Mesa Lone Star amp incoming

[AndyC]

I have a Mesa Lone Star on its way to me. It left San Pablo, CA a couple of days ago headed east. Bought it from a forum bro on TGP. I can't wait to get it. Has a flame maple cab - just beautiful. I'm also buying an Altec 417-8H speaker to go with it.

These are very flexible amps from Fender super cleans to fairly high gain (not metal). I'm building my home studio and this will be a nice addition.

Thought you guys might like to see the maple cab:

[Harpozep]

WOW! Looks great. Mesa does a wonderful job of creating pleasant looking amps as well as killer sounding ones.

Mine is a plain black Lonestar Special.
Great lead sounds, but not so good for a chunky bottom. I'm finding it too flabby and play my Carr Mercury more these days.

Just this morning I was thinking of wheeling it out of the garage and giving it another go. Perhaps with the new WB 7607's in my R9 and some patience I can get my Mesa to chunk out tighter on its bottom? I know enough to take most of the bass out to do this.

Anyway, these are great tone machines and require a bit of patience to tweak. I'm sure you will be having some fun with yours!

Let me know what you think on your end when you get it.

Here's a pick of mine. Boring, but the 4 x 10 is an option you don not see often. Two sets of different speakers for even more tonal options.

[toneguy86]

I'll bet it's heavier then hell too, with the maple cab...but worth it.

I'm going to post come clips later today of my own 212 Lonestar with various guitar settings. It is definately not a one trick pony! I love it more every day.

Mark

[Harpozep]

Originally Posted by toneguy86

I'll bet it's heavier then hell too, with the maple cab...but worth it.

I'm going to post come clips later today of my own 212 Lonestar with various guitar settings. It is definately not a one trick pony! I love it more every day.

Mark

Yeah, that wood just HAS to weigh a ton. Bet it just adds to the tone though
I know mine is heavy . Wheels are almost a necessity and I'm glad they are there.

Yeah, plunk down some sound clips. I don't know how to do that, but I'm sure we'd love to hear the range of tones you can make your Mesa deliver.

[coldsteal2]

man theres alto of open space in the back of that 4x10
or is there a panel that screws on?

[AndyC]

Hey thanks guys. Yeah, it's a cool looking amp. Yes, it does weigh a ton. The original owner preferred to sell locally so he wouldn't have to ship, but he agreed to do it for me. It's over 100 lbs with the shipping box and packing material. He says it's a beast. I'm not planning to gig with it, I will use it in the studio. I wouldn't want to bash that amp up even if it was lighter.

Harpo- that amp is cool. I had the same thought at Coldsteal about the open back. Have you tried running the amp into another cab? If you switch to the solid state rectifier you should have a pretty tight sounding amp there - so I would think the flabbiness might come from that big open back. They (Mesa) know what they are doing though, so maybe it's something else.

Mark - thanks for the clip! Sounds great and some very tasty playing there too!

I know Andy Timmons runs an Xotic BB preamp in front of his Lone Star - there's a cool video on YouTube with him demoing the setup. I ordered one of those yesterday and it's on it's way. Good way to drive the front end a bit harder. I'm really looking forward to the sparklin' cleans this thing puts out. I'm a little less sure of how much gain I'm really going to get out of it, but I have other amps for that.

[toneguy86]

Originally Posted by AndyC

Harpo- that amp is cool. I had the same thought at Coldsteal about the open back. Have you tried running the amp into another cab? If you switch to the solid state rectifier you should have a pretty tight sounding amp there - so I would think the flabbiness might come from that big open back. They (Mesa) know what they are doing though, so maybe it's something else.

Mark - thanks for the clip! Sounds great and some very tasty playing there too!

I know Andy Timmons runs an Xotic BB preamp in front of his Lone Star - there's a cool video on YouTube with him demoing the setup. I ordered one of those yesterday and it's on it's way. Good way to drive the front end a bit harder. I'm really looking forward to the sparklin' cleans this thing puts out. I'm a little less sure of how much gain I'm really going to get out of it, but I have other amps for that.

Mesa amps do have a flabby low end on some settings. I deal with it by turning down the lows almost all of the way, especially on the clean channel. It seems worse with the neck pickup. My mids though are up real high 2-3 O' clock) on both channels to compensate and I run both channels on the "thick" setting to add some additional low mids. It seems to work. The question of whether an open back cabinet contributes to the problem is an interesting one. I would like to try a close back cab to see just out of curiosity. I have also heard that tubes may be a factor. I'm going to go with a set of JJ EL34s and see if this changes things at all.

Mark

[AndyC]

Well, I got the amp. I have to say, this thing is a monster. It looks all sweet in the little combo maple cabinet, but it's a monster. The clean channel is CLEAN. Gorgeous reverb. The gain channel has an amazing amount of gain to it! It's running EL-34's, and at the 50 watt setting it can do Marshall really well. Up the gain and it does Mesa high gain too.

It has an amazing Altec 417-8H speaker in it. The single speaker can take the 100 watts - and it's far from flabby sounding. It's just loud!

I still have my Marshall DSL-100 half stack, and that's not going anywhere, but this Mesa is a nice compliment. Brings in the cleans the Marshall can't do very well, and adds some really nice 80's rock high gain sounds as well.

Next I have a Brown Note Dumble clone I'm building in my shop! That'll be here tomorrow! I love new amps!