Mesa Boogie Roadster/ Malmsteen sound

[SimpleMind]

Hei,
how is the Roadster with regard to getting the Malmsteen sound. Always thought of the Timmons/ Petrucci tone as being less defined as the Malmsteen tone, meaning that you can`t here the single notes as clear and defined as if Malmsteen was playing? Just my humble opinion. DOes that have something to do with the gear which is used. Is the Roadster capable of producing a Malmsteen like sound?

Thanks

 

[disassembled]

I would imagine the closest you could probably get is using channel 2 brit mode with EL34's in the section and a DOD 250 preamp/overdrive outfront (ala malmsteen). You'll most definitely want to use the solid state rectifier and reduce the bass to almost off while near maxing your highs and prescence. You will probably need a good amount of power section saturation too so i don't know how feasible this is for your situation. I would recommend that you keep your pre gain as low as possible and let the power section do most of the work.

I know he uses plexi's which rely on power tube saturation.

This is coming from someone who doesn't play/own a roadster so i don't know how close the roadster can get. Malmsteen doesn't have a gainy sound but more of a high end focused, extreme pick attack, power tube saturated tone.


Greg

 

[Platypus]

Malm's sound is a collection of 50W marshalls boosted with a distortion + (I think?)

Anyway, the roadster doesn't have a marshally vibe to it in the brit settings as compared to something like a stiletto or Orange or a real marshall, it seems a bit more 'voxish/hiwatt' to my ears but I don't own one so maybe I didn't tweak it long enough when demoing it.

I've seen a lot of posts asking about the Roadster from you, basically you cannot expect one amp to do everything. I know that's not what you want to hear but even the Road King lacks tones that my other amps can get, it's all a matter of what tone YOU want. It's fun to try and cop the tones of your favorite guitar players but in the end you have to be able to find your tone in the amp too.. if you play a roadster and it totally does it for you then I'd say go for it, but don't put all your hope into a onestop solution, it just doesn't exist

0.02

 

[cant play pool with a rop]

^^^+1 very well put Plat. I went through a Stevie Ray thing recently and spent a lot of time getting as close as I could to get his sound and feel man it was a lot of work. The band I'm in plays a set of covers and a set of originals( depends on gig), I really busted my but to try to get as close as humanly possible to Stevie. All this practice came in handy for the attack and groove but in the end I was still gonna sound like me and if I didn't sound like me something was missing in the feel and execution. I had to stop goin note for note and just play the blues dude and when I had that approach everything flowed and didn't sound to bad. With the gear also I had stop fusin and let it rip. When I had this approach the other band members would remark how much it sounded like Stevie but when I really tried to sound like him I would miss the mark. Plat your post reminded me of this experience and has sold merit.

 

[cant play pool with a rop]

^^^ solid merit.

 

[andrew_1990]

Man the closest your gunna get to malmsteen's tone is with a marshall and a some sort of overdrive up front the amp also has to be turned up extremely loud to get the power tubes going.

 

[kissmyaxe]

I know I know, this thread is long dead, but I did a google search for malmsteen and roadster and up came the boogie board. I doubt anyone is gonna have a look at this but I thought I'd post what I thought of trying to get a malmsteen sound out of a roadster. GOOD FUCKING LUCK lol. I know, cause I own one. I find that the roadsters and a strat neck pick up on channels 3 and 4 are absolutely atrocious. It just turns to fuzz, you will not get ANY bite. At the moment, I currently use Hot Vintage Noiseless pick-ups in my strat with 1meg Ohm pots all around for the brightest sounds I can get with a strat. The mesa just doesn't like it at all, my strat sounds like hell through it. My Les Paul and the Roadster on the other hand go together like they've known each other their whole lives, it's really quite amazing. Although, when flipping to the neck pick up on my Les Paul, there is bite, but you can hear the Roadster trying to Fuzz it up. I'm going to try swapping out the the tubes for EL34s and put an overdrive pedal on channel 2 in Brit mode to see how that goes. I'll post my results, if anyone cares lol.

 

[Bruno Petrucci]

Forget it

 

[domct203]

Don't forget about Raw mode. Use low gain, alot of mids and volume, and a DOD250 or MXR Dist+.

It's going to be a battle for sure.

Dom

 

[A_Ryder]

I know I know, this thread is long dead, but I did a google search for malmsteen and roadster and up came the boogie board. I doubt anyone is gonna have a look at this but I thought I'd post what I thought of trying to get a malmsteen sound out of a roadster. GOOD f%&# LUCK lol. I know, cause I own one. I find that the roadsters and a strat neck pick up on channels 3 and 4 are absolutely atrocious. It just turns to fuzz, you will not get ANY bite. At the moment, I currently use Hot Vintage Noiseless pick-ups in my strat with 1meg Ohm pots all around for the brightest sounds I can get with a strat. The mesa just doesn't like it at all, my strat sounds like hell through it. My Les Paul and the Roadster on the other hand go together like they've known each other their whole lives, it's really quite amazing. Although, when flipping to the neck pick up on my Les Paul, there is bite, but you can hear the Roadster trying to Fuzz it up. I'm going to try swapping out the the tubes for EL34s and put an overdrive pedal on channel 2 in Brit mode to see how that goes. I'll post my results, if anyone cares lol.

Yeah single coils and Mesa/Boogie hi-gain = challenge.

I believe "a thing is what it is", but I still like to hack about. And I don't have a Roadstar, I have an original DR 2ch - but I wonder -

Try a Recto type channel on "Vintage" with *TONS* of gain, but then put your (humbucker) guitar volume on 1 or 2 - no that is not a typo and yes that's the key. I know it's silly but please... And mids low, probably not zero. Muck about with presence and treble a bit.

Play some EVH or AccaDacca ... maybe Gary Moore ... Remind you of anything?

 

[Neptical]

Without doctoring up the tone a bit, that's not an easy feat to accomplish with just a Roadster. If anything, start with some compressor and overdrive pedals. Also, his tone is pure EL34 based so that's key, as well as his love for G12T-75 Celestions.

 

[kissmyaxe]

Someone made the point earlier that there is no One Amp Cures All solution. Fortunately, up till now, the Roadster has covered all my bases. I was actually looking into the new YJM from Marshall that has recently come out. It's basically a 2 Channel Plexi with the DOD250 built into the boost and some other bells and whistles such as a reverb and a noise gate. There is a limited selection of demo videos on youtube because the amp is so new, but some guys are getting some pretty sweet tones out of that amp. The only thing I'm not a fan of is the PCB... I love hand wired amps and I think everyone can agree with me on that one. So I might just turn to a Marshall Plexi for a strat rig. I'm not a gigging musician so I won't have to worry about lugging around to big rigs, I just play in the house for my own entertainment or to piss off the neighbor's dog.