Timelessness.

[László]

I had the misfortune of wanting to cop Kerry Livgren’s tone on Carry On. Little did I know that he and Tom Scholz (my other idol at the time) achieved those heavenly tones in the studio and almost impossible to duplicate live.

We agree on the “buy quality and you probably won’t suck” method of gear acquisition. It was the precise combination of gear that eluded me for several years. I had a good guitar, a good amp, decent fx, but I wasn’t inspired. Others were impressed, but not me. When the MkIII hit my scene, with channel 3, my world changed forever.

With that said, there was an equal epiphany when I bought my CAD amp. That 3D character that was fabled from boutique builders was there in spades and it took whatever I threw at it and made it sound fantastic. Once I discovered the right OD and distortion box for it (that was about a 2 year deal if I remember correctly), the dial-in period was over. Swapping a cab here or there to match the venue was all that remained. Doug and Jeff @ PRS amp department are artists and geniuses and I thank my lucky stars I took a chance all those years ago.

I was lucky in a way, because from '66 until the time I started law school, guitar tone was honestly a much easier thing to achieve. SG Special > Fender Black Panel Bassman . Fender 212. Simple.

On the other hand, after '70, my keyboard tone required a Hammond. Try schlepping a dual keyboard, old-school Hammond to gigs! It was...not easy.

Mesa made my job re-entering the music world a lot easier by the early '90s. I simply loved that Tremoverb. Guitar > cable > amp. Done. At the time I used delay at the console. But I built a rack of guitar effects eventually, and sometimes actually used them.

The Two-Rock Onyx was an eye-opener in the '00s, but after that it's been HXDA and DG30 for most of what I do. Though I do still like, and use, my Mesa amps. There's plenty of room for what they do in my panoply of tones.

It's good to have choices, I suppose.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Rick, I started gigging in the late 70s and remember how no one would share their tone secrets. I knew what I wanted but had no idea how to get there and advice was non existent. More like, misinformation was the norm. If I had a little of the info available today back in 79, I would have been modding my own Marshalls! Whenever possible, I share anything I know with younger musicians so that struggle isn’t as debilitating. My tone sucked for 5 years straight until I got into Mesa Boogie.

I remember playing a stock JCM 800 in 1978 and then playing a modded one a year later that was owned by the guy who worked at a local music store. When I asked him why his sounded so much better (had way more gain and could sing at low volumes" his answer was "buy one from me and I'll let you talk to my amp tech about modding it like this." He wouldn't tell me anything about what was done to the amp.

 

[andy474x]

Great thread.

I was fortunate to grab my Custom 50 head about 5 years ago, and then fortunate again to stumble on a matching open back pine cab. I don't have a crystal ball, but I think this one will be with me for a long time. It's a shame that the Custom amps got dropped and kind of replaced by the Archon, which don't get me wrong is a great amp, but the Custom is just a dream for live play as well as recording. It has the per channel adjustable lead boost for playing live, and for recording it has presence and depth, lead channel midrange shift, bright switches, really rich with useful features. And, of course, it sounds great - I'll admit, I've made a couple minor changes to the circuit on mine to trim some bass out so I don't have to fight the bass player live, or cut a ton of bass off a recorded track, but that amp is just so dialed in now, it's perfect. I don't think I could make it better if I tried. It also takes pedals like a dream, and it's really the amp that I can count on to put a pedal in front of and get a tone if I can't get it just going straight into the amp. I'm not going to say it can do every sound 100% as well as a whole room full of classic amps, but it's versatile enough to get the job done extremely well. So, that's why it's timeless to me... I just couldn't imagine selling the thing, because I don't think I could find another amp I find so universally applicable.