Sold my Fender Hot Rod amp and Ibanez guitar to pick up this monstrosity yesterday. It's a 50W Mesa/Boogie Stiletto Ace 2x12 Combo.
It's an unbelievably well made amp, built like a tank (it weighs 39kg ?). The colour is "Emerald Bronco" but I prefer to think of it as "Ninja-Turtle Green". ? Fortunately it's built on casters so can be wheeled around, but getting it into the car is another story altogether.
Valves are - 5 x 12AX7, 2 x EL34, 1 x 5U4
Very versatile, it has two channels, three different voicings per channel.
Channel 1: Fat Clean, Tite Clean, Crunch
Channel 2: Crunch, Tite Clean, Fluid Drive
You can also set whether you want to use the rectifier tube or a solid state rectifier on each channel.
The amp also has a "Spongy" setting which drops the voltage slightly and loosens things up for a more vintage sound.
Most important is how the amp sounds, and it sounds f*ckin' glorious! ? Had it at practice last night and the cleans are absolutely beautiful, especially the "Fat Clean" tone. Add a touch of reverb and delay and it's really heavenly stuff. Completely lush but with incredible body and punch to the sound (the closed cab helps there, I think).
The second channel offers all sorts of awesome gain options, but at its heart it has a very Marshall roar to it (by design, this amp is meant to offer up exactly those tones) but can also do a much higher gain as well. I'm going to need to spend a fair amount of time with it and my pedal board to work out my basic tones.
It's all tubes through and through, though strangely it doesn't have reverb (which is fine, I use a Neunaber pedal for that which sounds lovely).
I'm one very happy camper. ? I didn't see myself owning anything like this any time soon, but I got a great deal and couldn't be more pleased. Now to learn to play the guitar some more! ?
I'll be doing some recording of the amp on Sunday, will post some stuff when it's done.
