Grateful Dead Music Forum

I have dibs on a beautiful custom maple cab short length Mesa Long Star head that I'm scheduled to check out tomorrow morning. From what I've been able to learn about the amp, it's no Twin Reverb (what is?) but can get close. Is anyone using one now in your rig or have you heard/played someone else's? What do/did you think of it? Thanks.

Bwahaha

Kidding.

Sorta

Decent clean with a nasally drive channel. I don't like 2 channel amps.

None do GREAT for both and I find clean more important than OD.

Seriously, I'd avoid it unless you absolutely need a 2 channel amp.

Get a great clean amp and pair of drive pedals to get what ya need.

As always, just my opinion...

Your opinion is what I requested so I appreciate you sharing it.

I have certain needs - you can call them wants but its the same to me - in my next head:

- two channels
- clean channel with lot of headroom
- at least a couple of on-board different wattage settings
- lead channel that can sound decent at lower gain settings
- independent footswitchable boost
- on-board reverb
- effects loop

Not a ton of options given my needs. I'm aware of:

- Bogner Shiva
- Egnater Renegade
- Mesa Lone Star
- Fuchs ODS
- Redplate Blackverb

The key is the clean channel. That's gotta do it for me. If that's there, I can compromise on portions of the rest, if not, it's a non-starter.

My research and questions to friends who own the Lone Star do come up mixed. Not sure why, exactly. Could be amp-to-amp variability, person-to-person taste differences, or even different levels of experience and expertise in playing with the amp. For example, on the Lone Star, the tone controls are extremely interactive, the treble control is first in the stack, and how that's set impacts all the mids and bass the follow. I.e., the best way to reduce nasally-ness in a MESA amp is not the intuitive step of first turning down the mids control but of upping the treble!

I really do need to ask you, in followup, how much time you spent playing with the amp before you drew the conclusions you shared previously. If hours, I would frankly weigh your input higher than if "I tried my friend's once for a few minutes."

I dig "plug and play, doesn't have a bad tone in it!" amps as much as the next guy (you!). For better or worse, the amp I have not just described is a Mesa. With Mesa's, you must poke around - it comes with their territory.

I owned a MB LSC 1x12 combo for about 1.5 years (maybe more) played about a dozen shows or more and hours tweaking.

Even went to a "Mesa clinic" to learn more about the tonestack. I got lots of very good tone from it but not good enough.

The tonestack was a huge turn off to me especially because the amp was very dynamic with the different rooms we played.

So every single show I'd be tweaking and fine tuning all through the first set.

All in all it was a good amp but I never felt impressed by the clean channel for the BIG BEAUTIFUL clean that I truly desired.

The amp's tweed setting, however, was absolutely phenomenal!

Regarding wattage settings I feel that is a bit of marketing ploy since the amp has pre-gain you can set it there.

I never noticed a difference between the 50&100W settings. But the newer ones cut even lower so maybe that's slick!

The absolute best multi-channel amp I've ever heard was my friends TRIO which was tonally outstanding, IMO!!!!

He set it up:
1- Clean
2- Crunch
3- Solo

Maybe add that to your list?

I knew you'd come back with this much experience (you always do ). Will definitely give your points some more thought and weight.

What's a TRIO? Can't be the Behringer product, can it?

Jon S. wrote:I knew you'd come back with this much experience (you always do ). Will definitely give your points some more thought and weight.

What's a TRIO? Can't be the Behringer product, can it?

Thanks, bro! However, I will admit I significant thing that I forgot above - I only used the LSC with humbucker guitars.

And my desire was to have a great tone that is very midrange focused to cut nicely into the mix without massive volume.

The GT Trio. Same one Jerry used:
http://www.groovetubes.com/Trio_-_Full_ ... _P1719.cfm

+1 on the Trio ... very versatile and great tone on all three channels. There's a fourth option to mix the Scream and Clean channel, too. However, it being just a preamp, you need a power amp as well. I've had a couple of those in my rig.

I also had a Groove Tubes Soul-o 75 head which was a pretty amazing piece. In fact, I sold it to a buddy of mine, and he's thinking of letting it go. It's the Clean channel from the Trio, and the Scream channel from the Trio, with the option to mix the two together, but what's really cool about it is it has a special custom Mercury Magnetics transformer which will allow you to run any power tubes you like in there without rebiasing. I ran 6L6s, but you can put anything in there. You can also run it class A or class AB, and even "push" the class A side like an old vintage Vox amp. It was pretty prized by studio players back in the day, because you can pretty much get any sound out of it you want by changing tubes and class at will. Had a matching 2X12 cabinet with it, too.

This is a photo of it; it's in the NYC area now, and I know he's looking to let it go as I have infected him with the direct to board disease. LOL



Here's the manual, as well ... it's for the combo amp but the head is identical. Mine also had the optional fan kit on the back to cool the power tubes when you push it in Class A.

http://playingdead.net/soul-o.pdf

I played through a Mesa DC-5 and a Mesa DC-3 for a while ... the clean channels are okay, but not really that great. The reverb is very weak (not sure if the Lone Star has reverb). The overdrive channels required a lot of EQ and tweaking to get right, and they really only have one characteristic sound that works, at least for me. It's a good sound, but not what I would call versatile.

That Soul-O is sweet looking!

The LSC actually has very nice reverb.

He'd probably sell it for a grand or so; it was expensive as a new piece, I think the heads were $2599 and the cab another thousand. And that's in 1995 dollars. This one was (allegedly) built by Aspen himself for the guy I got it off, who was a friend of his and a big tube nut, who bought some old tube manufacturing machine from somewhere (GE?) and was trying to get the capital to get it up and running again. He showed me the machine out in the barn, it was wild looking.

Even the 2X12 cabinet has a panel you can remove to make it open back or closed back, depending on the tone you were after. The baffle board on the cabinet is angled a bit, too, so you can hear it when it's on the floor. It's a real chameleon of an amp. It has the optional footswitch, too.

Thanks, all who commented. I decided to pass on this particular Lone Star head for now (turns out the seller had it on eBay last month - I found his ad when doing my price research - and the highest bid was $300 below what he's asking now, probably because the "custom head cab" is homemade, not made by MESA - something stated in his old ad but not in his new one; also, it's the older version and he's running KT88s in it now which may perhaps be safe but there's certainly nothing in MESA's owners manual about it).

I'll continue to research this and other amps and, as always, appreciate the input from the good ruking folks.

I have certain needs - you can call them wants but its the same to me - in my next head:

- two channels
- clean channel with lot of headroom
- at least a couple of on-board different wattage settings
- lead channel that can sound decent at lower gain settings
- independent footswitchable boost
- on-board reverb
- effects loop

Not a ton of options given my needs. I'm aware of:

- Bogner Shiva
- Egnater Renegade
- Mesa Lone Star
- Fuchs ODS
- Redplate Blackverb

The key is the clean channel. That's gotta do it for me. If that's there, I can compromise on portions of the rest, if not, it's a non-starter.

From your requirements and your amp list above, I can say without a doubt that the Fuchs ODS is the multi-trick pony you could ride off into the sunset on. I have a Fuchs ODS 50/25. Gobs of beautifil lush clean headroom, awsome reverb, and covers all the drive ground, livingroom quiet or gig loud, no matter. The configuration options are are great when ordering new. The ODS is basically a Dumble clone, and then some. I primariy use a alnico Tone Tubby 1x12 cab, but it also sounds great through my old 2 x 12 Fender Bandmaster cab with Jesnon P12Ns. Since I got this amp, my Mesa Boogie Mark IV is gathering dust. I got mine from Radical Tone. Good luck on your quest.

http://www.fuchsaudiotechnology.com/

http://radicaltone.com/

I've played a number of ODSs and yet more Fuchs mod versions (mostly ex-Traynor YBA-1s). I like the amp but for Dead am not certain the lead tones are "there." Jerry wasn't exactly a Dumble-style tone! Also, the amps are a small fortune. Though I do see a bunch of used ones for sale now over on The Gear Page. Tell me, how would you describe the clean tone - e.g., Fenderish, other? - and the how does the lead tone sound with just a tad (as opposed to globs) of overdrive?