Warning: this amp has more knobs and switches than a fighter jet so I couldn’t help but write a novel about it even after just one day of ownership. If you are brave or bored, please enjoy and if you have/had one of these I would totally be interested in how you used it or any differences in opinion vs my experiences.
Also I ordered new casters but they didn’t come yet that’s why my cab is upside down
I have been posting a little about the mesa that I ordered. Now it’s home and plugged into a mesa road ready 4ohm 2x15. The basis M2000 was a mega bucks amp in the 90s and even though it is overly complicated and doesn’t get much love compared to the new Mesa or the old 400/400+ I still have fond memories of drooling on these when they were new.
I have an Ampeg SVT-vr/8x10 for my personal ultimate clean tone (and tube grit too but that’s WAY too loud) so this is a ‘lighter’ rig that will hopefully be fun and more flexible at lower volume for my current metal band.
On to my review/ initial experiences!
The amp has two preamp sides, tube and FET (solid state). It has a ton of headroom and the 625 watt power amp stage is quiet and simple with one output volume knob.
The tube side has a gain knob and a master volume. The three band eq knobs are very powerful on the tube side- if you turn them all the way down it actually mutes that area of the signal and makes the corresponding sliders on the graphic EQ useless/turned off. This becomes especially useful when blending with the SS channel as you can choose to use only select portions of the tube side.
It is easy to get a really nice sound out of the tube preamp. It has plenty of growl, a nice bottom and mids, and a sparkling high. It can go from clean with just a little tube sound to a muddy roaring overdrive with the gain and the master dimed.
The FET solid state preamp side is quieter. It is also easy to dial in a good sound that would work well in a band mix but often needs more output volume than the tube side since there is only a SS master knob and not a gain knob.
What the SS side has that the tube side doesn’t is a selectable bandwidth for the bass knob. The rotary EQ is not as powerful as on the tube side but you can pick the cutoff for your lows from below a low B to above an E and accentuate that area.
My mesa cab doesn’t seem to push the super subs as well as low mids and I like to stay out of the bass drum’s sonic territory as much as possible so I think the low high switch and frequency knob on the bass EQ selector will mostly be used in the low area of the high range. We tune to drop C so I might tweak for that area we’ll see when I get in a band mix.
Both preamp sides make good sounds by themselves and you can switch from tube to high gain tube or FET channels with the footswitch. It isn’t too hard to get a decent unity volume between them although the tube master seems to affect the amount of OD in the tube channel which can make the tube side much louder when switching back and forth. If you wanted to use each side at different times without diddling the output volume then you are limited to only so much dirt on the tube channel before it becomes much louder than the FET channel when you solo them.
One way to use the amp would be to have a smooth SS sound, a rowdier tube sound, and two variations with the footswitchable graphic EQs. This would be good in a cover band that does aerosmith then peter tosh for example.
Then there is the blend knob. You can get two good sounds and blend them together which makes a thick slightly chorused tone. You can also set the 9 band graphic EQs to come on automatically only in blend mode or when footswitched. Using the sliders you can make each channel into a strange voicing that interlocks with the other channel but still sounds good soloed with the sliders off. I was messing with doing a frown or mid heavy on one side vs a smile or heavy scooped sound on the other. The jury is still out on that idea.
I thought the FET side would be good for clean bass and clanky highs and the tube side good for a mid roar but it turns out that the voicings are much better suited to a scooped tube sound with the nasally mids put back in to the SS side for cutting punch and definition.
I was also playing with blasting the tube side with gain then putting solid state definition back in for a dirty/clean blend sound like a darkglass pedal or a dirt pedal looped through an x-blend fx loop pedal. This works pretty well but screws up the levels from side to side and needs the blend knob to be well over toward the FET side because of its quieter signal. In this mode the amp kind of loses its versatility and switching channels doesn’t get you similar amounts of volume.
I haven’t experimented with it but I suspect that using the rear mounted effects loop with crossover for a dirty patch on the SS side would give it another gain stage and dirty it up to match a mostly clean but tube colored punchy sound out of the tube side. Gotta try that for fun at home but bringing more stuff to the gig is not my goal!
That’s all I got for now. I know there are folks dragging these old toroidal power dual preamp dinosaurs around like me- how did you end up using yours?
Radar
