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Mesa 200 Buster club
- Thread starter Stevosimpson
- Start date
scotch
It's not rocket science!
- Nov 12, 2006
- 6,944
- 2,083
- 51
- Disclosures
- Please see Profile for Endorsement disclosures
Naturally the best bass to try it out:
Awesome rig! I owned one of those cabs years back and was pure thunder! I have rig envy!!This may be a small club, but I'm in.
ChaosMK is inspiring me to do some tube rolling...
View attachment 2089707
scotch
It's not rocket science!
- Nov 12, 2006
- 6,944
- 2,083
- 51
- Disclosures
- Please see Profile for Endorsement disclosures
Btw, Buster through 2 15's = EPIC² !
What a great hi fidelity tube amp. I have been so into dirtier preamps that I forgot how much I love this amps clarity. At the same time it never sounds clinical and has bloom & natural compression that feels so different from a solid state amp.
I've been comparing this Buster 2x15 stack to my all tube Portaflex 50w stack also with two 15" cabs. Very different feeling amps! Both can be very clean, but the Ampeg has more preamp grit on tap. In terms of volume, both rigs get far too loud to be appreciated in my 30' x25' studio. The Mesa has more headroom before the volume maxes out as you would expect. Both the Ampeg and Mesa have a horn that I keep dialed down.
Anyways, this Mesa stack is epic! Such a cool amp that Mesa should have kept developing. So easy to dial in and work with on stage, very reliable (my combo has toured in vans, trucks, and busses hard), and a tone with such depth and clarity. I wish Mesa had just tweaked the preamp for more grit if desired (I had a great amp tech/designer in Nashville mod mine for a little more gain) and with their preshape 1 knob contour control- very handy on the fly.
What a great hi fidelity tube amp. I have been so into dirtier preamps that I forgot how much I love this amps clarity. At the same time it never sounds clinical and has bloom & natural compression that feels so different from a solid state amp.
I've been comparing this Buster 2x15 stack to my all tube Portaflex 50w stack also with two 15" cabs. Very different feeling amps! Both can be very clean, but the Ampeg has more preamp grit on tap. In terms of volume, both rigs get far too loud to be appreciated in my 30' x25' studio. The Mesa has more headroom before the volume maxes out as you would expect. Both the Ampeg and Mesa have a horn that I keep dialed down.
Anyways, this Mesa stack is epic! Such a cool amp that Mesa should have kept developing. So easy to dial in and work with on stage, very reliable (my combo has toured in vans, trucks, and busses hard), and a tone with such depth and clarity. I wish Mesa had just tweaked the preamp for more grit if desired (I had a great amp tech/designer in Nashville mod mine for a little more gain) and with their preshape 1 knob contour control- very handy on the fly.
I love the simplicity of the Buster design.
No frills. Just tone.
No frills. Just tone.
Yes, and seems like that would be a pretty sweet rig.
There’s a Buster 15 combo for sale on ebay right now at a good price, pick up in Tulsa...
Dropping about half what they’re asking for that one to get the 1x15” I already have back in working order. Somebody jump on this one before I do!
I wore the shirt today in anticipation of picking up my Buster after ~180 USD worth of expected repairs, and ended up not picking up my Buster because it will need ~380 USD worth of unexpected repairs
I paid 550 USD for this thing less than a year ago, which I figured was a good price up front considering it was probably due for a bit of work, but still, yikes. At least I'm still enjoying my reunion with the Peavey rig I had in high school that I probably should have kept.
Yikes what’s wrong with it? I have to take one of mine on for repair.I wore the shirt today in anticipation of picking up my Buster after ~180 USD worth of expected repairs, and ended up not picking up my Buster because it will need ~380 USD worth of unexpected repairs
Power switch and input jack were bad (that, I knew); one preamp tube was bad (I have swapped them all out within the last year, so somewhat of a surprise, but whatever, they're under 20 USD each); ALL POWER TUBES WERE BAD (I had no idea). Hopefully this will be it for maintenance for a while, but I'm glad I went ahead with the nostalgia buy for the low-maintenance backup.
No mention of transformer. He'd better not mention transformer now, haha/groan.
