and the power amp. Usually an 50 W or more amp is way to loud once you get the Power tubes cooking.

The crunch over the buzz comes from pretube biasing at least in mesa amps. if you changed the 39k clipping stage to something warmer like well just put a 39 K pot in and dial in the crunch/fizz.

Long story short get an attenuator and or get a lower powered amp. A preamp/poweramp set up probably wont give you want you want. Unless the preamp is build as a preamp and power amp that goes into a dummy load then has a line out to go into your bigger Power amp.


On a side note almost all guitar amps are based on a hand full of classic designs with little tweaks. A DR and a slo are almost identical except for 3 or 4 resistors and a couple caps. So if you learn to build you'll always have what you want for less.

 

[boogietone]

JMP-1 into Mark IV, my current rig, what else would you need???[/quote]

A guitar?
Just kidding!