There should be a “Mesa Upcharge” line on the bill! You are a brave one for going here. Thanks for sharing the adventure. I have a love/hate for Mesa. Love my D800 bass head, hate working on the guitar amps in most cases.
Some places won't even take these in for repair. Ridiculously complicated & cluttered, w-proprietary parts, so I don't blame them. I don't play high gain stuff, but even if I did, it would not be my choice. I have much respect for your patience & skill in taking on these!
I always preferred the two channel variants to these and the triples. Look forward to seeing how many layers there are to this lemon, I mean.. onion.. lol
Am I the only one that thinks the Dual Rectifier has an amazing clean tone? I had an early 90’s Trem-O-Verb that was just too much for my needs. Ended up selling it for double what I paid for it.
No your not. I love my Mesa’s (2 x 20 and a 90’s combo) but realize they are quite complex - some perhaps unnecessarily - but a portion of it comes from the feature sets within the products.
I owned a Mesa Dual Rectifier 3 channel. This video is bringing back the nightmares. I did the series Effects loop mod which made it a much better amp. I just hated the clean channel and found it undynamic.
I have this same amp. I absolutely love the high gain sounds (ungodly loud though), but I dread the day that it breaks down and needs work. the traces and solder pads are so tiny, and close together.
Really? Really? What the hell Randall? Just in this shot, I can see 11 relays and 2 ribbon cables. But my pet hate is Dual and Triple Rectifiers. When did you last take a lead break at a gig and think to yourself "man, I could express myself so much better if I could now flick over to a tube rectifier...but which would capture my emotion better? A 5U4GB or a GZ34?". Wankery. Randall. Wankery.
I have to ask. Why is it that I’ve heard amps that sound leaps and bounds better than Mesa products with a whole lot less of a clusterphuck going on in the chassis? Is all that mess really needed for an amp to sound good?
@@TheAxe4Ever Sounds like you asked question just for rhetorical purpose. Why did you answer with agreement then? Also amp sounding 'good' is highly subjective. You like other amps better, does not mean that other amp sounds objectively better. Rectifier high gain sounds loose and is kinda shitty but Mark series have tight high gain once you do leave gain at at most 4 and crank lead drive to 10, crank treble to 10.
Looks like there is an added resistor on V1 and what does the IC do? I had a Express 525 and the clean channel had a load of hiss, nothing to do with tubes
These dreadful things look like they used every part in Mesa's inventory. What a mess. Randall Smith actually worked for Fender and yet... this is the crap he comes up with... If you did a parts count I'm sure there are about a dozen Tweed amps worth of componentry here
