Who inspired you to play a boogie?

[DRG14]

Back in '83 when MTV WAS music television, I saw a Night Ranger concert taped live from Japan and I was immediately taken by Brad Gillis' tone and technique. He was the first player I had ever heard (and eventually met!) that played through boogies. Oh, and Jeff Watson wasn't bad either... :wink:

Soon to follow were Stryper, Anthrax, Metallica (MoP & AJFA), & John Sykes. Yeah, my age is showing... Even though I had come to the boogie camp wanting to emulate those tones, over time I have come to appreciate the full palette of tone that the boogie amp can offer.

Boogie all the way, baby!!!

 

[pixy]

im a new mark user so...my experience doesnt go that far back, only a few years.... :


mark morton and will adler because of their weird untipically, un-stadard modern nowadays metal tones.

 

[pokerrules47]

The first time I ever saw a boogie was in the 80s. A band that I roadied for managed to open up for the tragically hip. One of the guys from the hip was using a boogie. It sounded awesome... big fat chunky tone. It didn't truly inspire me at that time, however a few years after I quit roadying for the band, I ran into them in another town. They were using boogies then. They invited me to sit in with their guitar tech for a show and I got to play his BC rich through a Mark III and then I was hooked.

I got my hands on a studio .22+ a few years later. Unfortunately money issues managed to rip that little gem from my hands so I was boogieless for quite some time.

The first time I ever saw a pro use a boogie was when I saw GNR in concert. Izzy had one on stage, not sure exactly what, maybe only cabs, but he sounded fantastic.

When I found out that Hetfield used boogies to front end his marshalls, I have never looked back. His live tone is AMAZING.

 

[xrocker]

Santanna. Heard him play and just had to have that sound and feel. Got my first Boogie in '79.

 

[Vigo1999]

Steve Lukather did it for me. his tone on Isolation still one of the best ive ever heard. 8)

 

[MusicManJP6]

hmmm... good question. I suppose it was my guitar tech. He let me play thorugh his Mark IV while he flipped the switches and gave me a demo of all the tones in it. I was hooked! Of course Petrucci using one doesn't hurt... haha. I no longer have the Mark IV but I'm a big time Mesa fan still for sure!

 

[andyman95023]

For me it was the 77 era Rolling Stones and Carlos Santana on tour I had to wait for them to get they're Boogies before I could get mine and also Eddie Money's guitarist was using one too

 

[Fxrs]

Another Carlos vote here.

 

[lingering_lead]

metallica and carlos...

 

[mesaftw]

Carlos Santana here too, and i cant lie to myself, Petrucci too, and big time.

 

[Whoopysnorp]

Nobody famous...one time I was browsing a thread on Harmony Central where a guy said he had built himself a preamp using the Mark IIC+ schematic as a guide, using the Mark IV preamp schematic when he couldn't make out a value or something didn't make sense on the IIC+ chart. He posted a sound clip of the preamp recorded direct, through a cab sim. I was blown away and wanted to get that sound like nothing else. Somebody in the thread mentioned 'You guys know that the Studio Pre basically does this, and you can buy it for around $300, right?' I got my Studio Preamp not long after, and have been a fan of Mark series amps ever since.

 

[igfraso]

Carlitos Santana... who else?

I sold my Dual Showman Reverb to buy my first Boogie.

 

[scottcrud]

Metallica back in the "day". I've had mine since 1989.

 

[JOEY B.]

Santana, Gillis, Lukather, in no particular order. And a local guitar shop owner (Bob Christopher) back in the early '80s who first introduced me to the Mark series. :shock:

 

[fatoni]

log. 311 suprisingly turned me on the the recs but that was never for me. logs tone on ashes was what convinced me to buy a mark

 

[woodtones]

I had been a very astute and die-hard Marshall fan for years and years-- in fact you could'nt have pried my Marshall amps out of my cold dead hands at one time or another. I had heard Gillis, thought his tone was too raspy, Carlos really had a sweet lead tone, I was most impressed with Petrucci's tones on the Images and Words CD, but mostly because of his skill. The first Boogie that I ever plugged in to was an early Tremoverb head and 2x12 recto cab. I played with it enough to really like the clean tones and I was impressed with the blues sounds that it produced, but was'nt overly impressed. However it was'nt until a couple of months later that I really got to sit down with it an give it a good test drive. Thats when I found the vintage high gain mode and I sat there for hours in total bliss. I knew that a brand change was in the works. A year or so later, I got up one morning and put all of my Marshall gear on ebay. I've had to run the gammut with different Boogies to find the ones that I really like ...and then I had to re-learn how to set up a guitar amp. And after I heard Petrucci's modern recto tone on the Awake CD, I knew that I was hooked for good...

-DLM

 

[lerxst88]

log. 311 suprisingly turned me on the the recs but that was never for me. logs tone on ashes was what convinced me to buy a mark

wow me too! Tim Mahoney had this huge heavy sound on "Creatures" and from that point I knew that I wanted THAT sound!

There were alot of boogie users that inspired me as well like john petrucci, santana, metallica, 3 inches of blood, avenged sevenfold, trey anastasio (he used to play boogies! now its all fender) and a little known band from oregon known as Grindstone (if anyone knows ANYTHING about them or likes them PM me!!!!)

My first experience with mesa boogie was actually a battle of the bands I did when I was 14 or 15. The venue supplied amps and drums so when we showed up and i saw a marshall halfstack onstage I was psyched (big AC/DC fan at the time) and I was excited to play through it. Fortunately they set me up with a Recto halfstack and I was AMAZED how awesome it sounded. I remember I wouldnt call it Mesa/BOOGIE because I thought the word boogie sounded goofy so I just called it a Mesa haha

 

[Don]

Nobody, really. I was looking for an amp with a great clean sound and a great dirty sound. Something that I thought was impossible. Just a good all around rock, blues, jazz, etc... amp.

I had known about them for many, many years, mostly because of Santana, magazine articles and guitar teachers (I started playing in 1971).

 

[Ultramog]

One of my early bandmates: Tara Key sculpted an impressive punk maelstrom out of a Mark II with a JC120. Me, I play blues with a couple fancy chords on a 7 string. Noted the roots of the Dumble topology in Randall Smith's work and played a Mark 1 Reissue at GC two weeks ago; it was the first time I actually heard those low notes, input one can actually sing a b9#5 and input two out-princetons a princeton, so here I am. It's not what I'm going for, but I did blast Santana's "Lotus" before actually plunking down for it.

 

[Erotomaniac1928]

John Petrucci, Andy Timmons