Roadster reliability

The Boogie Board

Help Support The Boogie Board:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

rich

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 4, 2008
Messages
135
Reaction score
0
Location
Brooklyn, NY
I've been reading around the forum...seems like a lot of people have problems with their roadsters, such as volume swells, reverb problems, and channel switching problems. Are these amps reliable at all or do most of them have problems. For those that had problems, were they corrected by mesa or a mesa certified repair shop under warranty?

Thanks
Rich
 
I found out that the volume swells are caused because of the reverb and unbalance between the clean and high gain channels. I have a road king and it does that but its because of the way i have it set up. as far as switching channels or the "pop", i switch between all the channels at least 10 times while the amp is in stand by before i begin playing it. And i no longer hear a pop"(i cant even remember even if there was a issue or not switching channels but i was read about it in other forums). IMO i find mesa to be VERY RELIABLE. I would use my one road king for a gig without any backup tubes, or fuses because i know i can depend on it. :p
 
yea ive never had a problem with my mark iv or dual rec, but i just heard some things about the roadster so i was curious...thanks for the help
 
ok, i've had my roadster combo for about a year and have had two problems, but both were not really the amps fault. First problem was when the soundman used a 200' extension cord to hook me up and the fuse blew (which was only a 3 amp fuse that long and mcquade had in the amp instead of a 4 amp), second time was when we were playing an outdoor gig and they were powering us off a generator which kept cutting out, its been in the repair shop for almost three months since then waiting for the parts from mesa since they won't let them use just anything in the amp, fortunately with the warranty, long & mcquade has given me a loaner amp the whole time at no charge so i'm not completely ****-out-of-luck. I always gig with a (solid state) backup and bring spare fuses and tubes, just in case, cause with a tube amp, you never know what might happen. that being said, i love the roadster and even with these two mishaps, i wouldn't trade it for any other amp. I usually keep my reverb down low anyway so there's no issue there, and the popping goes away after a few channel changes in standby. bottom line, you can't go wrong with a roadster!
 
I've had my Roadster Head for almost two years now, with only two issues. One was a bad Rectifier tube that blew a fuse, but that's not Mesa's fault. The second issue has just shown up, but IMO it's extremely minor. Ch 1's (green) indicator light is not working. The amp switches channels fine, but when in Ch 1 the light in the amp is not lit. This is probably not really Mesa's fault either, with the massive amount of semi-conductors they buy, sooner or later ther will be a dud.

I am extremely happy with my Roadster, the thing is built like a tank, and sounds fantastic in all modes/channels for me. I had the channel popping issue when I first bought the amp, but switching through the channels in standby has completely eliminated any popping at gig volume. And yes you will get volume/reverb swells if you don't balance your channel volumes. I don't ever see there being a reliability issue with it.

I've been playing Rectos since 2001 (Triple before the Roadster) and have never been let down.

IMO anything Randall Smith builds is built to last a lifetime. Once you find "your" Mesa, it's quite possibly the last amp you will ever need to buy.

I know I found mine :D

Dom
 
Just got my Roadster yesterday, love it, but it pops loudly when switching channels... hopefully this will work itself out. But other than that it is solid!
 
like i said, when you have the amp on (while still in stand by) switch through all the channels several times before you turn off stand by. That should stop the popping noise when switching channels
 
chriz_batman said:
like i said, when you have the amp on (while still in stand by) switch through all the channels several times before you turn off stand by. That should stop the popping noise when switching channels
Ya, I will be trying that for sure, thanks!
 
Back
Top