> Is this something normal for a new amp, or should I be concerned? Has anyone else experienced this?
< TLDR: this should not be perceived as Commonplace And Normal at the $4000 price point>
I've rejected entire shipments of transformers when they've looked like that. Why? Because when you're building custom amps, someone else's poorly finished transformer makes the rest of your work look bad.
People will debate about whether or not defects/cracks/pull-offs of coatings on the laminations are irrelevant; some will say that they could cause long term problems with rust resistance and the eventual development of shorts 20 years from now. From a warranty perspective amp companies won't care because those types of problems will take a long time to develop and any amp with iron that looks like that will make it through the warranty period without problems -- which is what the manufacturer really cares about. But IMO that sort manufacturing defect (it is a manufacturing defect, whether people want to admit it or not) says a lot about the manufacturing process and the both the technique and the level of care taken by the person who did the dipping and baking.
It's entirely normal to NOT have those sorts of defects when the person in the manufacturing plant is willing to take the time to prevent them -- just as it's accepted to have those defects in modern low-cost manufacturing when the absence of that sort of defect is not specified by the purchaser. Suppliers build to the level of quality demanded by the customer. If Mesa had spec'd that the transformers wouldn't have that type of appearance and would reject them if they did, then you could bet that the supplier wouldn't be providing iron that looks like that. The fact that the iron has those coating defects means that Mesa doesn't care about it from a functional standpoint so you don't need to worry about it. ( I know that Mesa lost an iron supplier during Covid, and moved to a new supplier, but I don't know whether that is relevant here.)
OTOH even though lamination defects don't represent a functional defect, it's entirely your decision to determine if you're willing to pay $4000 for an amp that looks like the guy who dipped the iron and baked it did a half-baked job. IMO at the $4000 price point a builder owes it to his customers to deliver amps that don't have glaring visual defects that prompt these sorts of questions to be asked. It's all about the standard of quality that any manufacturer places on themselves and on their products.
With all that said, peeling of lamination varnish has become accepted as a norm in the industry as low cost production has become an overriding factor in manufacturing. But in this case we're talking about a $4000 Mesa amp, not your garden variety mass-produced Crate.
When I was building hand-wired amps I sourced custom iron from Mercury. My first two shipments contained nothing but perfect specimens. Thinking that I had been through two test orders and had received very nice product both times, I placed a larger stocking order for my third order... and I received a third shipment of iron that was cosmetically awful. It was as if they thought that on a large order they now had the opportunity to dump their seconds on me. I had iron where the lams had been laid down on the connection wires while baking, so the wires were fused to the varnish and had to be peeled off, ripping off areas of varnish and leaving very ugly scars behind. One could even see where the wires had been baked into the enamel and then pulled out. Customers who had paid thousands for custom amp builds objected to the appearance.
Is it a functional problem? Well, no. But the cosmetic problem is objectionable enough to some people that they don't want a custom-ordered hand-wired amp to have iron that looks like that. There's no way that I'd sell an amp with iron that looks like that, because somebody else's shoddy workmanship ends up reflecting poorly on me, as if I was responsible for the way that the iron was built. So I ended up rejecting my shipment from Mercury and moved to another winder.
Just so you know, not all of the Mesa iron looks like the iron in your amp. Here's an example of what a JP-2C PT can look like -- cosmetically perfect: (start watching at 13:40)
I had mentioned this previously -- it's commonly known that Mesa had lost an iron supplier during Covid for undisclosed reasons. They have a new iron supplier now. It would be interesting to know if your amp's manufacturing date preceded or followed the supplier change.
In the big scheme of things only you can answer the question as to whether you're disappointed enough with the finish on your amp's iron to be concerned about it. Yes, the problem is both "commonplace and normal." IMO at the $4000 price point, someone in the QA department at Mesa should have enough pride in the product and care enough about the customer to make sure that the $4000 amps look like they're worth every penny of $4000, so that they are perceived as being above the standard of "commonplace and normal." And if they need to put the squeeze on their suppliers to deliver higher quality, so be it. Unfortunately, we're dealing with a Gibson-Mesa product now, rather than a Smith-Mesa product. Maybe Gibson is focused more on profits than on aesthetics.
Personally, I'm not as forgiving as everyone else seems to be. After Gibson jacked the prices to $4000, I expect a lot more from the amp when I'm paying $4000 than I did at $2600. But that's just me.
