I just played a Heartbreaker, I was impressed...........

[tele_jas]

I went to a "ma & pa" music store on my lunch break today and there in the back, behind all the Marshalls and Fenders, was a Mesa Boogie Heart Breaker. I thought "what the heck" and plugged a tele in to it and I was pretty impressed with the clean tone that I was hearing! And then I flipped over to the crunch side of things and was in classic rock heaven!! Why have I not heard too much about these amps?? Are these Mesa's secret weapon amplifier or is there something that I'm missing?

That was with best sounding amp in that music store today and he said that nobody has really looked at it, but that could be because of the $1100 price tag on it too :shock: , I think they're a little proud of that amp.

I guess this was more of an observation post instead of one asking for help. But I bet it could really rock with a TS in front of it :wink:

Later, TJ

 

[Anonymous]

Post removed.

 

[Guitarzan]

Heartbreakers are used by both Prince and Santana in their live rigs. HB's are great amps, There was a green velvet head and matching 4X12 on ebay a few months back...I posted it Here.

 

[Sardocasm]

as far as i know, it's more or less a re-make of the mark I. and since they have the mark 1 re-issue now, i take it the heartbreaker is no longer necessary. and that lust/greed thing didn't really catch on, although i find it cute.

I don't see how it would be straight out replaced by the Mark I reissue, the Heartbreaker has a bunch of switches for tone shaping. I should know, I've got one of 'em. 8) I especially like how either channel can be clean or distorted. Also, it's love/lust... :roll: but I agree, I like the strange quirkiness of it.

 

[dylan7620]

its a tribute amp to the mark I

 

[Cheez]

very similar to the LSC then, too... right? MkI foundation, lot's of switches. Heartbreaker is 30/60, though right (as opposed to 50/100 LSC)?

I was VERY interested in one of these, but could never find one to plug in to. Pretty pricey, too.

 

[PRSKILLER]

Back in 97 when I bought my Dual Rectifier I was playing around with the HB and I really liked it. The gain was really nice, not heavy like the recto but it could hold its own. If they didn't have any Rectifiers for me to try out I would've bought that HB :lol:

 

[Sardocasm]

The Heartbreaker's power breaks down more like the lsc going from 100 to 60.

 

[musicbox]

also has the variac, so you can run 2 6v6 and get it down to 20 watts.

 

[nomadlover]

i've got $900 saved up and in approx 12 days i'm buying one (hopefully!)! i've tried it out many a time and it is such a beautiful creamy sounding amp that when i tried it out with my crappy squier (soon to be replaced) it made it sound wonderfull. i crapped, puked, and peed all at the same time. i might chang the speakers for some red fangs! or not. :roll:

 

[Lewy]

The Heartbreaker is truly the overlooked amp in Mesa's back catalogue, and also the most misunderstood. Because, at the time it was made, it was billed as a tribute to the Mk I, that's all people tend to think it is, but the truth is that that only makes up about a quarter of what this amp is all about. It also does blackface style clean sounds, tweed clean and cruch sounds and does the hot rodded Marshall thing too.

It is an unashamedly vintage voiced amp, and people looking for really sharp sounds or that Mk IV hi fi clean sound are going to find themselves running out of treble to dial in and bass to roll off, but for everything else it's great. It's sensitive to preamp valve selection in that warm sounding valves like JJ's will soften it down too much and it can start to sound wooly. EH's work fine in mine, though.

All in all, the feature list is very impressive as a quick look through the manual on the Mesa website will tell you.

And Heartbreakers can often be seen going for not a lot of money (even here in the UK, where Mesa stuff is always really expensive) again, because I think they've just slipped off the radar. People don't seem to know what to make of them.