reo73 said:
Interesting,
I demo'd a Piranha a couple times and always thought it sounded brittle. Maybe it is the type of unit that needs some good tweaking time, which is what a lot of people say about Mesa gear anyway.
My experience with the Studio Pre, and granted I have only had it for a couple months, is completly different from your description. It is not flabby at all but rather tight in the bottom end with that unique Mesa karaang sound. Also the note definition is great compared to the Mark III I had and it is has tons of gain. The clean is fantastic as well.
The Piranha can be brittle . . . I have a few settings that are pretty brittle on purpose. I kind of like the "sandpaper" sound sometimes. I have one or two presets that are just odd sounding things--like playing over the phone or coming over a cheap AM radio. It can be fun for trying to mix things up.
It has a very narrow sweet spot with the input volume, where it just barely overdrives the first tube stage--that's where the good tone is. Too much and it mushes, too little and it's pretty blah. For my pickups, it's just a smidge below three o'clock. Also, it has a LOT of drive--it goes 0 to 70 and it'll mush out too high. I usually only run it between 25-36 or so, depending on the preset. The tone controls swing pretty wide as well, so it's easy to overdo them. My usual setting has everything between -3 and +3 where the controls go from -15 to +15.
The sweepable mid just makes the preamp. There's a nice spot at 2.6k that you can knock down a few notches and it has a really unique tone.
Also, the stock tubes are terrible. Just terrible. I have no idea what they were thinking. When I changed the tubes, it just about took my head off with the original settings. I think they found the mushiest tubes available on the planet and stuck them in. Like I said, it was my practice rig for five YEARS because I thought it wasn't worth the trouble. Then I changed the tubes and all was different.
I really notice the difference in a band setting, with everything up loud. I can hear everything much more clearly . . . even the "oops"es.
The Studio was a little bit "springier," but there were a lot of things that just didn't come through it. Especially muted stuff--I'll do a lot of things that are picked heavily with muting. Through the Studio it didn't seem to come through.
Of course, as always, your mileage may vary.