mantis
New member
Whats up guys?
A customer of mine is a Blues player and has a hell of a collection of very nice Les Pauls , Tele's and some Martin stuff. A spanish guitar and a few others.
He has a Road King he said he barely understands as it's to complicated to use. He also is frustrated with his tone.
I was not there to help him with his tone but to tweak his Home theater system , it's what I do. So out of sheer curiosity I decided to give hime a helping hand and play through his amp.
I also told him about the 10 watt setting as he said it's to powerful for practice at home and is always turning it down. So I dug in and here's my opinions on this amp.
I have to agree with him as there are so many adjustments. It's a double edge sword if you ask me. Not enough adjustment and you may never find your tone , to much same thing. I might have spent 10 minutes dialing in the clean and drive channel. The Clean I got pretty good , I added in some reverb to give it a touch of space instead of a dry sound. The mesa clean is somewhat muddy IMO and need a little help warming up. The Reverb did a nice job of giving that channel some balance. Bass was about 6 , Mid's where about 5 and high's where in at 6 to 7.
The gain was turned down to about 2 to 3 which gave it a warm sound without tube break up at low volumes. It had a nice warm blue type sound and it was nice. He liked how I dialed it in to his Studio Les Paul which is one of his favorite guitars and plays that one often.
Now the drive channel I has some trouble with. It's gain is very low with a messy mid range tone to it. I wasn't trying to dial in any hard rock to metal tones as this amp doesn't have any of that. But I was trying to get a nice tube break up with a shimmery warm natural Blues tone. Well I failed pretty badly. I couldn't dail out the mid range hump. When I backed off the Mid's , it got weak and to loose. It has many switches for warm fat or clean or something I can't remember off hand. But I tried all the settings to find the one that worked.
Basically the time I had spent was not enough. I would really need to dial this amp in as it's not easy. I can get most amps no matter what they are to get a pretty nice tone out of from blues to metal tones depending on the level of gain ones amp has. This bastard gave me some resistance.
I'm not throwing in the towel in this amp just yet as I'm thinking he might have some beat tubes. The 10 watt setting might not be enough o give the amp good break up. It was just a mess and I kept messign with it. When this happens when I'm looking at amps , I move on but I know there is some good tone in there somewhere , it's just going to take some time to find it.
I almost wanted him to let me take it home and give it a full workout as i know if I spend enough time , something good will come out.
Just out of curiosity , You mesa Road King players , what settings do you like to get a good Les Paul Blues tone ? Someting really older sounding with clarity and warmth. Nice top end but nicely rolled lows into a beautiful inviting mid range?
A customer of mine is a Blues player and has a hell of a collection of very nice Les Pauls , Tele's and some Martin stuff. A spanish guitar and a few others.
He has a Road King he said he barely understands as it's to complicated to use. He also is frustrated with his tone.
I was not there to help him with his tone but to tweak his Home theater system , it's what I do. So out of sheer curiosity I decided to give hime a helping hand and play through his amp.
I also told him about the 10 watt setting as he said it's to powerful for practice at home and is always turning it down. So I dug in and here's my opinions on this amp.
I have to agree with him as there are so many adjustments. It's a double edge sword if you ask me. Not enough adjustment and you may never find your tone , to much same thing. I might have spent 10 minutes dialing in the clean and drive channel. The Clean I got pretty good , I added in some reverb to give it a touch of space instead of a dry sound. The mesa clean is somewhat muddy IMO and need a little help warming up. The Reverb did a nice job of giving that channel some balance. Bass was about 6 , Mid's where about 5 and high's where in at 6 to 7.
The gain was turned down to about 2 to 3 which gave it a warm sound without tube break up at low volumes. It had a nice warm blue type sound and it was nice. He liked how I dialed it in to his Studio Les Paul which is one of his favorite guitars and plays that one often.
Now the drive channel I has some trouble with. It's gain is very low with a messy mid range tone to it. I wasn't trying to dial in any hard rock to metal tones as this amp doesn't have any of that. But I was trying to get a nice tube break up with a shimmery warm natural Blues tone. Well I failed pretty badly. I couldn't dail out the mid range hump. When I backed off the Mid's , it got weak and to loose. It has many switches for warm fat or clean or something I can't remember off hand. But I tried all the settings to find the one that worked.
Basically the time I had spent was not enough. I would really need to dial this amp in as it's not easy. I can get most amps no matter what they are to get a pretty nice tone out of from blues to metal tones depending on the level of gain ones amp has. This bastard gave me some resistance.
I'm not throwing in the towel in this amp just yet as I'm thinking he might have some beat tubes. The 10 watt setting might not be enough o give the amp good break up. It was just a mess and I kept messign with it. When this happens when I'm looking at amps , I move on but I know there is some good tone in there somewhere , it's just going to take some time to find it.
I almost wanted him to let me take it home and give it a full workout as i know if I spend enough time , something good will come out.
Just out of curiosity , You mesa Road King players , what settings do you like to get a good Les Paul Blues tone ? Someting really older sounding with clarity and warmth. Nice top end but nicely rolled lows into a beautiful inviting mid range?
When I just want to plug in, I'll go for that one. Hahaha
