Mesa's Sweetest Sounding Amp | Lonestar Special 

What's your favourite Mesa amp?

I played a 1x12 Lonestar Special for 10+ years. Were it not for my Kingsley Dumble clone I would still be using the Lonestar. Great video as usual.

This is hands down the best demonstration of the Lonestar. I super appreciate that you prioritize staying IN TUNE! Slick slow hand licks and you really captured the essence of this amp. My favorite part was the Les Paul feedback note.....Rocking. 🤙

Hands down THE BEST instructional video of this amp on the internet... and I do reckon I’ve watched them all. Honestly, Mesa should hire you to demo all their gear Leon.

By far the best clean platform Mesa has ever produced...

Well, I'm now inspired to go home and fire up my Lonestar Special.

My exact amp! I love it! Had it for around 15 years… a definite keeper and extremely versatile which you well demonstrated here. For super Marshally tones, run a Vox Big Ben into channel 2 with the drive all the way up, and then into a Marshall cab loaded with 25 watt Greenbacks…Riff heaven, very similar to the last tone you demonstrated in the video!

Yea, by far the best showcasing of the LSS out there. Thank you mate. My best speaker arrangement to date has been a v30 + Scumback M75 but dang those Reapers sounded most excellent. If I ever think about letting mine go, I'll just watch this vid and come back to my senses. :)

The secret sauce with these things is throwing a compressor/limiter at it and then boost the signal with a BB preamp to get into that Andy Timmons zone. BB Preamp into a Blues Driver for some more grit and add all the lush modulation effects. It's gorgeous!

Great review of a smoking amp. I've had a few trade offers for a vintage twin or an ac30 but I kept with this legend. I feel like it will only continue to be revered as time goes on. Great playing Todd, I run mine through an fm3 with compressor, bb pre, suhr box and some other fx.

Great idea to always keep the front panel on screen ! I should have done that on my recent demo of this amp

I love the Mesa Lonestar clean tone with the lush valve driven spring reverb. But I have the Lonestar classic 2 x 12" and that thing is fantastic!

My favorite amp. I have gone through dozens of amps and I now just have a lonestar special with matching 1x12 extension cab and a 1967 fender bandmaster head I converted to a 1x12 combo.

Great review. As an old school metal guy who found blues later in life, I really dig the Lonestar Special. I run mine in stereo with a Morgan MVP23, each with Creamback loaded extensions cabs. Combined with a well rounded pedalboard its a rig that’s capable of doing anything I could want or need to play with my mediocre skills. 🤘🏻

I want the amp (GAS) badly, love the channel and really like the Golds in the BG Strat. Great playing man...

I’m a tweed man so the Cali 40w combo was a killer upgrade (and stereo companion) to my Blues Deluxe. Let’s Boogie!

great video leon. these are fantastic pedal platforms!

Thanks Leon. I picked up a LS in Australia and after one hour of testing then rolling it back against the wall, I realised it had left a rectangular scorch mark on the wooden floor where I had played it, this amplifier has sooo much hot sauce. Tex Mex alright. Damn! I dig this amp!!

Hey Leon, thanks for doing this video! I really want one of these amps. Some constructive feedback, take it or leave it (this probably goes for most amp review videos). In removing the amp's noise or hum from the audio we lose a lot of the 'air' sound and maybe some of the delicate clicks of what it's like when your fingers touch the strings and things like that. Everything sounds very compressed instead of dynamic and open. Or maybe the amp is really silent? On the other hand the tone does come through and you're playing is fantastic!

Brilliant review and playing - I’ve owned my Mesa LSS for over 15 years, only criticism is it weighs a ton. 🤣🤣🤣

When you pair this amp with a 65 deluxe reissue and send the wet signal to the effects loop in the mesa it becomes heaven in the ears I’m one of the lucky ones to jump on this amp when they first came out and a 65 fender deluxe and i have never looked back great playing Leon

Love mine - just wow! Yeah, I use it for country/single coil clean. Mine is the El84, single speaker version. It's a great amp. Can't fathom why they discontinued them. Great job on this demo/review!

Ok Leon, first up, you must be one strong dude the way you handled this amp. Damn thing ways a ton. Second up. You cost me a lot of money. Thanks to you I had to find and buy one. Thirdly, thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Im a Fender guy but I love the thick cleans of this amp. Not as loud as my Twin but a thicker creamier clean that has me rethinking my idea of cleans. Back to the weight, i did need to remove the chassis to do a small repair and the amp itself is quite light. The cab with the amp removed is still really heavy and could use a couple of neo speakers for weight. Great layout and loves the Helix effects into the front. Early days but so far so good. Thanks for the great demo and keep on rockin......😅

A mate of mine has the 4x10" Lonestar combo and it is a brilliant amp. Really versatile and sounds stellar.

That thing has so much warmth you just want to snuggle up to it.

Buy me one Leon!! Lol sounds fantastic!! I feel like those amps are in a low key sweet spot in the amp industry! Mesa Boogie hits

I remember when they came out with the Lone Star, it's a really nice sounding amp.

That sounds fantastic!!

Easily the best review of this amp on RU-vid, thanks. You don't need me to tell you you're a fine player, but you're a fine player.

PRS and Mesa are like PB&J. Gibson knew this.

Brunnetti is quite pristine and the suhr bella along with mesa Electra dyne which is tied with the Lonestar at least to my ears but the swart atomic space tone was second only to finding Jesus when I first played it I almost fainted

Just discovered how amazing this amp sounds when you crank DOWN the mids. I know! Wild….it goes against everything I understand about tone shaping in amps but hey 🤷‍♂️ it’s a game changer.

The Lonestar Classic is one of the nicest lower gain amps Mesa has made. I liked the Special a bit less but its low end is easier to control. The Fractal Axe-Fx 3 model of the LSC is great and can probably be turned into a LS Special by changing powertubes to EL84 or something.

Leon was born to play this amp

thanks for the IRs i used one with an lonestar amp sim. sounds real good with a strat

Had two of these and they were always just a bit too glassy for me…. That being said I’d like to try one again. One of those amps you just want to love.

Great video as usual! If you like the Lonestar, you should try the Mesa Blue Angel 4x10 😁😁

Lovely naturally compressed sound.

So the australians keep pinching stuff from New Zealand for example: Crowded House, Phar lap, Russel Crowe just to name a few. Here is another example, Leon is so good he has to be a Kiwi. lol I love listening to your playing 🎸🎸🤙🤙

Agreed, best clean sound I ever heard (except perhaps a ‘57 Deluxe or a Music Man HD130 ). Only con , as shown in the video: it is very heavy indeed.

Would love a comparaison between that and the mark iv clean!

I came here because of the Lonestar 1x12" model in the NUX MG-30 and Andy Timmons :)

god damnit, Leon, I do NOT need another amp

I have already tried this Tweed Lone Star model, with a Gibson LP Deluxe 2015 mini-humbucker my favorite couple overall (but too expensive for me now) also try with firebird ♥

This is the single best amp Mesa have ever engineered.

The Lonestar Special is indeed "special". I bought it almost one year ago and it still surprises me in many ways. First of all, the EQ knobs are extremely sensitive an can really transform the sound. A little trick for y'all : If you think you're lacking gain, just turn up the treble knob (you'll hear the difference)

Have you played a Mesa Fillmore? Curious how the Lonestar fairs against it.

There was one of those lone stars at my local shop and the guy had it custom with all figured maple shell instead of tolex in a natural finish and it looked and sounded amazing. Crazy thing is that guy buys everything in pairs so he had a stereo rig of them at one point. Wish I had the $2500 to buy it but someone beat me to it

Send it to Cliff!! We want it modeled 😄 Thank you for the great demo

Yeah I love that amp. The tone we hear is of course the culmination of all the variabies. The amp, the tubes that are in it, the speakers, the mic/s used to mic it. The preamp it was run through, if there was one used,.. etc, etc.. But that's one of the best sounding amps ever made to me. And I love EL84 tone. I also have no use for anything above 50 watts anymore, and even then there too loud. The WGS speakers are fantastic, but I have fallen for the Retro 30's these days. They would likely make the tone out of the amp a bit tighter and more articulate. But that base tone is still great. You and I have very similar tastes in tone Leon. Not exact but similar. My Mark V rig gets almost exactly the tone I want in combination with the Line 6 HX Effects I use. And what it doesn't is due to the HX Effects actual effects being really good for me, but not completely perfect. It does all the effects I need and makes overall use with being able to set up and switch between the refined snapshots you can't get with analog pedals, but the true analog pedals still sound a bit better to me. But only a little, making it not worth the difference there. Andy Timmons gets some amazing tones out of the Lonestar's he uses and I could definitely see myself getting one down the road. I've decided to leave Fractal and other amp modelers behind since I really only use the Mesa mods and when it comes down to it, the real thing is the real thing. This 2-12 combo is way too much to lug around for me anymore though. I would buy a 1-12 combo with a matching 1-12 cab to add on when I want it. If I could find it. The gain on this is actual fine for me. I never set my gain above 4 and change on my Mark V and use overdrive pedals for that little extra for rhythm and leads. With the gain very low, mainly using the voicing to refine the tone. I don't know if you have one around still, though I've watched your review of it, but I would really enjoy seeing you use the HX Effects with the Lonestar and work up some good snapshots to really push the tone you can out of the amp with effects. Because as good as the amp sounds on its own, it's still just the foundation of tone for rock players like us. To then refine and shape with effects to get that greasy tone we love. If you don't have an HX Effects, than just pushing the tone you can get out it with the effects from everything else you do have is still great. Thanks for another great video. 👍

Why the frig did they stop making these

The Drive channel reminds me a lot of the V-Twin preamp

Leon, this is all great but very teasing for an amp that is almost impossible to get 😢

Mini Rectifier Twenty-Five. from clean to mean. Really rips with a 4 X 12.

stating the obvious but channel 2 strat on the neck sounds like Andy Timmons. Listen to AT for tons of stuff with the Lonestar, tone for days

Iove the Ionestar, not sure why they have discontinued them. Before the Special came along I sat down to the Ionestar in a music store and was blown away by the clean and miId overdrive sounds...then I tried to Lift it and the 2x12 modeI was easily in the territory of my oId Super Reverb weight wise. A Special 1x12 might be answer, though I don't suspect used prices wiII go down anytime soon,

What glorious tone! Isn't this the amp that the dude from Danger Danger uses? I can't remember his name. He plays an Ibanez Strat basically.. With Dimarzios. Sounds great and I love those laces too! The best are those Suhr pickups you have in your yellow strat though.> God those are just too cool.. 🤟🤘❤

I’m so curious how these and the bogner shiva compare. I play indie, post rock, and post metal. So now all my tones come from my pedalboard. I really only use amp distortion when I’m at home goofing around. I kind of prefer pedal distortion. Anyway, it’s been fun looking at amps with nice clean channels. I’m trying not go full on fender amp, just because I feel like that’s boring. Ha.

Love that Lonestar sound! Any chance you could do a vid comparing it to the Texas Star models in the Axe?

Yes ,enfin un vrai son de d amplis ❤❤❤

Do these amps get noisy..hiss and hum even at low volumes? Every Boogie I've had was very hissy.

What a sound!!!

That or a boss katana ?

Best clean from a Mesa? Perhaps... What abot the TransAtlantic TA-15 or TA-30?

would be curious to hear this amp clean with your emg strat, dbx comp, the rack rig and real speakers!🙏🤙🏽♥️🥳

What is life without feedback? ... :)

Mesa Numbers one

Are the rhythm licks at 8:52 and 9:14 improvised or are they from a song?? Great playing. That strat tone is everything I want 🙌

Love mine!

Day of the eagle. Mr trower, very nice Leon!

Theres more gain available in this amp too. I can see you aren't using the effects loop because you have the master volume and boost all the way down. If you kick in the effects loop, you get another gain stage controllable by the effects send knob on the back. Point it to the "+" and it sounds fantastic. Also, the drive knob can be modified to be footswitchable. This makes it effectively 3 levels of gain and two levels of volume available at all times. Its a great old school gigging amp.

What pedals would you use with that amp using the clean and drive channels, plus would you do like a dry/wet setup with that?

I have own one since 2008, does everything, great clean sound, BUT I wish I would have purchased as a head, the second channel bass is too much, it will mechanically damage the power tubes when loud, speaker too close to tubes, not a fan of combo amps.

Never owned a Mesa, but in the market just the same...looking to grow..is this a tune amp? Have been looking at the Mark 5 for sometime...and recommendations for a little over beginner player, right now I have a code50, but haven't been using any amp at all..know this is wrong of me, looking to change??

Question, if I may....right off the bat, in the clean channel, with the gain at noon and the master volume of the channel at around 10 o'clock.....how are you getting any signal at all with the master output at zero?

Awesome! What riff is it at 13:55? killer!

you should try the road king - it has the lone star circuit in channel 1

I had one of these years ago. Great amp which got stolen in 2010.

How about making some Helix presets based on this amp?

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voxy goodness ....

Mmmm… Lobster Special…

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13:40 that should be illegal

😢his amp was discontinued and is increasing in price every dsy

I may be selling the head version of mine soon, if anyone is looking.

squee

Why do you have the output at 0