I'm a big Mesa/Boogie fan, and i've been looking for a small, versatile combo for home use, small gigs and recording for some time now. My dream amp is a Roadster 1x12 combo, but it's a little cumbersome and a little out of my price range, so i've been trying pretty much everything else... Nomads, F-series, and now the Express series.
I once rented a Nomad 1x12 and found its clean and crunch sounds to be good, but i couldn't get a satisfying high-gain rhythm sound out of it, no matter what i tried. I had the same experience with the F-50 combo.
But for some reason, the F-30 really hit a sweet spot for me. Being primarily a rhythm player in a band that covers a lot of musical ground from atmospheric/ambient to full-blown metal chugging, i have a need for at least three core sounds: Clean, a nice percussive Crunch sound, and a full-blown ROAR. The F-30 nailed all three for me quite nicely. But before i could save up for one, Mesa discontinued them and brought out the Express series.
On paper, the specs for the Express series (four modes, two channels with switchable/adjustable Contour on both channels) sounded like a perfect evolution from the F-series. I was really pleased when The Guitar Shop in Port Credit got in a whole bunch of the new amps a couple of months ago, so i sat down with an Express 5:50 to try it out.
Since i was in a relatively small store and sitting very close to the amp, i spent most of my time in the 5-watt mode. This is a great feature, which i really appreciated. The clean channel was just beautiful. Crystal clear, with those "glassy" overtones, with lush reverb and responsive tone controls. Turning up the gain pushed into grittty SRV territory, and even more grungy when the "crunch" mode was engaged. Turning on the Contour gave a bit more girth, but it didn't seem as dramatic as the Contour mode on the F-30.
Channel 2 was a bit of a mixed bag. I found i could dial in some nice "liquid" singing lead tones, but found the distortion sounds to be completely lacking for playing high-gain rhythm. The bottom end was flabby and poorly defined, and no matter what i did, i could not get a nice, tight, percussive "chunk" sound for palm-muted chords. And this is where my main disappointment lies. If an amp can't do that, it's useless to me, no matter how good the other channels are.
On an F-30, when i set Channel 2 so it's purring along in a nice rhythm grind, kicking in the Contour mode pushes it over the top just enough to get me near Recto territory. Nice girth and punch, with a percussive, tight low end. I was expecting the same behavior from the Express series, but found that it just didn't have the "juice". The contour mode seems a lot less dramatic on these new amps than on the F-series, and the ability to dial it back seems even more odd. If anything, with a variable control on the Contour mode, i expected it to be voiced even more extreme than the F-series' Contour control. I found just the opposite: It was voiced more conservatively, and dialing it back, it might as well not been there at all.
The other day, i tried the 5:25, and found very similar results. After about 10 minutes of knob-twiddling, i gave up in frustration. My findings were confirmed by the fact that they also had an F-30 in stock, and was able to dial in awesome tones in just a few seconds.
In conclusion, while i found that the cleans and "grit" sounds in the Express amps are a great evolution from the F-series, and i find the amp seems to cover more ground in the low- to mid-gain territory, but in the process, Mesa has sacrificed the high-gain rhythm sounds. It'll "sing", but it won't "chug".
I really hope the Express amps will be revised so they cover the kind of range that the F-series did (especially the F-30... that little thing had serious magic in that EL-84 power section) and make the Contour mode much more dramatic than its current voicing.
I really wanted to like these amps, but they left me wanting more.
I once rented a Nomad 1x12 and found its clean and crunch sounds to be good, but i couldn't get a satisfying high-gain rhythm sound out of it, no matter what i tried. I had the same experience with the F-50 combo.
But for some reason, the F-30 really hit a sweet spot for me. Being primarily a rhythm player in a band that covers a lot of musical ground from atmospheric/ambient to full-blown metal chugging, i have a need for at least three core sounds: Clean, a nice percussive Crunch sound, and a full-blown ROAR. The F-30 nailed all three for me quite nicely. But before i could save up for one, Mesa discontinued them and brought out the Express series.
On paper, the specs for the Express series (four modes, two channels with switchable/adjustable Contour on both channels) sounded like a perfect evolution from the F-series. I was really pleased when The Guitar Shop in Port Credit got in a whole bunch of the new amps a couple of months ago, so i sat down with an Express 5:50 to try it out.
Since i was in a relatively small store and sitting very close to the amp, i spent most of my time in the 5-watt mode. This is a great feature, which i really appreciated. The clean channel was just beautiful. Crystal clear, with those "glassy" overtones, with lush reverb and responsive tone controls. Turning up the gain pushed into grittty SRV territory, and even more grungy when the "crunch" mode was engaged. Turning on the Contour gave a bit more girth, but it didn't seem as dramatic as the Contour mode on the F-30.
Channel 2 was a bit of a mixed bag. I found i could dial in some nice "liquid" singing lead tones, but found the distortion sounds to be completely lacking for playing high-gain rhythm. The bottom end was flabby and poorly defined, and no matter what i did, i could not get a nice, tight, percussive "chunk" sound for palm-muted chords. And this is where my main disappointment lies. If an amp can't do that, it's useless to me, no matter how good the other channels are.
On an F-30, when i set Channel 2 so it's purring along in a nice rhythm grind, kicking in the Contour mode pushes it over the top just enough to get me near Recto territory. Nice girth and punch, with a percussive, tight low end. I was expecting the same behavior from the Express series, but found that it just didn't have the "juice". The contour mode seems a lot less dramatic on these new amps than on the F-series, and the ability to dial it back seems even more odd. If anything, with a variable control on the Contour mode, i expected it to be voiced even more extreme than the F-series' Contour control. I found just the opposite: It was voiced more conservatively, and dialing it back, it might as well not been there at all.
The other day, i tried the 5:25, and found very similar results. After about 10 minutes of knob-twiddling, i gave up in frustration. My findings were confirmed by the fact that they also had an F-30 in stock, and was able to dial in awesome tones in just a few seconds.
In conclusion, while i found that the cleans and "grit" sounds in the Express amps are a great evolution from the F-series, and i find the amp seems to cover more ground in the low- to mid-gain territory, but in the process, Mesa has sacrificed the high-gain rhythm sounds. It'll "sing", but it won't "chug".
I really hope the Express amps will be revised so they cover the kind of range that the F-series did (especially the F-30... that little thing had serious magic in that EL-84 power section) and make the Contour mode much more dramatic than its current voicing.
I really wanted to like these amps, but they left me wanting more.
