Mesa Boogie Throttle Box EQ Pedal | N Stuff Music Product Review

[CoreyT]

Great sounding pedal for those with a clean amp that does not have its own gain channel.

 

[László]

I usually love Mesa stuff.

However, he's got that one sounding like a box of angry little bees, and not like a Mesa at full throttle.

 

[gball]

Maybe it's the mic'ing, but I'm not sure... I want to love Mesa stuff, but I have owned a couple of their amps and several of their pedals and I just cannot get them to work for me (obviously many others do not share this opinion). This isn't doing anything to change my impression.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

I usually love Mesa stuff.

However, he's got that one sounding like a box of angry little bees, and not like a Mesa at full throttle.

I gotta agree on all points... The video for the Mesa EQ pedal that came out a few months ago sounded equally horrible. Hopefully it all boils down to the player, as I want to be excited about these.

 

[László]

I gotta agree on all points... The video for the Mesa EQ pedal that came out a few months ago sounded equally horrible. Hopefully it all boils down to the player, as I want to be excited about these.

It's probably how it's set up, but this video really doesn't sound good. And they're using what appears to be a Royer mic on the amp, which is a good mic.

In any case, the demo is awful. Any amp-like quality the pedal might have is completely missing.

 

[rubalup]

It's probably how it's set up, but this video really doesn't sound good. And they're using what appears to be a Royer mic on the amp, which is a good mic.

In any case, the demo is awful. Any amp-like quality the pedal might have is completely missing.

+1

thats my definiton for bad tone

 

[andy474x]

I've heard some other pretty bad demos of these Mesa pedals, I think this current pedal line is a flop. This is actually probably the best one I've heard... yikes. To me, the high gain Mesa sound of a recto is a raw, girthy, ripping distortion, and then you have the more liquid sounding drive of Santana tones and the Mark series. Granted, I'm far from an expert, but these sound nothing like that, very fizzy.

Nothing personal Corey! Still love checking out the content you post, keep 'em comin!

 

[CoreyT]

No problem Andy.
I find a lot of the vids on line sound not so good sometime, and a lot of it can be chalked up to how YouTube compresses them for their servers to save space.

 

[László]

I've heard some other pretty bad demos of these Mesa pedals, I think this current pedal line is a flop.

The ones on the Mesa site are better for most of the pedals, and certainly sound different for this one, though in an equally un-good way in the other direction with a 7-string high gain demo that made me scratch my head but at least sounds like a gained up Mesa in a way.

No problem Andy.
I find a lot of the vids on line sound not so good sometime, and a lot of it can be chalked up to how YouTube compresses them for their servers to save space.

I doubt this one's the data compression.

N Stuff did Mesa no favors with this demo. The tone balances are way off, it just sounds horrid. I'm going to guess that whoever set this up lost all of his high frequency hearing or something, cranked the treble on the amp, and turned off the bass.

In fact, Royer mics tend to exaggerate the low end and roll off the high end when they're that close to the speaker cab.

But you can hear the guy's voice sounds normal. So it's not the YouTube data compression.

 

[prsrocker1988]

The Mesa pedals are really good, and I'm not a Mesa gain kinda guy (I tend to hang in the vintage 70s rock zone) but the Flux Drive is a great overdrive for ANY of my amps - Blackface and Tweeds mostly but still - it gives a nice liquid gain - better for solos but really good OD nonetheless.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

N Stuff did Mesa no favors with this demo.

Well, dude in this video is just trying to cop a Metallica tone with that horrid "V" setting. Check out what Mesa actually calls it themselves, they call it "The Fabled V" setting, "fable" as in: it's a lie.

There are several reasons why everybody who tries this falls short on sounding like Master of Puppets, but one of the big reasons is that by dumping the 750hz control and boosting 240hz you're barely effecting the range of "scoop" in those tones which is centered more in the 400hz range, and cranking 6600k on any amp that isn't dark sounding already is of course gonna "bring out the bees" in your tone.

Check out the 7-string vid that perplexes Les, and which I find to be a way closer to usable tone for that music, and you'll see that the middle slider is barely down a few db and the highs are attenuated on the eq too. I personally feel that doing any additive eq above 4k on these types of tones is a bad idea, and in fact I mostly dump everything above 8k to keep the sizzle away, and to leave space for voice intelligibility (if you have a singer) and cymbals (if your band has a drummer).

I used to record an ass-ton of heavy bands with crappy gear and no money, and a few of the things I would try to do to get them sounding closer to WMD guitar tones were to keep an eye (ear) on 96-80hz for the bottom, 400hz for mids, and 4k for the highs (or edge). YMMV, IMO, etc.

 

[CoreyT]

OK< here is another pedal from Mesa with NStuff Music doing the review again.
See if this pedal is any better thank the first Meas one they reviewed.

Mesa Engineering Flux Five Overdrive | N Stuff Music Product Review