Joining the Darkside.

Tone Slinger · Post by **Tone Slinger** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:23 am

While I see why a black/death metal type dude would want what a mesa exudes (big,tight bottom and definition at super high gain) I cant understand why a member of this forum (necrovore) who, as I've read many a post, is very knowledgable on all the great tones of past/present would use one. I find it hard to believe that Necrovore even play's that style. But hey, he obviously is making decisions based on his particular needs. I personally dislike those genre's sounds, as everything is too hurried and the tone is so compressed and focused that all the dynamic is gone, but, I do get 'glimpses' at what the deal is about that stuff, it is beyond powerful. I just find it hard to disengage from it . See my music is ALL the time (in my head). It's like everywhere I go, I get musical idea's that sorta reflect "living reality". I dont go like "Oh, its time to get away from reality" and play video games or whatever. See , heavy, speed, black/death metal style of music only has a small space in my life, like when I'm caught in traffic, or mad at a position of authority, etc. I do have and play those style riffs in my songs, but only in the balance that I feel that way,cause music is about expression to me. I act on my thoughts and feelings, so I'd be in jail right now if all I heard in my head was music with that vibe. I dont change to fit into a 'style'. That , to me is like putting a costume on at halloween. I'm not saying Necrovore is wrong or bad for his choice of amp or style, I'm just tryin to understand how other musicians think, and how they express themselves. None of this is meant to piss anyone off, its just me tryin' to understand other's, as well as my own thoughts. I try not to be 'prejudiced', musically, or any other way.

Necrovore · Post by **Necrovore** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:50 am

Hey I never said I was leaving. Matter of fact I stated that I was sticking around. The only guy that understood where I am coming from was Toneslinger. The Marshalls DO NOT GET HEAVY ENOUGH for extreme metal. If they did they would never have come out with the JCM200 DSL/TSL/MODE 4/JVM etc.. ad nauseum.... (All of which essentially sound like crap except the JVM.) They would have also never come out with a Stiletto. Which is the Marshall killer on the Mesa line. I personally think the Stiletto sounds like hammered on dog poo but others seem to like it.

I would think that you guys would understand more where I was coming from considering there are others on this board that do not play Marshalls as their main rigs. Some play Soldano's, Fender's, Laney's, and even Pod's

for a living. Oh well the rivalry never ceases eh?

Oh Allen, Fuck you.... Kick me off the board. Who was it that said go get the Triple Rec cause I will give you a copy of the original receipt so you can change the warranty into your name?

This is all in good fun guy's I'm not pissed. Just don't try to sell me cryo tubes.

Tone Slinger · Post by **Tone Slinger** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:42 pm

What tubes you pushin' in that Mesa ?

Bluesgeetar · Post by **Bluesgeetar** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:14 pm

I'm not a huge fan of Mesas but I do love the Princeton Boosts. Still chasing dwn info on that little sucker so I can do a Home brew job.

yngwie308 · Post by **yngwie308** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 2:32 pm

I had a Blackface Princeton, with cascading gain mods, loved it to death.
If scooped middles are wot you want, by all means a Boogie power/pre-amp setup or Tri Axis or whatever, we can understand what you are saying, it's just not what we want, death metal is putrid filth to me and they can all rot in their own hell, with their psuedo-satanic bullshit ethos..knowhatImean

Give me pure Marshall/Metro tone forever, it covers everything I need, from Moore to Malmsteen, Jimi too, ect.
It's like Paul Reed Smith, the perfect non-amp, guitar setup woukd be a PRS/Boogie, sorry Carlos

.
Let's keep this crap off a pure forum of Marshall heaven

Let's keep in the light, Rectoboy

yngwie308

Bluesgeetar · Post by **Bluesgeetar** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:17 pm

yngwie308 wrote:I had a Blackface Princeton, with cascading gain mods, loved it to death.

yngwie308

My understanding of a Princeton boost is that it is a 50watt 59 bassman circuit with cascading gain stages and a reverb added. After I looked at a schematic of a MK1 I think he is full of shit. To many .047uf caps in there with alot of 25uf caps. If it is a Bassman, I don't see it! It looks more like a hot rodded Pro reverb or vibrolux with cascading gain stages. I ain't sure. I have some pics of Randalls Princeton boosts and there is only two 6l6GC tubes in the thing. Dude is full of shit.

Necrovore · Post by **Necrovore** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:25 pm

Tone Slinger wrote:What tubes you pushin' in that Mesa ?

I have not messed with the tubes, but they are all 6L6 branded Mesas. They all have the Mesa top of the line STR coding. I would like to see what the EL34's sound like through this amp. Hopefully not like the Stiletto.

Oh yeah this amp has mids for days. Just not the half cocked wah honk mids that Marshall does. I love that tone too, just doesn't do what I am involved with justice either. The Mesa Dual Rectifier 3 channel sounds a lot different than the older 2 channel models. I like this revision of the amp. I do not like the older ones as those do in fact sound mushy.

tonejones · Post by **tonejones** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:52 pm

I gotta say, I dig a Mesa's sound from a distance (no joke here).

Up close to the amp, it's like old coffee for me (get a knife so I can cut me off a cup).

Starting at about 10 feet away or so, it sounds nice and full.

We had a Dual Rectumfrier on consignment at the store, I went and plugged in and got the old coffee experience......

Then came that big, full sound from every other dude that plugged into it (same settings too, I went and checked)!!!

jngreene79 · Post by **jngreene79** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 5:01 pm

It's how you run a TR. The lead circuit is very close to the SLO, and the SLO is a an 800 on steroids... just a beefier power section It's not like the Mark Series with the Fenderish plate fed TS off of V1. Sadly, so few people know how to get a good live guitar sound from a TR, especially the 45 degree bang wearing screamo kid or the Dimmu Borgir wannabe band.

Necrovore · Post by **Necrovore** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:38 pm

jngreene79 wrote:It's how you run a TR. The lead circuit is very close to the SLO, and the SLO is a an 800 on steroids... just a beefier power section It's not like the Mark Series with the Fenderish plate fed TS off of V1. Sadly, so few people know how to get a good live guitar sound from a TR, especially the 45 degree bang wearing screamo kid or the Dimmu Borgir wannabe band.

I agree with you here. The thing is that you can't start with this amp or any Mesa from what I have messed with by using the same normal settings as a Marshall. The tone controls are really responsive as is the gain pot. I had to start the amp off with everything at 12:00 then go from there. My current settings are not far from 12:00. Mainly starting 11:00 - 2:00 on the tone/presence settings. Even the gain isnt wide open, but about 3:00. This worked for a while, but I had to use another method I will explain below.

What is really neat is that the 2nd and 3rd channels are meant to be used together in a rhythm/lead type setup. The 2nd channel tonal structure tops out at the lower end of the tonal structure of the 3rd channel. I am not talking the 3 modes per channel either as that seems to be a tonal/gain thing that I am still trying to wrap my head around.
The 1st channel which is the clean/pushed channel is neat too. The cleans are ok, much like any other amp that does good cleans. I really do not like clean cleans otherwise I would just mike up an acoustic as clean electrics sound lifeless to me. I really dig the Pushed mode though. If you have heard the level of fuzz on Guns n Roses song "One in a Million" the gain level is something like that but tons more organic fuzziness. You can dial it back to cop that driven Chicago electric blues vibe.

Another thing I have found with this amp. My other guitarist uses a DR as well, but uses the DR cabinets. Those suck balls and I think designed to suck the punchiness out of these amps. Carl's are loaded with the V30's and no matter what he does the amp sounds somewhat loose. I use Marshall cabs with 65's in one and the other cab has Eminence Texas Heats. On either cabinet my DR as well as his sounds super punchy and tight. I attribute that to the smaller, less deep dimensions of the Marshall cab compared to the Mesa cab.

The Mesa DR is not the Be all End all of guitar amps and I'm not trying to sell it as one. It works well for what I am using it for. I would not use one for normal hard rock or heavy metal(Marshalls or Laney's here). Even Emo and Nu-metal garbage I wouldnt use a DR. I would use a Solid State amp for that stuff. the DR does extreme metal well. It can also be used for decent clean work and will do the driven bluesy type stuff fairly convincingly.

The tone controls are not as fixed as a Marshall and increasing one does affect the others quite a bit. So much so that here is a method I tried that was given by Kirk Hammet in Guitar Player in the early 90's. Seems to work well for this amp, as well as others including Marshalls, but moreso on this DR.

bring your gain up to where you want it.
bring your overall volume up to where you want it.
Start with all tone controls at zero.
turn your bass up until it starts farting then back off just until the farting goes away.
Turn the mids up until they start to get nasally then back off just until that nasal tone goes away.
turn the treble up for the cut you want, then the presence to fine tune the liveliness of the amp.

Doing this I ended up with Gain at 3:00, volume at 10:00, bass at 11:00, mids at 1:30, treble at 2:00, presence straight up 12:00.
Amp was set to modern, bold, diode rectification.

Using spongy, tube rectification, vintage, or raw, you start over with the procedure and each will give you a different control setting. The mids are funny as even a 1/16th" rotation makes a difference. you will know it is right when all of a sudden the guitar just pops out in the mix. The difference in mid tone is almost imperceivable.

jngreene79 · Post by **jngreene79** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:24 pm

It's funny... my diy single channel Soldano-esque amp ( with larry's effects loop) sounds exactly like you describe as far as tone controls go. They're super responsive when the master is anything but dimed. I guess it's because the PI's not getting slammed. The guitarist in my band has been playing my amp for recent shows and loves it. He usually plays a 71 Superlead, but my amp is really articulate and thick. Plus, the depth/resonance/what ever you want to call it does a nice job of keeping the flub out. We've talked about it before - I'm in a black metal band too (though a drummer).
Just to ramble.... We played a show with 4 other bands last week. All of the other bands wore either corpse paint or had some keyboardist who was way too loud. A black metal show... They all sounded like SHIT. Some of them are pretty big bands (won't name any names). Pure hissing-fuzzy-arpeggio filled Legend of Zelda crap. I love hearing these guys warm up. They absolutely shred. ( http://youtube.com/profile?user=peckawood This is one of the guitarists who's maybe 20 years old. ) But, the tone (if you can call it that) is aweful. I'm sure you know it and have seen it too. Funny thing is, we get complimented all of the time on our intelligible live sound. It so simple. I know what you mean (Necro) about Marshall's not being very good for some metal, but put the right pedal in front and it gets me there.
by the way, how do you like you cab with the eminence's. I've been thinking about building a new 4x12 with something different. I'd love some EV 12L's, but at $200 a piece, that's going to be tough.

Necrovore · Post by **Necrovore** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:43 am

I like the Eminence so much that I will be selling the Celestion 65's that are in it now. Just need to make sure that they are all good to sell. No ripped cones etc.. So I can buy a second quad to do the B cabinet. They really help with the low end seeing that they are 150watt/speaker the amp will not push the speakers into distortion so they are perfect for modern metal.

The Texas Heats are a very well balanced speaker. No frequency seems to dominate them so you are truly hearing what the amp is doing. If anything they have a slight snarl to them, but that is what I said slight. Plus they are very inexpensive at $250/quad shipped to my door. If you buy them from GC and have them shipped to the store they will be $226/quad. Our local GC would not order them for me as they said they could only sell what they have in stock, so I bought them from the South Austin store.

Tone Slinger · Post by **Tone Slinger** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:53 am

Man, all these posts have got me thinking back to the last 20 years or so in the "big, distorted amp" category. Back in '87, you basically had 800 Marshalls (single, or split channel), the Silver Jubilee was also out around this time. The Mesa's that I remember, like the 50 caliber for instance, had the eq sliders on the front panel. These Mesa's were tight and had alot of gain, but fell well short of Marshall in tone. The ADA preamp had just came out, claiming to be the "Holy Grail" of tones. This just wasnt true, but did enable one to make huge eq changes to fit different sounds, which to me were all very pale in comparison to what they were cloning. The first Soldano's started showing up, man , I remember thinking about all that gain. As I recall Mr. Soldano also designed an amp for Yamaha. His Soldano amps used 6l6, but the Yamaha's had el-34. I remember likeing the Yamaha's better,as they were a little warmer and brown,though 'looser' sounding than the namesake Soldano's. At this time the Marshall 800 channel switchers were my favorite's overall, as to me, I could more closely dial in early VH tones as well as good Lynch tones. As the 80's turned into the 90's I finally aquired my first Super Lead (a '73) and realized that ,although it had no master volume, it had a very pure and powerful sound that was super dynamic. It was then that I realized why Yngwie's Strat tones alway's had so much more life , and dynamic tone,than other dudes using new "Super High gain amps". Anyway's, Marshall was bested by Mesa for the first time in the 90's . Marshall had never tried to compete with anyone until then. They changed to 5881 tubes (ouch !) an by so doing, lost thier identity. The First DR's sounded best to me, though I havent kept up with all thier stuff. I agree that the stiletto isnt so good. The new Marshalls also pretty much suck, the vintage/modern is pretty good though(wish they had used el-34's in it). I guess tone is a tool to express idea's, and no two people have the same idea's completly, so things vary. I have reached these opinions though....

1) regardless of build/circuit, the transformers are VERY important, any mid to late 70's Marshall all the way to now, as well as most other mass produced amps would greatly benifit having new 'iron'.

2) For more dynamic's in one's lead tone, some output tube gain is needed, as too much 12ax7 may be good for keeping things tight for rhythms, kill dynamic's in lead tones.

3)EL-34 as well as 6ca7 tubes sound warmer than other types, though for super preamp gain the 6l6 and 6550 types tend to keep things more tight and togather.

4) Why am I posting this, cause I learned most of this from you guy's in the first place

.

Leader · Post by **Leader** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 10:01 am

Necrovore wrote:The Marshalls DO NOT GET HEAVY ENOUGH for extreme metal. If they did they would never have come out with the JCM200 DSL/TSL/MODE 4/JVM etc.. ad nauseum.... (All of which essentially sound like crap except the JVM.)

The DSL does not sound like crap. It is probably their best selling production model right now. Throw in a set of JJ's set the bias, (way to hot from the factory), push it through a 4x12 with a clean boost up front and it sounds killer.

The DSL does not sound like crap.

Tone Slinger · Post by **Tone Slinger** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 11:26 am

I agree, the DSL's do sound pretty good, they cover both a good clean and dirty tone. But to nit-pick, they at least need a better ot, as compared to a test I did, an old 70's JMP master volume had a more natural feel and break up. I mainly attributed this to it having better transformers. I'd like to hear a DSL with better transformer's.

Metropoulos Forum

Joining the Darkside.

hmmm