Mesa Boogie Mark I reissues?

[RiffRaff]

Anybody use one? What are your thoughts? What I'm looking for is a single 12" combo with a great clean tone that works well with pedals on the front end. I know the mesas can hold their own on the volume side but how do they sound clean and because of the very "active" preamps do pedals or an effects processor sound good with the amp? Since the overdrive I would be generating would come from effects would it be better to have an EV speaker or ???

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: Mesa Boogie Mark I reissues?

I really like the mk1 ri. Along with the blue angel, it's the only mesa I really rate given my personal tonal preferences.

Basically, the Mk1 is a fender princeton souped up with an extra gain stage. It can deliver a very nice fender-style clean tone with good headroom, and also breaks up nicely, though with nothing like the gain of later boogie amps. As far as I know, the circuitry is pretty simple compared to later models. Sounds great with a strat.

Dunno about how it takes pedals.

 

[HamerPlyr]

Re: Mesa Boogie Mark I reissues?

I have an original Mark I that I can't live without, but the reissues are fairly faithful to the original. If I wasn't going to use the high gain settings of the amp, I would go with an older Twin or Deluxe Reverb. Don't get me wrong, I love the amp to death and I have for 20+ years, but for what you described, it wouldn't be my choice. As to the speaker, the EV in that kind of amp is way to clean for my tastes, but that's just me.

 

[RiffRaff]

Re: Mesa Boogie Mark I reissues?

Thanks guys for the input, it's kind of a thing where I want an amp I can use my Vox TonelabSE with for gigs where I need a considerable number of different tones but also have an amp where I can just get together with the rockers, plug in my guitar, turn it up and play it straight. I've thought of a twin but the only one I've found which can foot both of the bills is the evil twin and I didn't like the overdrive channel at all. I might go try a Rivera RG100 - I hear those have a nice fendery twin clean with a kick butt British crunch channel.

 

[Kent S.]

Re: Mesa Boogie Mark I reissues?

The only thing about it, is that there really is no channel switching, you plug in one channel for clean, and the other for overdrive ... it's really just like a fender amp (duh) if you took the first channel (normal as opposed to vibrato, or normal as opposed to bright like some of the brown faces had), and rewire the first channel's preamp output to a switching jack to route it into the second channels preamp stage (that would be the vibrato channel (more commonly known as the one with reverb). You'd pretty much be stuck with using any effects (especially delay and reverb effects) on the clean channel, but that sounds like what you want to do .. personally I like EVs period, because they are generally so clean.
I don't know if the MK I RIs are availble with an effects loop as an option or not, but at the very least I would have one installed.

 

[Mkf411]

Re: Mesa Boogie Mark I reissues?

You mentioned using the Tonelab with the amp you buy. I wonder how it would sound with something like a Jazz Chorus 120. It's such a clean amp. I wonder how that would work.