Mesa F-30

[chrisolson]

Zeegs - one thing I do to "Marshall it up" --

I guess first things first... I EQ something like this on the red channel:
G - 2:00
T - 10:00
M - 2:00
B - 10:00

Then to Marshall it up, I put the gain at about 9:00, and hit it with a Boss Super OD, gain at 9:00 and level at 3:00. It gives it a crunchier, less smooth tone, more reminiscent of Marshall stuff... I don't do it on the Contour channel - tht needs no help to sound good.

I keep going out and trying other amps thinking that there's a magic bullet out there for me, but I just can't find anything resonably priced that sounds as good as this amp. I thought I was going to get GAS from the new Bogner, but I spent about a 1/2 hour with it the other night at GC, and I couldn't get that "1 week honeymoon" sound that always gets me to buy an amp. About the only amp I've played lately that could give it a run for it's money was the Orange Rocker 30, but I need an effects loop. Guess I could try to find a Rockerverb 50, but then you're talking big $$$.

[zeegler]

Funny you should mention the Oranges Chris. A friend of mine has the Rockerverb 100, and when he first got it, we brought it over here to compare it with my JCM 900. Now, as you probably know, the 900s have a rep for harsh high end, and no bottom end. Well, I discovered shortly after acquiring my 900 that a Boss GE-7 in the loop completely fixed that problem. With the EQ in the loop, and an SD-1 in front to add a very small amount of gain, my 900 becomes a fire breathing tone-monster. Now back to the Orange. So we hook the Orange up, and spend a fair amount of time comparing the two amps, and we came to the conclusion that with the EQ in the loop, they sound almost identical. The Orange has the same gain characteristics of a Marshall, but with far more bottom end, and less spikey top end. It's a fantastic sounding amp. I thought to myself at the time that maybe I needed to get myself one. However, in the end, my Marshall is more aggressive sounding, which I really prefer. The strange thing is that when I saw the F-30 in the store and asked to try it out, the first thing that came to mind was that it seems to cover the exact same frequency range as the Orange. It has a ton of low end, and similarly focused (perhaps a little on the loose side). So I guess my point is, if you take the gain characteristics of a Marshall, the tone stack of a Mesa, you get an Orange.


Yeah, it's an oversimplified way to look at it, but that's my conclusion and I'm sticking to it. I still may pick up a Rockerverb 50 some day, but my goal right now is to get my SLO 100 clone done.