Acoustic Brand Mesa Amp

[billhart22]

1980's ACOUSTIC Brand G100T-112 TUBE MESA SPK GUITAR AMP G60T

Looks like one mean machine for Mesa fans. I remember in the early 70's Acoustic Brand amps ruled the concert auditoriums (way more expensive than Marshalls). I could be wrong. It looks interesting though.

Ebay

So what is your guys opinion of this??

Bill

[kenjones]

I had one of the heads with a 4X12. One of the worst amps I've ever experienced. The thing was completely lifeless.

The band I was in bought two full stacks of those Acoustics back in the 80's before I joined the band. One of the guitarists in the band received a big inheritance and blew it all at Texas Tom's Music Emporium in Houston. He outfitted the entire band, bought a huge PA, guitars, etc. They painted one of the stacks flat black and replaced the grill cloth with black grill cloth. I ended up with an all-brown half stack and ended up trading it back to one of the guys in the band for one of the black 4X12's. I actually still have the 4X12 - it's been sitting in my studio being utilized as a shelf!

[billhart22]

Wasn't Acoustic sold out (at least their amp division) in the mid to late 70's? I could be wrong. (I changed some of the wording in my topic message)

[alpep]

the 165 is a killer amp. I had one for a long time but sold it about 6 months ago.

they had nothing to do with mesa except they stole their design for that amp.

tube and ss switchable rectifier wow!

[marcnorth]

I used 2 Acoustic 370 bass amps back in the 70's. Those things were heavy as hell. (200 lbs) My brother still has both of them. He uses one of the heads for his keyboards and both of the folded 18's for his sub woofers.

Back when I bought them they came with a life time warranty. I had to get one head fixed after a generator malfunction at an outdoor gig, other than that they are still going strong.

I still have a 140 bass head and a 150 guitar head but the speaker cabinets are long gone.

[tomteriffic]

Their solid-state stuff was dead-nuts reliable and sounded very good for what it was. And the 360 bass amp was the only real competition an SVT had. Besides, if the 360 didn't exist, the only ever decent fuzz bass track ever recorded wouldn't have been (Larry Graham on Sly's "Dance To The Music").

Having said that, I had two of those Acoustic Mesa wannabee's over the years, both full stacks. One was given to me (little wonder why) and the other I bought for a pittance, with the intention of flipping it. Those had to be the most disappointing amps I've ever owned. Flat, lifeless, almost like you had to pick a fight with it to get it to do anything at all. The second one I had sat in a pawnshop for 3-4 years before anybody sprang for it. I forget what I got for it when I took it in, but the shop overpaid.

By contrast, I had a 150 with a 6 x 10 cabinet that, as a clean amp, was tough as nails and sounded fabulous. I just couldn't justify keeping it at the time, though.

Here's my theory:

When the Acoustic Control Corporation was in it's heyday, doing the black and blue solid-state amps, they built the hell out of them and they sounded great because of that. As chance would ave it, Aspen Pittman was working for them at the time. As is the way with musical instrument companies of the day, they got gobbled up by another larger "holding" company who wanted to get into the biz.

Shortly after this takeover, at a meeting, the subject of cutting costs came up. One suggestion was to make the power cord 6 feet long instead of 10. You may remember those big chrome knobs that those amps had on the back, to wind up that long honkin' cord around. Aspen protested, saying "If you shorten that power cord, you'll be out of business in three years". Well, they did, and they were. Not because of the power cord but because of the compromising attitude and other corners they cut along the way, resulting from that compromising attitude.

The brown tube models were Acoustic's very last gasp at amp building, and by that time, the corner cutting was too far gone for them to survive. Some of that last production batch as also rebranded as late-generation Kustoms. They sucked too.

[DavidE]

1980's ACOUSTIC Brand G100T-112 TUBE MESA SPK GUITAR AMP G60T

Looks like one mean machine for Mesa fans. I remember in the early 70's Acoustic Brand amps ruled the concert auditoriums (way more expensive than Marshalls). I could be wrong. It looks interesting though.

Ebay

So what is your guys opinion of this??

Bill

I remember trying one back in the day. My recollection is that it sounded like crap.

[billhart22]

Here's my theory:

When the Acoustic Control Corporation was in it's heyday, doing the black and blue solid-state amps, they built the hell out of them and they sounded great because of that.

The black and blue ones with the horn speakers in them....those are the ones that I am referring to. I used to get all excited to go to a concert and see a wall of them.

Since some people have Acoustic heads here, it would really be cool to see some pics of them.

[tomteriffic]

Yeah, some of them had horns. Those were better suited to PA or keyboard use. If you accidentally got in front of one of those with a guitar being pumped through it, you could easily get a hole drilled in your head from ear to ear . Both time I saw The Doors they had a wall of 'em. Loud and clean. And loud.

[murkat]

1980's ACOUSTIC Brand G100T-112 TUBE MESA SPK GUITAR AMP G60T

Looks like one mean machine for Mesa fans. I remember in the early 70's Acoustic Brand amps ruled the concert auditoriums (way more expensive than Marshalls). I could be wrong. It looks interesting though.

Ebay

So what is your guys opinion of this??

Bill

When I was 19, I thought they were cool..... I have a komet now.

[marcnorth]

I forgot I still have one of these too.

[billhart22]

I forgot I still have one of these too.

Wow!! What would a guy need to make that thing run?? It's like pretty major cool. It is really thick looking...does it have any pre-amps or poweramps built in? Or does it just connect to poweramps?

It even has a real VU meter on it.

That sure takes a guy back a few years Just looking at that gives me "Concert Ring"

Thanks,

Bill

[marcnorth]

Built in power, all you have to do is add speakers.

These were made so you could string them together for more channels.

[Gino]

I had them all! G 60 T, then 164 and finally 165. The 165 had a hardwood cabinet which made the amp sound a bit brighter than it's brothers. But they all were VERY dark in the lead channel and if you didn't want to sound like Carlos all the time it was annoying over time. They had a very fenderish clean channel, though. I got rid of the 165 when I got my Boogie Mk II b and I haven't shed a tear ever since. Kind of synthetic sounding but a lot cheaper than Boogies back then.

There used to be another nice tube amp back then, a German make by the name of Kitty Hawk. The guys who built it sold Dumbles in Germany and their Kitty Hawk Standard amp was pretty much a Dumble Overdrive clone - and a pretty good one, too. Like to get my hands on one of those, but they hardly turn up anywhere over here.

Gino

[Hamer Bass Head]

I had them all! G 60 T, then 164 and finally 165. The 165 had a hardwood cabinet which made the amp sound a bit brighter than it's brothers. But they all were VERY dark in the lead channel and if you didn't want to sound like Carlos all the time it was annoying over time. They had a very fenderish clean channel, though. I got rid of the 165 when I got my Boogie Mk II b and I haven't shed a tear ever since. Kind of synthetic sounding but a lot cheaper than Boogies back then.

There used to be another nice tube amp back then, a German make by the name of Kitty Hawk. The guys who built it sold Dumbles in Germany and their Kitty Hawk Standard amp was pretty much a Dumble Overdrive clone - and a pretty good one, too. Like to get my hands on one of those, but they hardly turn up anywhere over here.

Gino

Does anyone remember the legend and mitchell amps? they were both natural wood with cane grills.... a bandmate of mine in about 1980 had a legend 65 with 2x12 celestions. It was ungodly loud!

[Nuclear Wessel]

Does anyone remember the legend and mitchell amps? they were both natural wood with cane grills.... a bandmate of mine in about 1980 had a legend 65 with 2x12 celestions. It was ungodly loud!

I remember both. The Legend amps were tube preamp/solid state power amp. Supposedly they sounded pretty decent.

I stopped at my parents' house last week and got my old Mitchell head out of my old room and took it home. It hasn't been turned on in many years. I scavenged the tubes at some point to put in another amp. I got the head in a trade in about 1985. Some previous owner had modded it. He didn't like the push pull swiches for boost and bright on two of the knobs so he had two position switches installed on the faceplate of the amp for those. Problem is he replaced one of the volume knobs with a linear taper pot so the volume jumps drastically. I cleaned it up yesterday, and I'm gonna put tubes in it (a quartet of 6L6's is on their way but I haven't got them yet - I didn't have any extras laying around), fire it up and see how it sounds compared to my SuperSonic and Genz Benz El Diablo.

If it sounds any good, I'll look for an audio taper pot to use for the volume knob.

I pulled the chassis out and it's all point to point wired, like a boutique amp!

From what I remember, the amp had plenty of gain available. It has dual cascading gain knobs like the early Mesa Boogies that Mitchell was trying to compete with. Should be interesting to see whether I like the tones it produces.