I'm new to this forum so if this has been covered before please forgive my ignorance .
I recently purchased a lonestar after seeing the Andy Timmons video on you tube .After getting it home and spending some time with it my impressions were that channel 1 sounded dry and lifeless ,had no sparkle to it at all . Channel 2 had a good lead tone but was a bit fizzy and like all mesa amps the bottom end was muddy and farted out . So since I bought my amp used and had nothing to lose in the warrenty department I decided to mod the amp . I pulled the load resistor and replaced it with a bias pot that I purchased from mansfield guitars . Thay sell A "bias mod kit" which consist of a pot and a resistor soldered to a small pcb. then I biased the amp up to 65% and man what a difference . Channel 1 now has the sparkle and chime I have only found in fenders . Channel 2 no longer has the fizz I spoke of and the muddy farty bass is a thing of the past . Mesa says their amps are fixed bias for maintenance free preformance and I guess to some degree this is true . However some would argue that its to sell mesa tubes . My lonestar was biased at 30% which kills the amps ability to preform the way I want it to . As I said earlier I brought the amp up to 65% which is where I found what I considered to be the best tone .Is there a down side ? Yes there is your tubes won't last as long as before but to me its a trade off that is well worth it .
For the last few years I have been playing boutique amps and I am somewhat of a tone snob . Since doing the mod on the lonestar I hardly play my boutique amp at all ,yes the mesa sounds that good
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