I just spent some hours alone in my band's rehearsal room playing my Studio Pre and, oh God, I love it so much!!! This time I got some really great tones even if I was playing and old Cimar (by Ibanez) guitar tuned 2 whole steps and a half down (BF#DAEB) which is muddy and not so good sounding just by itself. I was running the Studio Pre in mono without any fx, through a Tube Works MosValve MV-962 poweramp (another great piece of gear, these poweramps really deserve their good reputation) and a Marshall 4x12" cab. So, I had the time to do some considerations, and these turned out to the following questions I would like you to answer/discuss:
1) What outputs do you prefer?
Before I got the MosValve poweramp, I used to play my Studio Pre through the fx loop return of a Randall RG3 mosfet combo loaded with two Celestion Seventy 80s and I quite liked the tone using one of the main output. Always with the main out, with the MosValve I got a crisper and more aggressive tone (maybe due to the Marshall cab too), and bass frequencies had the tendency to become muddy and consequently undefined sounding. While that tone had more dynamics and "feel" if compared to the tone I got with the Randall combo, the "basic timbre" was a bit worse. Then I tried using one of the recording outs, and the tone had instantly improved and was so much smoother. I'm not a fan of Mesa recording outputs for direct recording, but through a poweramp and a cab they work great. I was quite satisfied with the tone, even if I felt it lacked a bit of presence and "impact". So, I finally tried the fx send output to directly feed the poweramp as many suggest (because recording outs circuitry is supposed to load the main outs one) and... I found my holy grail tone! It retained part of the crispness and aggressiveness peculiar to the main outs but it had a bit more smoothness and sweetness to it and, most important, mud was gone on lower strings and I could get an extreme defined and organic tone. Those considerations are mainly referred to high gain territory, but I soon found out that the fx send was (to me) the best out to choose even for clean tones, and lower gain lead settings were simply amazing (I discovered a great potential in the amp's lead channel with the fat swtch turned off). I'm planning to record some output comparison clips after retubing my Studio and when I'll have my Cubase installation CD back from a friend.
2) What pickups do you use with your Studio Pre?
I found really great tones with passive humbuckers, from death metal to petruccian rhythm/soloing, from bluesy to extremely clean tones. Got good tones with active pickups, but couldn't find any more-than-decent setting for my single coil USA Fender Stratocaster, which sounded quite dull... I had compared my Strat with others out there (with some amps which don't include my Studio Pre) and always thought mine played better, especially for rock/hard rock tones (I'm using .010-.046 strings to fatten my tone a bit).
Sorry for the not-so-short post, I'd really appreciate if anyone wanted to give his personal opinion about all that and maybe add something else.
Franz
1) What outputs do you prefer?
Before I got the MosValve poweramp, I used to play my Studio Pre through the fx loop return of a Randall RG3 mosfet combo loaded with two Celestion Seventy 80s and I quite liked the tone using one of the main output. Always with the main out, with the MosValve I got a crisper and more aggressive tone (maybe due to the Marshall cab too), and bass frequencies had the tendency to become muddy and consequently undefined sounding. While that tone had more dynamics and "feel" if compared to the tone I got with the Randall combo, the "basic timbre" was a bit worse. Then I tried using one of the recording outs, and the tone had instantly improved and was so much smoother. I'm not a fan of Mesa recording outputs for direct recording, but through a poweramp and a cab they work great. I was quite satisfied with the tone, even if I felt it lacked a bit of presence and "impact". So, I finally tried the fx send output to directly feed the poweramp as many suggest (because recording outs circuitry is supposed to load the main outs one) and... I found my holy grail tone! It retained part of the crispness and aggressiveness peculiar to the main outs but it had a bit more smoothness and sweetness to it and, most important, mud was gone on lower strings and I could get an extreme defined and organic tone. Those considerations are mainly referred to high gain territory, but I soon found out that the fx send was (to me) the best out to choose even for clean tones, and lower gain lead settings were simply amazing (I discovered a great potential in the amp's lead channel with the fat swtch turned off). I'm planning to record some output comparison clips after retubing my Studio and when I'll have my Cubase installation CD back from a friend.
2) What pickups do you use with your Studio Pre?
I found really great tones with passive humbuckers, from death metal to petruccian rhythm/soloing, from bluesy to extremely clean tones. Got good tones with active pickups, but couldn't find any more-than-decent setting for my single coil USA Fender Stratocaster, which sounded quite dull... I had compared my Strat with others out there (with some amps which don't include my Studio Pre) and always thought mine played better, especially for rock/hard rock tones (I'm using .010-.046 strings to fatten my tone a bit).
Sorry for the not-so-short post, I'd really appreciate if anyone wanted to give his personal opinion about all that and maybe add something else.
Franz
