tbonesullivan

I was thinking about getting a nice 4x12, but most of them weigh in over 80 lbs. The mesa boogie ones are over 100. I mean, eventually I may start trying to sell my combos and get heads, but right now, its combo city. It's easier to get a good speaker match with a combo.

It gets loud, and thankfully it's on wheels. I don't see it moving much out of the basement, so the weight should not really be an issue. I still need to put the wheels onto my Maverick. I picked up the hardware a few months back, but have been lazy.

Yeah, so I keep telling myself that I'm gonna switch to all heads and cabinets, and make all kinds of weird plans that end up with me needing to own 10 different cabinets for various amps, situations, etc etc etc. And then I give up and just get a combo. Well, it happened again. I had been thinking about picking up a real "Rectifier" for some time now. I have a Maverick, which is technically a Dual Rectifier, but it's not THAT kind of Rectifier. This definitely is. It's also got one thing that I really do like having in an amplifier: reverb. I just like... spring reverb, and don't like having to plug in some type of unit to an amp to get it. The typical "rectifier" doesn't have reverb, or tremolo for that matter. If you want reverb you had to go with the Rect-O-Verb, but that doesn't have the Tube Rectifier option, which is one of the big reasons for getting it. The other options were the Tremoverb, the Roadster, and the Road King. Well, the latter two are just insane amps, with 4 channels, tons of switches, tons of tubes, and that many more things to go wrong. So, the Tremoverb it was. It's also got the kinda unique "channel cloning" feature, which allows you to have two of the same channel, so you have two of the 4 total modes dialed in at any given time, along with reverb, and tremolo (which is fun but of questionable usefulness). I was on the lookout for a head, but then a combo popped up locally, original owner, in great shape, with some extra goodies and the original hang tags. Perfect for an OCD idiot like me. Original casters, footswitch, manual etc. Also came with an aftermarket custom footswitch that uses the external control jacks, so that you can turn on/off reverb, tremolo, efx/ etc. Not sure how useful that will be for how I'll be using it, but it is nice to have. Mesa Boogie has a history of either having a minimal footswitch, or something huge with a ton of buttons. Currently the amplifier is set up for EL34 tubes right now, and it's got a set of "7" rated Groove Tubes EL34 -R2 tubes, which are the same as the "Svetlana" brand of power tubes made by New Sensor. Preamp tubes are a mixture of the original Beijing China 12AX7 tubes, Groove Tubes 9th Gen Chinese tubes, and some Russian. Currently it sounds really good, but loud, though it's got an overall master volume that really helps tame it. Now I've got to decide if I want to keep it running EL34s, or switch it back to 6L6GC tubes. Pretty much all my amps right now have EL34s, so I was looking for something different.

yeah, I had seen some suggest similar products on their transformers. I've really only got one amplifier that has any noticeable rust, my carvin x-100b. I might think about getting some of that stuff, as I also need some to use on the undercarriage of my car, and motorcycle.

Yeah. It's only on one amp I have, which was bought used, so it probably was in a basement for a while. It's only a little bit, and the amp sounds fine, so I'm not going to mess with it. It does seem though that over time the Electrical varnish they coat them in will start to flake off due to the heating/cooling cycles. You can see a bit of the orange varnish lifting up on the transformers in my Rivera R55: Also at this time I have noticed that the 50 Watt transformers Rivera uses are definitely significantly bigger than the ones that Mesa Uses. See.. now this makes me want to go get insulating varnish and touch up my transformers. UGH. Stupid OCD.

Like all gear junkies, I'm a member of various amp groups on Facebook and elsewhere, and yesterday someone posted an amp for sale, and someone was a little down on it due to some surface rust on the output transformer core. It was a Mesa MkIIC+ with an Export Transformer, so people were worried about that, considering it's a major selling point of the amplifier. I've never really considered thinking about it before, as most amps I have seen that are 20+ years old have some level of rust on the core, which forms when the original paint or lacquer degrades, if they had that at all. A lot of smaller transformers also have a covered core, so you can't really see it anyway. So, I looked around, and found a Mercury Magnetics blurb about it, saying it was essentially no big deal: https://www.mercurymagnetics.com/transformer-rust-friend-or-foe/ But, this was after reading another guy say: "well it's not horrible, but it means that eventually your transformer will rust through and die". Then I went through a bunch of Hi-Fi forums where people had various opinions, some who had tried to remedy the rust due to appearance, and others who said "just put some rustoleum over the rust and call it done.", while others were all about the WD-40. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Dave's guitar in Wisconsin apparently already listed AND SOLD their set: https://davesguitar.com/products/fender-custom-shop/jimmy-page-telecaster-set-ltd-one-set-available/

I really wish I had an iso cab and a small amp I would use to play through recorded guitar music for a week or so. Some speakers take so long to break in. That's one of the reasons I like used combos/cabs: already broken in! Usually anyway.

Yeah, you can bet SD would love to get the secret sauce Ren uses. Schaller has a very "German" way of looking at pickup design, which is similar to the Japanese way. It's more of a "Beer Purity" method, very academic and engineering based. So they designed the Golden 50 to give a nice neutral tone that lets the sound of the instrument really shine through. However, if you're used to the more "Classic American" voiced pickups like a Seth love from SD, they sound sterile.

Definitely talk to the guy when/if you bring it in. Most local guys really like talking about people who really care about their gear, and it can help you get bumped up in line a bit. If you look for new speakers, Jensen makes some nice ones, and so does Ted Weber. Nice Vintage sound/ feel but more modern construction. Those amps should definitely have more clean headroom than that.

With the Stiletto, The input driver stages for 3 of the modes are on V1, while the input driver for the other 2 are on V2. Not really sure why mesa did it this way, but they did. The other triodes in V1 and B2 are post "gain" control gain stages. But, at least I can read Mesa Boogie Schematics. I don't know how to read Marshall and Rivera schematics.

So, as always I'm rolling tubes like a fiend, trying to find the "best" mix, and having access to the schematics definitely helps in this. The question is, in a preamp design that has 5 triodes in the signal path before the phase inverter, which ones are the ones producing the overdrive? I was looking at the schematics and manual for my Stiletto, and it has the following signal path for the gain channels: V2A: Input Driver Stage followed by Gain control V1A: Second Gain Stage V2B: Third Gain Stage V3A: Fourth Gain Stage v3B: Fifth Gain Stage (cathode Follower before tone stack). So, looking at this, I would assume that Gain Stages 2 3 and 4 are the triodes being driven into clipping. Am I reading this wrong? I would also assume that the cathode follower is not being driven into clipping.

I wish My neptune blueburst guitar had looked that good. Of course, now it's not neptune blueburst anymore....

It should be noted that Schaller makes a standard TOM as well. They supplied lots of hardware for Hamer guitars, including their standard tailpieces and Nashville Style TOMS. I believe they also supplied Gibson at one point.

Thanks for the info! I guess I was thinking more of the "second coming" of Park, when it was the "value line", which quickly went away. I had a solid state Park amplifier when I was in middle school. I know that people are raving about the current incarnation of the Park amplifiers, so if the guy can make those right, he's certainly the one to turn to to reissue this amplifier.