Some of you may have noticed my lame mark IIB posts to date.
I thought I would post a small review for those who are interested.
First up, I played pro for years and have owned a pile of amps and feel like I have a pretty good idea about tone in a live situation.
The clean on this is outstanding. I have a 70s silverface vibrolux that was modded to a blackface and it sounds better than that amp. The main difference (if you eq it like a vibrolux) is it is cleaner in the trebs. Also it has that awesome what I call "boing" in the bass and the mids (kinda like a clean version of that Malcolm Young tone if that makes sense). I am staggered at the sheer variety of tones this thing can get. I have a SRV strat and it sounds realllly nice with the Mesa. I find that gibsons sound good but not as good as a strat.
I really like the mild breakup you can get as well. very responsive to pick attack.
I do not like it with a lot of gain, the lead sounds are pretty ordinary IMO. But that might be just my ear being so conditioned to marshall tones. But the clean quality of this amp well and truly makes up for that. Also pedals sound great in this thing. I have been playing around with a bunch of overdives and they all sound good., So I am not to concerned with what I think is a "bad" lead sound.
The only thing that would be ultra useful would be the ability to footswitch the graphic.
I can see this quickly becoming my favorite amp. It just oozes quality in sound and also build.
Thanks again for your help to date.
I thought I would post a small review for those who are interested.
First up, I played pro for years and have owned a pile of amps and feel like I have a pretty good idea about tone in a live situation.
The clean on this is outstanding. I have a 70s silverface vibrolux that was modded to a blackface and it sounds better than that amp. The main difference (if you eq it like a vibrolux) is it is cleaner in the trebs. Also it has that awesome what I call "boing" in the bass and the mids (kinda like a clean version of that Malcolm Young tone if that makes sense). I am staggered at the sheer variety of tones this thing can get. I have a SRV strat and it sounds realllly nice with the Mesa. I find that gibsons sound good but not as good as a strat.
I really like the mild breakup you can get as well. very responsive to pick attack.
I do not like it with a lot of gain, the lead sounds are pretty ordinary IMO. But that might be just my ear being so conditioned to marshall tones. But the clean quality of this amp well and truly makes up for that. Also pedals sound great in this thing. I have been playing around with a bunch of overdives and they all sound good., So I am not to concerned with what I think is a "bad" lead sound.
The only thing that would be ultra useful would be the ability to footswitch the graphic.
I can see this quickly becoming my favorite amp. It just oozes quality in sound and also build.
Thanks again for your help to date.