Mesa Boogie F-30 combo - a fire breather in a modest combo

bobbyd

New member
I love Mesa amps. my rig in the late 80s and early 90s was two Mesa MK III heads, two mesa 4x12s loaded with black shadows, and the rig split into stereo with the TC 1210 spatial expander and 2290 delay. That was a fucking AMAZING sounding rig.

Fast forward to now, Mesa has dozens of amps. You name it, Mesa has probably tried it.

I ignored the F series amps for some reason. I think I tried one, and it was dull and uninspiring. Recently I was surfing craigslist looking for tranny hookers, I mean looking at the gear classifieds and saw "Mesa F30 combo, broken, $150"

i couldn't pass it up. drove down to the city to pick it up, and when i tested it out i noticed that there is a switch to turn the speaker off soyou can record direct - I flipped the switch and WALA!!! the amp was working fine.

But the dude who was selling it said "it's cool man, jjust give me the $150 and we're all good".....it's freaking CHRISTMAS in OCTOBER!

the F-30 has quite simply the best sounding CLEAN channel of any mesa I have ever heard. It's juicy and bouncy and a joy to play. reverb sounds good, and that clean channel loves pedals.

the dirty channel has it's own set of controls, which is huge, especially since the F series amps do not have the graphic EQ option.

cranking up the dirt channel and the amp COMES ALIVE. the basic dirt channel is very Marshall-flavored. tone controls are REALLY sensitive - start at noon and watcjh your bass, it can get flubby faster than my fat ass ex wife running to catch the ice cream man.

once you get your sound tuned in with the dirt channel, then you have the CONTOUR channel - to me, it sounds like kicking in the graphic EQ and another gain stage. the amp comes alive and gives you that molten liquid sustain and gain that put Boogie on the map.

love love love the 2 EL84 output section - and this amp is so good it makes me want to check out the 100watt head. :rock:
 
Am a few hundered pages into A Feast for Crows right now..... and feeling the urge to slow down.

When is the 5th book due anyways?
 
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