ItsaBass
New member
Hi,
I just took my Mesa Express Plus 5:25 in to the Mesa/Boogie shop for warranty service yesterday. I got it in August, and about two months ago, it started doing this "thing" intermittently. It did it about three times total; it's not something easily reproduced. It would sputter and lose almost all volume. If you looked in the back when this was going on, one of the tubes was glowing red hot. Textbook example of a shorted power tube, according to the owner's manual. They looked it over, put two new power tubes in, and tested the amp as I waited. No charge, as it is under 6 months old.
I have been around Mesas since 1988, when my dad got a Mk. III. I have also owned a few of my own. This is literally the first problem I've ever seen with any of their products. Does anyone think they have gone downhill in recent years, or do you think this is truly just a tube issue? I must say, that while the amp is nice, it doesn't seem as well built as the old Mk. III. Just little things like the quality of the hardware seem a slight bit cheapened. I wonder if this is going on inside as well. I am just bouncing the idea around to see what people think, not accusing Mesa of making junk.
It remains to be seen whether this amp is just brutal on power tubes, or whether it was simply a random tube failure, maybe even due to shipping. I've probably put about four months and I estimate 40 - 60 hours on the amp – no time at all. I run the master volume high (often pegged) and the gain low. I also don't use the 5W mode often. OTOH, I've put literally over a decade on other sets of EL84's or 6V6's before they tested bad, and I've never had them fail outright. But whatever it is, I have had more flat out tube failures in the past year than I have had in my previous 23 years of playing tube amps. It's getting annoying, and expensive.
Now, the manager at the Mesa shop told me that good tubes are scarce these days, that EL84's in Mesas are known to get eaten up pretty fast, and that at least they're only $35 a set. But there have to be some decently made tubes out there. And, freely admitting that their tubes are not well made, why would they make the amps so the bias is not easily adjustable, which would allow for easy tube upgrades?
Mesa's got a whole long lecture about the reasons they don't have an easy bias adjustment on their amps, and why it is best to just use Mesa tubes. They don't want anybody monkeying with it, and it makes it so their color-coded tubes are plug and play. I got the argument...however, it doesn't hold water if the amps can truly be made much more reliable with a tube swap.
So, what say you as to whether tube upgrades can help on a Mesa? I want to put in some tubes with better reliability (i.e. what I consider to be MESA reliability), and hopefully ones that can give it a sonic improvement at the same time. Are the options out there so much better than stock Mesa tubes that it is worth paying the money having the amp hard-wire adjusted each time you replace the power tubes? Or should I just keep feeding it Mesa branded tubes, and hoping that it doesn't do this again...this time at a gig. I bit the bullet and got a Mesa largely because I regard them as being bulletproof amps. However, if this is how it's gonna be, the main selling point of the amp is lost to me.
On the plus side, it's a great amp otherwise.
Thanks.
I just took my Mesa Express Plus 5:25 in to the Mesa/Boogie shop for warranty service yesterday. I got it in August, and about two months ago, it started doing this "thing" intermittently. It did it about three times total; it's not something easily reproduced. It would sputter and lose almost all volume. If you looked in the back when this was going on, one of the tubes was glowing red hot. Textbook example of a shorted power tube, according to the owner's manual. They looked it over, put two new power tubes in, and tested the amp as I waited. No charge, as it is under 6 months old.
I have been around Mesas since 1988, when my dad got a Mk. III. I have also owned a few of my own. This is literally the first problem I've ever seen with any of their products. Does anyone think they have gone downhill in recent years, or do you think this is truly just a tube issue? I must say, that while the amp is nice, it doesn't seem as well built as the old Mk. III. Just little things like the quality of the hardware seem a slight bit cheapened. I wonder if this is going on inside as well. I am just bouncing the idea around to see what people think, not accusing Mesa of making junk.
It remains to be seen whether this amp is just brutal on power tubes, or whether it was simply a random tube failure, maybe even due to shipping. I've probably put about four months and I estimate 40 - 60 hours on the amp – no time at all. I run the master volume high (often pegged) and the gain low. I also don't use the 5W mode often. OTOH, I've put literally over a decade on other sets of EL84's or 6V6's before they tested bad, and I've never had them fail outright. But whatever it is, I have had more flat out tube failures in the past year than I have had in my previous 23 years of playing tube amps. It's getting annoying, and expensive.
Now, the manager at the Mesa shop told me that good tubes are scarce these days, that EL84's in Mesas are known to get eaten up pretty fast, and that at least they're only $35 a set. But there have to be some decently made tubes out there. And, freely admitting that their tubes are not well made, why would they make the amps so the bias is not easily adjustable, which would allow for easy tube upgrades?
Mesa's got a whole long lecture about the reasons they don't have an easy bias adjustment on their amps, and why it is best to just use Mesa tubes. They don't want anybody monkeying with it, and it makes it so their color-coded tubes are plug and play. I got the argument...however, it doesn't hold water if the amps can truly be made much more reliable with a tube swap.
So, what say you as to whether tube upgrades can help on a Mesa? I want to put in some tubes with better reliability (i.e. what I consider to be MESA reliability), and hopefully ones that can give it a sonic improvement at the same time. Are the options out there so much better than stock Mesa tubes that it is worth paying the money having the amp hard-wire adjusted each time you replace the power tubes? Or should I just keep feeding it Mesa branded tubes, and hoping that it doesn't do this again...this time at a gig. I bit the bullet and got a Mesa largely because I regard them as being bulletproof amps. However, if this is how it's gonna be, the main selling point of the amp is lost to me.
On the plus side, it's a great amp otherwise.
Thanks.
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