Strategy 500 came today!

[Spike]

I'm stoked.
Now all I need is a quad and a couple of reeves cabs and I'm done.

Anybody got a quad for sale?

 

[Whoopysnorp]

Hope you have good earplugs! I have the 395 and I can't imagine wanting more power than what's in there. The track switching feature on these amps is really neat; if I had a problem getting the volumes matched between rhythm and lead on my Studio Pre like some people do, this would solve it neatly. As it is I keep my tracks on about the same volume but for the lead mode I'm only running the triode "class A" pair.

 

[ak47]

Nice!! ..and it looks pretty clean too... congratulations! Are there 2 screws missing on the front..? Mesa should be able to help replace them without much trouble..

I have had my Strategy since 1993 (got it from a guy who ran his keyboards through it!) and only needed a re-tube once.... worth the investment but it would have been nice if the ½ price vouchers that came with these in the beginning were always valid!!

I put some grey Mesa 6550-A's and yellow Mesa 5881-6L6's with GE JAN 12ax7WA's for the pre-tubes in mine and it sounds super sweet when changing channels!

If you are interested, you can see a photo and hear the sounds I get from my quad and strategy 500 combination at http://www.myspace.com/anguskeay

 

[Spike]

Hey buddy! You have the exact setup I'm trying to put together!!! ARGH! So jealous!!

Sounds AWESOME!! And thank you for the comments.

 

[ak47]

Thanks Spike! yep, it is a rig that you will never get tired of playing and pretty much all sounds are covered with ease...

Oh yeah... and it has some tone... 24 tubes of tone to be exact!!!

I usually run it into a Marshall JCM900 lead 4x12'' and a Marshall JCM800 bass 2x15'' and get a fantastic separation and range of frequencies to play with. I realised long ago that to really do these power amps justice you do need to run several speaker boxes. A big and heavy rig... but totally uncompromising!

Good luck finding a Quad... I think they usually appear on the market a lot more often than strategy 500's do so you are off to a great start! Let us know how you go.