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Mesa seem to be pretty heavy handed with the EQ and compression on their own demo videos. I would wait for some more demos before judging it.

Molly wrote:

JHorner wrote:

Molly wrote:Is it my ears or do the demos make it sound dark; like there's a blanket over it? That typical Mesa thing.

Not claiming to be an amp dialling in expert, and no idea how the guitar tone controls were set, but it looks like they all had way more bass and or less treble than I would.

Mesa usually advise you to reduce the bass as you increase the gain. Not so in the examples, eh.

Took a squizz at the manuals - this one is telling you to go real easy on the treble (saying there will be lots of great sounds even at zero treble), so it might have a different tone stack.

Its not from the Mark family of amps apparently

If Fender bred with Laney this would probably be what the offspring would look like haha.

TBH I would very rarely buy something going off how it sounded on YT demos, who knows what is done in the mixing. Plus it always usually sounds pretty different playing it firsthand anyway. I'd definitely like to try one if/when they reach here; think at the moment I'm leaning towards one of the new Marshall Origins but this may get a bit of a look-in.

The Sweetwaters video: that's Caitlyn Jenner.

To be honest, I didn't hear anything there that made me want to buy the amp.

Will the tone of amps hit a brick wall ?
As in nothing new to expect just refinements

Man, I never buy an amp based of a demo(s); you're judging something by listening to a stranger playing gear that's not the same as yours and you're not listening to it 'live'. There's a video of Andy Timmons playing a Beatles track through a little Vox Pathfinder and it probably sounds better than some people playing through a cranked AC30!

For me price is kind of irrelevant too, it's all about what inspires me. Would having this amp make me want to plug in and play, would it inspire me to try new things and maybe even play in different ways than I normally would? I've got a $3,000+ amp sitting in my front room and it pretty much never gets used... I'm picking up a $1k Marshall head this weekend and I'll put money on that being used most days of the week for a good while. I also purposely haven't listened to anything on YouTube for that amp, so it's just a complete blank canvas for when I first plug it in

Mini Forklift Ⓥ wrote:I also purposely haven't listened to anything on YouTube for that amp, so it's just a complete blank canvas for when I first plug it in

That's some serious restraint! I still listen to demos AFTER I've bought an amp...

Molly wrote:That's some serious restraint! I still listen to demos AFTER I've bought an amp...

After I have the gear watching the videos wouldn't really interest me, unless it was something technical like a Kemper where I don't have much of a clue what I'm doing. Only ever done that once and that was with a delay pedal I think I got from Troy - anything with more than 3 knobs and I get flustered (calm down Jeremy).

I'm possibly more of an impulse buyer than you, I skip the videos and go straight to looking at ways of how I can get my hands on it! Lucky for me I don't really like Suhr's, PRS or a lot of the other spendy stuff else I'd be screwed

Olderama wrote:Will the tone of amps hit a brick wall ?
As in nothing new to expect just refinements

It's been like that for more years than one can count!!!

Ain’t that the truth

Other than a Mark V and Recto, every Mesa that I have played has sounded to me significantly darker than on the YT videos. Once you play them side by side with Marshalls you notice. For Fender tones the Mesas are pretty comparable.

werdna wrote:Other than a Mark V and Recto, every Mesa that I have played has sounded to me significantly darker than on the YT videos. Once you play them side by side with Marshalls you notice. For Fender tones the Mesas are pretty comparable.

Wonder why they don’t/can’t get the brightness of their clean channel to spill over? I’ve found the same with their cabs, the 2x12 I had was noticeably ‘darker’ than the others I’ve either owned or own.

Mini Forklift Ⓥ wrote:

werdna wrote:Other than a Mark V and Recto, every Mesa that I have played has sounded to me significantly darker than on the YT videos. Once you play them side by side with Marshalls you notice. For Fender tones the Mesas are pretty comparable.

Wonder why they don’t/can’t get the brightness of their clean channel to spill over? I’ve found the same with their cabs, the 2x12 I had was noticeably ‘darker’ than the others I’ve either owned or own.

My Electra Dyne's schematic was very JCM800, yet it sounded way darker. The ED weighed a fuck ton compared to the JCM. The heavy thing in valve amps is the transformer. Maybe Mesa use a type of transformer that colours the sound darker.