Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

[jgcable]

Anybody use either of these? If so, do you use them through the clean channel or the gain channel? Reviews?

[Twisteramps]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

I used a V-Twin years ago, when they first came out. It sounded good through a clean channel, never tried to push it. I do recall that it didn't sound nearly as good as my dual rectifier (duh) but it sounded ok on it's own. It was pretty loose... not real tight.

Pete

[aldog1330]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

I had one for a week or 2 5 or 6 years back. It was a good sounding pedal, just didn't have a whole lot of gain if I remember right. At least not dual rec amounts of gain. Then again, I used to scoop the shit out of my mids and dime the bass, treble, and gain, so take it for what its worth. With the mids up though it did have a nice crunch.

[Cleveland Metal]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

My experience with the V-Twin pretty much repeats what has been said. Owned it about 2-3 weeks... But, I probably didnt wring it out as much as I could have.

[jgcable]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

Would you put in front of the gain channel or did you put it in the clean channel?
For instance, would it work in front of the lead channel on my Mesa Mark III if I dialed the gain down?

[Cleveland Metal]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

I didn't think it had enough gain for my uses when used with my clean channel, and I didn't like the character much on my gain side.

I'd bet it would be cool to overdrive like an 800 with. Something with a little dirt already.

Again, I probably didn't spend enough time with it to make a really strong decision on it. It just didn't move me much and I ditched it. Lotta people like em, so they must have some good use.

[aldog1330]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

I'll echo what Cleveland said, it really didn't have enough gain on the clean side. Do they still run around $200?

[jgcable]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

The V-twin is around $300.00. The Bottle Rocket is around $150.00 both used.

I will take the replies and pass on either unless I could try one out myself with my own amps.

[aldog1330]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

Were you going to use it strictly into the clean channel? Or as a boost? Or more curious than anything? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[jgcable]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

More curious than anything else. I was thinking that they might add more versatility to my Mark III or one of my Carvin X amps but by the responses neither of them will.

[SteveK]

Re: Mesa Bottle Rocket, V-Twin

I have a V-Twin which I use through the clean channel of a Fender amp. I use it in the Lead/Blues channel switching option and that efefctively lets me get a three channel amp out of one clean channel.

It doesn't have huge amounts of distortion available, but you can get Metallica levels of grunt out of it. You need to leave some mids in there though, gain at 3/4, bass at full, mids at 1/2, treble as full gives you a starting point for an 80's style thrash tone. Goosing the gain gets you into Santana style territory. You could also get some mileage out of tube-swapping. I've since stopped using mine because I got sick of the huge awkward wall-wart that powers it and attendant problems with on-stage power, compounded by the fact that mine has an Aussie style plug on it, so I need an adapter plugged into an on-stage plug-strip.

My pedal rig used to look like this:



It used to give me no end of trouble on-stage as I was running three seperate power supplies!

I got sick of it and switched to this:



Which, while it may not have the cork-sniffer credibility of the other rig, wins out in one important respect: It works reliably [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

- Steve