Anyone else own a Mesa F50?

[War_in_D]

I picked one of these up about three months ago locally for a really reasonable price because the person selling it said that it had a "crackling/static" noise in it. My first throught wasa bad tube, or dirty tube sockets so I took a chance on it thinking I could clean the sockets and replace a tube and be good to go. Well, two tube socket cleanings later and new/different tubes all the way around and it still has that noise so I guess I'm going to have to take it to a tech to have it looked at. That's not a big deal to me, because I got it worth the money.

My question for other F50 owners is this though.. Is your amp UNGODLY loud? I'm fortunate that I have a place that I can turn amps up if I need to, but this thing is blowing my head off with the gain sitting at about noon, and the master just barely cracked open. I have it sitting on one of those angled amps stands, and I can't sit in front of it. It's just too much. I have to be off to the side, and at least 5-6' away before it becomes bearable. The clean side is not as touchy with the gain/master settings and I can run the gain at about 9am on the dial and the master at about 11am and while it's a bit loud.. it's not obnoxiously loud like the gain side it. This is with the Contour switch off. Is this normal for these?

 

[Gibsonchild]

I have a DC-3, which was the predecessor to the F-series. It’s had an intermittent crackle and pop since new, and I was told it’s due to something in the switching system. I’ve never bothered to fix it because it only happens in specific configurations that I never use.

As far as the loudness goes… if it’s anything like my DC-3, it only has 3 volume settings. Off, unusably quiet, and pretty damn loud. I played thru an F-30 and F-50 back when they were new, and I seem to remember the 50 being pretty loud as well.

 

[War_in_D]

Yup, sounds like this F50.. there ain't a whole lot of turning of the master knob before it goes from off to Armageggon.

I tried jumpering the effects loop to see if the knob back there would have any effect on the overall loudness (ala Splawn loop master), but it didn't. However, it did seem to be quieter and I didn't hear the cracklin/static. I'm going to either look into putting an EQ with a level control in the loop, or possibly building a passive volume knob to throw in there to act as a master volume.

 

[Gibsonchild]

If your comfortable opening up the amp (and you know how to work on them safely), pull the chassis and check the FX loop jacks to make sure that they’re clean. If the crackle went away when you plugged into the FX loop, it could possibly be a dirty contact on the jacks causing the problem.

 

[Gibsonchild]

Also, that amp has a parallel FX loop, so you can’t insert any type of master volume control unless you have it re-wired to a series loop.