Well what can I say, I always wanted a mesa and one popped up for the right price so I just had to snag it not knowing much about it.
Now that I played a bit with it and read more about it I start to realise I scored something truly special. What a great amp! It's the quietest amp I ever played, noise wise, I need to triple check myself when I stop playing to not accidentally leave it on all night. Mesa discontinued it? It's so easy to dial in and get good tones out of it right away.
The clean channel is lush and pulling the gain knob activates the bright mode bringing out the ' fairy dust' sparkle. It's easy to dial in and you can do anything from spanky clean to gritty swampy blues and inbetween. There is a real reverb tank but I'm not sure it takes a while for the reverb to come in. I read something about it being fed into FET's on purpose this way by design?
Anyway, the red channel offers a smooth crunch that sounds a bit vintage and warm to me, bordering muddy tone for chords but for leads it's like butter. Then there is the contour switch that only works for this channel, and hitting it you enter recto territory. I like it! Heavy, chunky, clear, that typical low mid Mesa crunch is there and i can't stop playing it.
I didn't try out the FX loop yet because I didn't want to rewire my pedalboard again so I will have to see if it takes pedals well (they say it does).
Oh yeah, there is a Black shadow speaker inside (C90?) and it sounds pretty tight and balanced. Would make a good companion with a v30 in a 2x12 cab I suppose. I did play the F50 over my 2x12 V30 HB cab and the earlier speaker breakup crunch is insanely good.
Anyone else playing the F-series? I'm curious what tubes are populair choices.
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