Finishing the rig/rack w/Mesa Studio pre and repairs/tweaks

[Purpleibby]

Finally finishing my Rack/Rig, this will be a progress thread.....got the last piece of the puzzle/plan....a preamp to do all clean duties and I got the one rep'd to be awesome at it(I'm a sucker for super clean cleans)...a Mesa Studio Preamp. Picked one up and was supposed to be fully functional and in great condition.....gets here and the thing from the outside pretty much as described...but something moving inside. Ends up that the reverb tank was broken off the mounting springs(danging by 2 of them) and the white ground wire was broken off(one of the mounting springs was GONE) ....the kicker is you can tell it was like this before shipping because the inside of the chassis had been worn over time where the tank/assembly has been scratching the inside of the unit, one of the mounting springs was stretched all to hell(inch and a half long) and one of the wires of the transducers had been rubbing up against the ground tab for so long it ate through the insulation. I worked it out with the seller and decided to keep unit and he refunded some off the price I paid(says he didn't know and the reverb worked, I believe him).

I could not get the mounting springs separate so I had to order a new spring reverb assembly from Mesa(and went ahead and got a fresh set of tubes while ordering). Thankfully the wires to the transducers did NOT break off when he had it/in shipping. So I cleaned the inside of the unit til is sparkled(dirty as hell inside), installed the new mounting springs on the old tank...put a dab of epoxy over the exposed wire coming from the transducer and replaced the white ground wire(brittle as shit) with good wire I had, and soldered everything nice and clean..a little rustoleum satin black where needed and some cleaning.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Next step is to test it(crossing fingers guys, wish me luck please...haven't tested the preamp yet, didn't want to turn it on until fixed)...will post back after testing.

Next maintenance will be replacing the dead soldered-on battery in my Roland RSP-550 with a battery clip. After much searching...could not find a decent battery clip for this unit and all of the ones with leads are shit....but I stumbled on to something I'm going to try that looks awesome...found this neat thing...will solder some leads to it and dual lock it on the inside of the RSP-550 chassis.....came in today, tested it for continuity and it looks to work GREAT::

The Rig Before:

 

[Ian1eh]

NICE!!!!! Very cool.....LONG LIVE THE RACK!!

 

[shadow]

Wow nice looking rig! Great ending for the boogie and roland. Does the switchblade switch between the friedman and boogie?

 

[Purpleibby]

NICE!!!!! Very cool.....LONG LIVE THE RACK!!

Right on, thank you man...and YES, LONG LIVE THE RACK!!!!

Wow nice looking rig! Great ending for the boogie and roland. Does the switchblade switch between the friedman and boogie?

Thank you ! The Axess GRX4 on the shelf A/Bs the guitar signal/pedals between amps...an isolation transformer(Lehle P-Split II) is between one of the amp inputs and the GRX4(it used to A/B my Friedman and CAA PT100) I'm in mid process and still have to test the Boogie and keeping fingers crossed. Wish me luck guys on the Mesa that everything is ok. The switchblade handles all of the rack/line level gear and does the effects loop stuff/switching/mixing.

Thanks again!

 

[paulyc]

Great thread ! Good luck with the Mesa !

 

[Purpleibby]

Great thread ! Good luck with the Mesa !

Man, I sincerely appreciate it and I can use it(luck lol)...thank you

 

[Shask]

I have repaired a few of those spring tanks in my days also, lol. Bad design of those things just bouncing around.

Great looking rack!

 

[Purpleibby]

Roland RSP-550 modifications and firmware upgrade. Upgraded the OS/EPROMS to 1.04...did a custom mod for a battery clip WITHOUT removing the board. As you know this unit has a soldered-on, stand-up CR2032...so the solution I came up with was to cut the battery out to leave the legs as long as possible to solder the leads to and install my custom solution:

Soldered on some leads and dual locked it to the inside of the chassis:

Final Product also pictured is new installed EPROMS for OS 1.04:

It's happy now

 

[Purpleibby]

Pedalboard/Midiboard upgrades:

Was always functional(see rig pic at the top for the BEFORE pic of my pedalboard) but wanted to upgrade/build some cables and do proper lengths and get a pedalboard interface and tidy things up more:

Parts are here, Friedman buffer bay/pedalboard interface arrives:

Made a riser and built some nicer cut to length cables:

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A few tie mounts and zip ties later, the finished product(Mission Expression, tap tempo box, Friedman Buffer Bay, Black footswitch for extra controls for the Eventide, Friedman BE100 footswitch

 

[Purpleibby]

I have repaired a few of those spring tanks in my days also, lol. Bad design of those things just bouncing around.

Great looking rack!

Thanks man, seems like a common fault. No big deal to repair thankfully, thankful that Mesa is great for parts/support for their legacy products. Been wanting one of these preamps for a long time....Great sounding preamp....the cleans on this thing are killer, been wanting one for a long time.....I think they're even better than my old 3+SE preamp, and that's saying something! Thanks again.

 

[Ian1eh]

This is cool thread!

So what's the format for the rack? Is it a mono setup with the RSP550 and Eclipse in the loop of the Friedman?

How are you switching in the Studio preamp? I am assuming it is going into the Friedman's power section?....

If you are running this setup in mono, do you fee as though you are missing anything by not running stereo, or wdw?

Thanks

 

[Purpleibby]

This is cool thread!

So what's the format for the rack? Is it a mono setup with the RSP550 and Eclipse in the loop of the Friedman?

How are you switching in the Studio preamp? I am assuming it is going into the Friedman's power section?....

If you are running this setup in mono, do you fee as though you are missing anything by not running stereo, or wdw?

Thanks

Thank you, the thread is on going and will continue til' it's finished

I run the line level effects processors stereo into the switchblade which has mixing capabilities...I mix L/R outputs of the effects to a mono signal(best results this way) into the BE100 return ...and yup I use the Friedman's return as the power amp for the Studio Pre. All the effects processors are run 100% wet and I use the switchblade to mix the dry signal of the BE100/Studio Pre with the effects per preset and run this into the return of the BE100. The expression pedal gives a lot of possibilities in real time control wet/dry mix and volumes, even morphing between fx chains, whatever I want. Oh yes I would definitely benefit from stereo but it sounds great this way and keeps me from having to haul around more cabs and another power amp(gears already turning here lol, one day! )

The great thing is I still have a free pair of outputs from my switchblade for running my my daw through the effects rack, or to run out to a future power amp/cabs for W/D/W. That's the beauty of the switchblade....I can program it to do any of it without losing anything....have dedicated presets for daw mixing, the set up as it is, or running a future W/D/W config. Pretty nifty.

Switchblade 8B ins/outs

Ins:
BE100 Send
Eclipse L out
Eclipse R out
MPX-1 L out
MPX-1 R out
RSP-550 L out
RSP-550 R out
Studio Pre Out

Outs:
BE100 Return
Eclipse L In
Eclipse R In
MPX-1 L In
MPX-1 R In
RSP-550 R In
L Rack output(free)
R Rack output(free)

Thanks again.

Added: With the switchblade I a/b the Friedman BE100 preamp/Studio Pre's outputs per preset....I no longer use the Friedman clean(it's not a bad clean channel by any means, the Studio Preamp's clean is just on another level) that's why the Friedman foot switching doesn't need to be midi controlled...I just have the BE100 footswitch on my board for when I want to switch between BE/HBE modes on the fly.

The Inputs(guitar/pedal shelf) of the BE100 and Studio Pre are also midi a/b'd per preset with loop 4 of the Axess GRX4 on the shelf. When one of the outputs of the preamp are selected, the inputs are switched too...this prevents any possibility of bleed. There's an isolation transformer(Lehle P-Split II) in-line before the Studio Pre's input.

 

[SFW]

The clean channel on the Studio Pre is indeed nice. However, you owe it to yourself to roll it over to the gain channel and enjoy that awesome goodness of the Mesa Mark II C.

 

[Purpleibby]

The clean channel on the Studio Pre is indeed nice. However, you owe it to yourself to roll it over to the gain channel and enjoy that awesome goodness of the Mesa Mark II C.

I appreciate it, thanks Yeah man, that clean channel is awesome....that's what I sought it out for for pretty much....but yeah the gain channel is nice too I most certainly agree, it would be foolish to not take advantage of it for sure. The studio pre seems much more organic than I remember my Triaxis being(not knockin' it, I remember liking it at the time).

I'm probably going to add the footswitches to the board for it(cool to see that mesa still sells the original footswitches for the lead/rhythm and the eq/reverb, I'll probably pick them up eventually, I definitely have space for expansion on my board)...My main gain sounds are more than covered by the BE100....but those Mark gain sounds definitely have their place.

I like the midi a/b of amps while keeping the original footswitches of each amp config for sound/channel switching.

Thank you!

 

[Ian1eh]

This is cool thread!

So what's the format for the rack? Is it a mono setup with the RSP550 and Eclipse in the loop of the Friedman?

How are you switching in the Studio preamp? I am assuming it is going into the Friedman's power section?....

If you are running this setup in mono, do you fee as though you are missing anything by not running stereo, or wdw?

Thanks

Thank you, the thread is on going and will continue til' it's finished

I run the line level effects processors stereo into the switchblade which has mixing capabilities...I mix L/R outputs of the effects to a mono signal(best results this way) into the BE100 return ...and yup I use the Friedman's return as the power amp for the Studio Pre. All the effects processors are run 100% wet and I use the switchblade to mix the dry signal of the BE100/Studio Pre with the effects per preset and run this into the return of the BE100. The expression pedal gives a lot of possibilities in real time control wet/dry mix and volumes, even morphing between fx chains, whatever I want. Oh yes I would definitely benefit from stereo but it sounds great this way and keeps me from having to haul around more cabs and another power amp(gears already turning here lol, one day! )

The great thing is I still have a free pair of outputs from my switchblade for running my my daw through the effects rack, or to run out to a future power amp/cabs for W/D/W. That's the beauty of the switchblade....I can program it to do any of it without losing anything....have dedicated presets for daw mixing, the set up as it is, or running a future W/D/W config. Pretty nifty.

Switchblade 8B ins/outs

Ins:
BE100 Send
Eclipse L out
Eclipse R out
MPX-1 L out
MPX-1 R out
RSP-550 L out
RSP-550 R out
Studio Pre Out

Outs:
BE100 Return
Eclipse L In
Eclipse R In
MPX-1 L In
MPX-1 R In
RSP-550 R In
L Rack output(free)
R Rack output(free)

Thanks again.

Added: With the switchblade I a/b the Friedman BE100 preamp/Studio Pre's outputs per preset....I no longer use the Friedman clean(it's not a bad clean channel by any means, the Studio Preamp's clean is just on another level) that's why the Friedman foot switching doesn't need to be midi controlled...I just have the BE100 footswitch on my board for when I want to switch between BE/HBE modes on the fly.

The Inputs(guitar/pedal shelf) of the BE100 and Studio Pre are also midi a/b'd per preset with loop 4 of the Axess GRX4 on the shelf. When one of the outputs of the preamp are selected, the inputs are switched too...this prevents any possibility of bleed. There's an isolation transformer(Lehle P-Split II) in-line before the Studio Pre's input.

That is WICKED!

Good for you! Collapsing the effects to mono is a good idea as those presets are typically built in stereo.....So, if used in a mono setup, they need to be collapsed to mono, or they don't sound right. Awesome!

 

[Purpleibby]

Update...preamp in, all is good.....moved my trusty Pedal Power 2+ to midi board to power the GCP and Buffer(used to phantom power it from shelf, see pics above)..... added a Friedman Power Grid 10 to the pedal shelf. Since inclusion of Friedman buffer to midi board, changed pedal order on shelf.

Guitar to Friedman Buffer bay, I was using the Koko Boost with it's buffer first inline on the pedal shelf...now it's(Koko) at the end of the chain before the a/b which is done by loop 4 of the Axess GRX 4...best place for it. Friedman buffer is the input buffer to the system and the Koko Boost is the output buffer before A/B loop and ISO transformer.

So guitar to Midi board/Friedman Buffer Bay...then to input of Axess GRX4,

GRX4 loop 1: CS HW 74 Phase 90
GRX4 loop 2: Vintage MXR Flanger
GRX4 loop 3: Xotic SP compressor running at 18 volts now(another small change, love the result)

GRX4 loop 3 output to Sound Sculpture ABCadabra loop
ABCadabra loop: Boss DC-2
Output of ABCadabra to Koko Boost In(buffer on, this is the output buffer for the pedal shelf)
Koko Boost out to GRX4 loop four(for midi controlled A/B to BE100/Studio Preamp inputs)
There's a Lehle PSplit II being used as an isolation transformer between the output of GRX4 and Studio Preamp input....

Space left for "special box" I'm looking for that will complete the pedalboard

 

[Purpleibby]

Back of the Rack wiring/config and more video!

 

[wilbstrange]

Man what a cool rig!
Hey I just picked up a used Roland RSP 550 with the same worn out battery ? issue. Where did you get the battery clips from? I must get that same clip! Did you have to replace the LCD Display? Mine is why fainted and I really want a drop in replacement without having use a resistor to get the correct voltage... would you know where to get that part?

 

[wilbstrange]

Was there a significant improvement w the version 1.04 erpoms?