I've been "weeding out" my gear closet lately & thought I would sell my old Mesa V-Twin pre-amp. I haven't used it for years, so I figured it was time.
I plugged it into my pedalboard system & now I'm not sure. It really does sound great on bass! I'm not sure what to do. It has a great organic overdrive and it can act as a nice, quiet tube pre (albeit with limited eq).
Anyhow, I did a few "quickee" recordings with my Fender '62 RI Jazz. A few notes:
1) The "bypass" on the V-Twin sounds good, however when switching from "bypass" to "on" there is almost a
full second of delay in any sound coming out - very bad! I used my True Bypass Looper to solve this problem (V-Twin is always engaged).
2) There is no volume balance between the 3 channels - so it's best to set it for one great sound and use it in a loop. (I believe later models have a volume balance adjustment)
3) There is plenty of available volume and gain! You can definitely drive a poweramp with this thing. It is also capable of so much gain/distortion that it is easy to go
way over the top...
4) Its big and heavy. So is the power supply. This must be the heaviest "pedal" ever. It's basically solid steel w/ an aluminum diamond-plate overlay. This is definitely not a pedal for the pedaltrain jr. devotee!
So there are a significant amount of cons, but it sounds so damn good! The following clips only scratch the surface of what the V-Twin can do, but I thought I captured some decent representations. On all clips the knobs are set the same: everything up 50%.
clip 1: Direct to pro tools w/ no eq, compression, etc. I play a simple phrase bypassed & then the same phrase with the V-Twin on the "blue" channel.
Click here to watch mesa-direct-bypass-and-blue
clip 2: The same idea as clip 1, but run through my Line 6 Lowdown amp. I used the xlr out into my interface & added some software compression. This should give a better idea of what the V-Twin sounds like through an amp.
Click here to watch through-lowdown-bypass-then-blue
clip 3: Just for kicks, the "red" channel - again direct to pro tools.
Click here to watch red-channel-direct
clip 4: The V-Twin as a clean tube pre. Just bass into V-twin into pro tools interface - no extra eq or compression. I butcher what I consider possibly the coolest "pop" bass line of all time!
Click here to watch mesa-as-clean-pre
