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Mesa F-series Lounge. Come on in and share your secrets.


Dann'sTheMan

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Hey Brothers,

This is a thread for those interested in Mesa's stealth amp, and wondering how to get the most of them live, when recording or at home.

Tommi Inkila has been wowing everyone with his fantastic clips, and he suggested that such a thread would be cool to exchange production ideas, have a tube-discussion and especially hear experiences with the F-series in a live situation.

So share your experiences, and help the brothers (and sisters) here get the very best out of the Mesa F-series! http://img3.harmony-central.com/acapella/ubb/smile.gif

Big smiles,

Andy.

P.S. The F-series Lounge is already a one-stop shop for information, now it's a one-stop shop for clips too! http://img3.harmony-central.com/acapella/ubb/thumb.gif

_______________________________________


F-series Clip Library

Clean
F-50 - Until You Suffer Some - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Until You Suffer Some (Direct) - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Amazing Dissonance - musicdog400
F-50 - Eminence Screaming Eagle Open back test - jrc6
F-50 - VIDEO: Soon and Very Soon - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - VIDEO: Overture - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Clean Sample - Surfcaster
F-50 - Blues - Surfcaster
F-30 - Clean - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Clean (Direct - PODXTL Cab+Mic Sim) - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Stereo Clean - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Clean - Roosevelt


Low Gain
F-50 - You're In Love - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - I Want To Live With You - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - VIDEO: Mary Had A Baby - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - VIDEO: The Trumpet Shall Sound - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Sultans - Surfcaster
F-50 - Koin - musicdog400
F-100 - Haunting - hal9000
F-100 - One Night's Sleep - hal9000
F-50 - Classic 6L6 Boutique Drive - Dann'sTheMan
F-30 - Come Around - Bi-Polar
F-30 - Strumming and arpeggiating - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Stereo Noodling - Antti Loponen


Medium Gain
F-50 - Revelation - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Is It Alright To? - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Fisher Of Men - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Ascension - Surfcaster
F-50 - Medium Gain Sample - Surfcaster
F-30 - Singing Lead - Takis aka Mr. Blues
F-100 - Strong Woman - hal9000
F-30 - Feeling Free - Bi-Polar
F-30 - Armchair Soldiers - Bi-Polar
F-30 - Oblivion - Bi-Polar
F-30 - Overdrive - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Stereo Drive - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Stereo Crunch - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Stereo Lead - Antti Loponen
F-50 - 647 Elm Street - musicdog400
F-50 - Voodoo Child - mangojeep66
F-50 - Purple Haze - mangojeep66
F-50 - Two Notes - musicdog400
F-100 - Recording Tests - snakum



High Gain
F-50 - From This Moment - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - I Will Be Here For You - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Place In This World- Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - So Help Me God - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Downfall-like Crunch - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Classic High Gain Mike Placement test - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Midnight Jam (Direct)- Surfcaster
F-50 - Deflep- Surfcaster
F-50 - High Gain Sample - Surfcaster
F-50 - Shut Up - Jacks Down featuring doggage5050
F-50 - The Plaque - mrelusive
F-50 - Eastern 50 - mrelusive
F-100 - Dig - hal9000
F-30 - Digital Times - Bi-Polar
F-30 - Shredding with wah and delay - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Drive (Direct - PODXTL Cab+Mic Sim) - Antti Loponen
F-30 - Murder In A Tuxedo music page (CLING TO and ONE MINUTE are both F-30....) - Japetus
F-30 - Dirty w/Contour - Roosevelt
F-50 - Bury You ---- False Positive - John Denver
F-30 - VIDEO: Drunk and having Fun - RonniePentatonic
F-30 - VIDEO: Suhr and PRS Jam - RonniePentatonic



Metal
F-50 - Sneak Peaker - Tommi Inkila
F-50 - Building The Mood - Tommi Inkila
F-50 - Seveno - Tommi Inkila
F-50 - Metal Riffin' - Dann'sTheMan
F-50 - Exile - Surfcaster
F-50 - Exile (boosted) - Surfcaster
F-50 - Detuned Riff (Direct) - Surfcaster
F-50 - Amp-on-loan Metal - Rock_Borg
F-50 - Early HB Recordin' & Widdlin' - Dann'sTheMan
F-30 - Various Metal & Hard Rock Clips - andershoeg
F-100 - Sludge (direct) - hal9000
F-100 - Infinite War (direct) - hal9000
F-100 - It Is That Way (direct) - hal9000




F-series Settings Archive

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y34/afraiddave/hal9000sF-SeriesAuditionSettingsrevA.jpg

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Let me kick off with a tip that may be useful Live for integrating an F-series into a MIDI set up. I've posted this information before, but this thread is certainly a good place to document this.

I have made up a custom cable to allow me to switch my Amp and my FX Unit with one stomp on my MIDI footcontroller. I used it to switch live, for example, from a clean tone with fat chorus, to a thick crunch tone with Delay and Chorus - all without tap dancing. cool.gif

Check out the cable diagram here. The F-series also uses a similar 5 pin DIN, but the pins are wired slightly differently - they are:

Pin 1 - Ground
Pin 4 - Channel 1/2 toggling
Pin 2 - Contour On/Off
Pin 5 - Reverb On/Off
Pin 3 - Not Used

They work like this, whenever a "Function" Pin is connected to Ground (Pin 1), the function of that Pin is selected i.e. to toggle between Channels 1 and 2, connect and disconnect Pins 1 and 4; to switch Contour On and Off, connect and disconnect Pins 2 and 1; to switch Reverb On and Off, connect and disconnect Pins 5 and 1. You can check this yourself by pulling the cable out of the Mesa footswitch, and connecting these pins, two at a time, with a piece of wire (you aren't likely to harm anything).
At the other end of the cable, I don't have a stereo jack (Tip, Ring, Sleeve), but rather mono jacks (Tip, Sleeve). I suspect it will be the same connection on many MIDI Switchers. All of the Sleeves must connect to Ground (Pin1). All of the Tips will connect to the Function Pins (4, 2 and 5).
adapt%205-pin%20DIN%20schem.jpg
Back at the other end of the cable, I used a 5 pin DIN socket so that I could simply unplug the Mesa cable from the footswitch, and plug it into my custom cable instead. You can see my custom cable here:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2251/...6fc69179_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2404/...045d3988_b.jpg

Big smiles,

Andy.

F-series Miscellaneous Tips

hal9000F-SeriesMixPotMasterRevB.jpg

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Wow, this thread started quickly... I was just imagining that something like this would be cool... and now here it is smile.gif

At this point I would like everyone to participate, F-owner or not.

Here's my findings so far (a week with F-50) ...

Andy's instructions are really handy... I managed to do that cable right on the third time... mostly the problem was that I wasn't paying enough attention and the cable I was soldering had different colors on the cable.

I'd like to also address that F-series is 3-channel amp in real-life. The contour switch is so carefully tuned that the tone controls don't need any altering... at least in live situation where little tone alteration doesn't bring much in to the sound like in studio situation.

Then some findings about tubes... beforehand I were told that the stock tubes aren't really good on Mesa... at least on F-series that doesn't show to me at anyway. Still, I'm an experimentalist so I had to put in JJ electronics 12AX7 on V1 that supposedly does wondrous things on Mesa amps... especially in Rectifier series. The JJ tightened the sound, gave more defined high-end and increased the gain (and hum slightly). I can imagine that those qualities are something to thrive for in Rectifier series. F-series doesn't necessarily benefit on those aspects, because I find it to be more defined than recto. Of course JJ gives meaner sound to F-series, but the amp might lose some of it's fatness that appeal to many. I'll be getting some tested Svetlanas (Billington Gold) and chinese tubes (Golden Dragon) next week... I'll update you on that once I get some results that are saying-worthy, it may take a while.

Production: I've received many thanks about my production quality, big thanks for that... for a year I have studied recording all the time, but my findings are somewhat sad truths.

1. quality amps and instruments
2. quality recording equipment

After that you don't have to be the a magic engineer for capturing great sounds (of course that helps).

I may sound quite harsh, but I'll take purposefully a little bit aggressive approach to this subject so please bare with me smile.gif

There has to be some differences between, let's say, a 60-bucks rec-preamp (actually ART Tube MP on that price range has great value) with a 1000-bucks machine.

Somewhere there's a point where the price/better sound -ratio comes quite bad, but to a certain point spending more money to the equipment is well worth the money. Just like in guitars... I'm getting sidetracked smile.gif Anyway if you are really interested in recording, some of the money you wanted to spent on guitar gear should be spended on recording gear instead. This way your recording equipment grows along with the guitar equipment and you are able to capture the real sound of the amp finally.

How to change the overall sound with other stuff

1. mic choice
2. mic placement (took 3-4 hours for me)
3. the mix (there can be done some magic, but this shouldn't be the place where everything happens... fix it in the mix, I wouldn't sign on that)
4. tube choices, but this starts to get in to the territory of nit-picking

My SM57 is straight on axis directly to grille... 4" from left of the cab's edge and 6" from the bottom (bottom left element on my 4x12").

Bonus... if you want a massive guitar wall... double-tracking (or even super-stereo, 2 tracks on left and right) is a necessity. This takes some skill, because the playing has to be tight... it's also very effective way to improve your playing.

I think also that compression is a must for that guitar wall... at the moment I'm using freeware VST plugin from www.kjaerhusaudio.com called Classic Compressor... their other plugins are good too, like the limiter. My settings are normally something like this:

Threshold: -20dB
Ratio: 4:1
Soft compression
Attack: around 7-8ms
Release: 70-90ms
Gain: set with taste

Also it's wise to listen your mixes through monitors you're familiar with... with two different volume levels. If it sounds good quiet, it sounds great louder biggrin.gif Listening through headphones is also recommendable.

It's often considered that a tube amp should be recorded with almost full volume and volcano-hot tube. With at least my F-50 that's not true. I recorded my latest clip with volume at 9:00 o'clock. Of course, the sound will most likely get even better when I turn the amplifier louder, but didn't find this as effective as I assumed.

There's some of my thoughts... quite long text, hopefully there's something usable within those lines. I'm happy to elaborate if I can smile.gif

Oh, here's my latest clip: http://koti.mbnet.fi/ojakola/Tommi I...g The Mood.mp3

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One point about mic choice:

I have completely tested two dynamic mics for guitar recording and live use: Shure SM57 and Audix D3.

The minus of SM57 is that it starts to cut the frequencies already around 400Hz so it has to be carefully placed if you want the full bass frequencies created by the proximity effect. That's one of the reasons why I prefer it directly on the cab's cloth (grille)... in live situation 1"-2" away could be reasonable if you don't want to lose the bass by turning the knobs on the amplifier. This may be something that you have to fight with the mixer/engineer if they have they own preferences.

The plus of SM57 is it's upper-end "snap" quality that is often desired... also it gives the guitar some vocal qualities.

Finally, I'm not sure if I remember the numbers correctly, but it gives you some clues what I'm talking about:
If you happen to use SM57 and a cab with Celestion Vintage30's you get side-effect that can be good or bad. The resonant peak of V30-cab is somewhere around 2.8kHz and the resonant peak of SM57 is around 5.7kHz... that's close to having to octaves "ringing" at the same time (2.8 * 2 = 5.6 ~ 5.7) ... so those frequencies are emphasized with SM57 and V30 -combination. It's always present and very hard to get rid of if wanted. To some people this actually is the magic tone characteristics that they thrive for.

Audix D3 is more hifi mic with it's frequency range (about 50hz-19kHz). The sound is quite balanced and full already so it's not so critical to place. This mic could be a solution if you have some problems in getting the bass out of the traditional SM57. In live situation Audix is quite easy to work with because it doesn't pickup other instruments easily like drums from behind. Also the even response is a nice feature, because it gives more room to mix-man to work with. Sometimes in live situation SM57s snapness may come quite annoying to the audience, therefore Audix is nowadays quite common equipment in gig-places around here.

Hopefully I get to use some other mics so I can form some thoughts about them smile.gif

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Great post tommi,

I like to mix and match different mic's when recording as well. I prefer to use condenser mic's on the rhythm tone, and dynamics with leads. The condenser's preserve the low mid & fullness of the guitar tone. The dynamics help sharpen the tone, and allow the lead to cut through.

I have both the Shure 57 & the audix d3. The D3 can easily take an SPL beating, even without a 10 db switch. I find the low mids are recorded better with the 57. The D3 is very clear, much clearer than a 57, but it has a unique flavor that I don't prefer for rhythm guitars. I think the low end is left out.

I have been experimenting with different speakers. I find the celestions are better for the F50, since they have more midrange punch. The F50 is fairly dark, and once the 6L6's kick in, it gives you a more balanced mid range tone. Therefore a speaker with a lot of mids (celestion v30, cl 80, green backs) will balance things out, and allow it to cut through the mix.

I have been trying the patriot series speakers (black powder & screaming eagle). It definitely offers a different tone, more dark & warmer. With both speakers, the F50 takes on more of a fender tone. You lose a lot of the nasal buzz of the celestions. The black powder is a great speaker with a heavy dose of low mid punch! Better suited for the F50 open back, as the close back has too much low mid punch & sounds too dark.

The screaming eagle, on the other hand, works much better. It is very, very bright, and helps better define the F50 high gain. It may be too bright for some people, but records like a dream. It makes the clean channel even more "poppy," and "bell like." It definitely has more of a fender vibe, bright & snappy.

The countor is a great channel, but I think there is too much bass!!! I typically back off the bass eq to about 10 O clock, crank the mids to 3 o clock, and crank the highs to 2-3 O clock. The high gain tone becomes much more clearer. This is especially true if you are cranking the amp, and pushing those 6l6's!

I hope to explore more with tube options as well. I am looking into the THD yellow jackets. Perhaps I can get an F30 sound out of the F50. I will post results in the future.

sorry for the long post

jrc

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Don't be sorry for long post jrc! I like those long texts cool.gif

Few comments to your text... nothing negative smile.gif

I will be having two mikes on the cabinet when I start to record our upcoming. Shure SM57 and one condenser (Rode NT-2A most likely).

That combination gives me the full tonal range... I'm a little bit worried though, because condenser will take some of the rooms sound and I like that "in your face" type of sound... well, we are going to see how that will sound rolleyes.gif

BTW, your perception of feeling that dynamics will help you cut may come from the "snappiness" I mentioned in SM57.

I slightly disagree with you about the D3, but this may be caused by seeing the thing from an different angle. D3 is so even that it makes it feel to lack some bass and on the other hand it makes it so clear at the same time.

I personally prefer SM57 over D3 when used with F-series voicing... my former amp (now as backup), zenAmp, sounded much better with D3. So that's really case sensitive.

Experimenting with the elements would be cool, but it's out of my budget at the moment and I'm very pleased with those v30's... I'm glad you wrote about your experiences, now I know more, and if I have some questions sometime, I know who to contact smile.gif

Overall I think ie. Nomad is even darker amp from Mesa. Actually I find F to be very bright Mesa. Anyway I have my bass knob set at 11:00 so we are not so far off smile.gif

Let us know how those THD's work. It sounds very promising.

Let's have long posts on this thread and allow all the ideas and perceptions come out cool.gif

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Hei! (finnish hello)

Just wanted to ask something about tubes... a minor thing that's been bothering me.

With the original tubes on my amp I started to get some really strange and loud "squeek" right after note that had a pause after it. Then suddenly the clean side was completely mute, dist was working fine. I put in JJ and the problem was cured.

Today, on practise I thought I heard same, but nanosecond long "squeek" once. It didn't happen for another time or I'm not sure if my ears were tricking me.

I presume this type of thing has something to do with tubes or components related to them. Do you think that it was the tube or could the problem be in the barrels (is that the correct term?) in which the preamp tubes are connected? Can someone describe how it sounds if one of preamp tubes sort of disconnects in the middle of playing. Also, I was wondering if these problems occur when the resonance causes some rumble to the amp and tubes...

Thanks in advance for your thoughts smile.gif

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I use an SM57 also, utilising one of two miking techniques.

The first is the popular on-axis approach, perpendicular with the speaker grill. I keep the mike on axis and move it between the centre of the dust cap and the edge of the cone until I have the right balance of treble and bass. I used this approach for many years both live and recording...

However last Spring, I learnt another technique from a respected Australian sound engineer that was flown in for a satellite TV show I was recording. He positioned the mic near the centre of the speaker, but with the capsule pointing back towards the edge of the cone. The barrel of the microphone making perhaps a 30 degree angle with the speaker grill. I've found this approach results in quite a balanced tone, but perhaps there is less proximity effect. The TV show mixed the audio live before broadcasting 24 hours later, and I was very pleased with the results of this approach.

I certainly recommend experimenting with these approaches, smile.gif

Big smiles,

Andy.

P.S. BTW, Tommi, I've never experienced the squealing and silence symptoms that you described but then I've never touched the stock tubes in my F-50. It may be a "shorting" problem - I was wondering if maybe any of the tube socket contacts might have been damaged when you were experimenting with different tubes? If it happens again, it may be worth having the amp looked at properly so that you can have piece of mind (fwiw, my F-50 has been totally reliable).

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Thanks Andy for your experience on miking!

I'm also familiar with that miking technique... haven't really used it, but I guess that position works nicely on live situation especially. It's easy position, because it's easy to measure where to put the mike.

Thanks for your insight on the tubes... I was really careful when changing the tubes. I think that the bad tube may be the source of the problem most likely and hopefully. Well, there's always a warranty so I have much time to invistigate if there is any real problem. Because Mesas are known to be very reliable and my F-50 is brand new I refuse to believe that the problem lies inside the F-50. That would be too typical (bad luck) for me rolleyes.gif

PS. guerrilla, I hope we are worth of your trust.

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Hmmm... I have made these two clips.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/ojakola/Tommi I...eak Peaker.mp3
http://koti.mbnet.fi/ojakola/Tommi I...g The Mood.mp3

Dann'sTheMan has good clips on his signature ... hal9000 have some... and few other guys on this forum. I guess a search is in order to do here in the forum.

When I was searching clips of F-series, googling didn't do much for me. rolleyes.gif

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Originally posted by Guerrilla
i dont have any secrets.... i rely on you guys.
Maybe I should have entitled this thread, "...share your experiences"? tongue.gif

This thread is meant to be more a relaxed Lounge than an academic exercise. If you have anything to share: settings, anecdotes - then please do. Even if you don't expect it, I'm sure others will find the posts valuable - I've already learnt some new things from both Tommi and jrc6! cool.gif

Big smiles,

Andy.
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one thing i would add, although i'm sure it's apparent to anyone who's spent more than half an hour letting the 50 roar, is that you cant fine tune the amp at high volume levels while standing right next to it.... gotta adjust, step away 10 ft, then repeat.

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it's a fucking hassle to change pre-amp tubes without taking the chassis out of the head cabinet.

the footswitch and power cord jacks are difficult to access.

Dunno if this is just for me or not:

The footswitch.

no led for reverb.

if on clean - 1 green LED
if on lead - NO LEDs
if on contour - 1 red LED that is only on when you access the lead channel.

so it looks weird if I'm rocking out because there are no lights, but there are when I'm on clean.

If I forgot whether I'm on contour mode or not, I can't find out til I turn on the dirt - kind of annoying for live use.

Anyone else getting this or is my footswitch broke (I bougth used)

Loving the amp though, but these are my quibbles.

90rig2-med.jpg

Craig

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I don't have those problems with leds... must be annoying problem.

I agree with you about those tube replaces. The cables are attached firmly for a reason, but I have also felt that they could be differently connected.

I still think that those tubes are easier to replace without dismantling the amp. Takes some nerves though and you have to know in which direction the sockets are. So far the best way for me to change those tubes is to put the F on the floor so that it's frontplate is facing to floor. One tube can be replaced in a minute at the worst... specially the V1 and V2 because they are behind the transformer.

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Cool Hal... that was nice to read... and the picture in the end... I'd want one of those sets. Tan grille looks cool, but I've been dreaming having those cabs with pewter grille. Gold grille looks cool on paper, but I haven't seen any good real-life pics about it... not even on Mesas site.

Do the leds work like that? I guess I must pay some attention to them when I see my baby next time biggrin.gif

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Originally posted by Tommi Inkila
Cool Hal... that was nice to read... and the picture in the end... I'd want one of those sets. Tan grille looks cool, but I've been dreaming having those cabs with pewter grille. Gold grille looks cool on paper, but I haven't seen any good real-life pics about it... not even on Mesas site.

Do the leds work like that? I guess I must pay some attention to them when I see my baby next time biggrin.gif
Like this: hal9000PewterF-100Headandcab.jpg
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Originally posted by Tommi Inkila

save picture as... smile.gif

Yep, I've found that Mesa picture also... looks really nice... I wish someone would order F-amps with every possible combination so we could get more pics eek.gif
If you want to see something that doesn't have a picture, I can make a prototype in no time...
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hal9000! I just couldn't let this go without commenting about your posts in this thread - they are probably the best posts I've ever seen at HCAF, and undoubtedly the most beautiful.

I had hoped that you would join in this thread because you always make such valuable contributions. However, I was completely blown away by your hand-drawn works of art! Neil - you rule! smile.gif

Big smiles,

Andy.

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I'm loving my Custom F-50. Although, I've gone through two sets of power amp tubes in two months. Hopefully it's just a run of bad tubes, but we'll see.

100_1727.jpg


DansTheMan, your post's and enthusiasm contributed to my interest in this amp, thanks very much, it's a tone machine. Thanks also for creating the "Lounge".

Hal9000, I'm considering a POD XT Live, to use in front as an effects processor. Have you tried that configuration? And also, I'm looking for a stand that can put the F-50 as low as possible while facing it almost straight up, similar to a monitor. Can the Quick-Lock stand do that?

Thanks Guys
UJ

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"As far as recording, I use an SM57 close to the grill on one side, another SM57 about 3-4 inches away on the other speaker, and the line-out through a DI box. Surprisingly, the speaker emulated output of the amp adds a lot of bass to the signal, which when added to the mic

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