I have an LSC and love the clean channel and have been working on the lead channel. The amp seemed to me that it had the right sound in there somewhere and I just needed to find it. I could get a drive, but it sounded a bit thin and had the touch of that buzz I think people talk about.
I did turn it up like Screamin' Daisy suggested and that helped, but it still didn't give it the depth I wanted.
Re-reading the manual, I started to play around with the Thick and Thicker switches. It hadn't impressed me before, but I hadn't really thought through what it did. Since the Thick switch lowers the mid frequencies I started playing with the Treble and the Mids. There is this huge interaction.
I pulled the Treble back to about 11 o'clock and pushed the mids to 1:30. The Marshall kind of crunch was beginning to show itself. Now I started to adjust the base up, reaching about 11 am, and was surprised that it didn't boom like I had expected. Instead it started adding this undercurrent while I still had single not articulation. Now the power chords were getting the depth I was wanting. It will still take some tuning to get it right. I like being able to control just how much drive with the volume on my Les Paul. It also reacts to shifts in my PUP tone controls very nicely. I'll probably ease the bass up a bit, but now I'm getting a much more British feel through the amp. Kick in the drive and it is massive.
I had been thinking I was going to need a pedal to get what I was looking for, but now I think it is in the amp. It is thanks to a lot of the posts I've read here that got me thinking that I ought to RTFM several more times and start playing with the controls more.
Mesa builds a great product, but it does take some patience to really find the sound you want. If you've played other amps you'll not expect the tone control interaction to be so powerful and you'll get too frustrated too soon because you'll dime everything and it'll sound like crap.
Anybody else finding similar experiences or alternate approaches?
I did turn it up like Screamin' Daisy suggested and that helped, but it still didn't give it the depth I wanted.
Re-reading the manual, I started to play around with the Thick and Thicker switches. It hadn't impressed me before, but I hadn't really thought through what it did. Since the Thick switch lowers the mid frequencies I started playing with the Treble and the Mids. There is this huge interaction.
I pulled the Treble back to about 11 o'clock and pushed the mids to 1:30. The Marshall kind of crunch was beginning to show itself. Now I started to adjust the base up, reaching about 11 am, and was surprised that it didn't boom like I had expected. Instead it started adding this undercurrent while I still had single not articulation. Now the power chords were getting the depth I was wanting. It will still take some tuning to get it right. I like being able to control just how much drive with the volume on my Les Paul. It also reacts to shifts in my PUP tone controls very nicely. I'll probably ease the bass up a bit, but now I'm getting a much more British feel through the amp. Kick in the drive and it is massive.
I had been thinking I was going to need a pedal to get what I was looking for, but now I think it is in the amp. It is thanks to a lot of the posts I've read here that got me thinking that I ought to RTFM several more times and start playing with the controls more.
Mesa builds a great product, but it does take some patience to really find the sound you want. If you've played other amps you'll not expect the tone control interaction to be so powerful and you'll get too frustrated too soon because you'll dime everything and it'll sound like crap.
Anybody else finding similar experiences or alternate approaches?
