Gibson "Brings Back" the Falcon Series of Amplifiers, redesigned by Mesa Boogie

[tbonesullivan]

8 hours ago, scottcald said:

Or give you a diagram of what goes where. 

I have some of them, but getting Mesa to GIVE you one is a pain. I don't know what secrets they think they are keeping that anyone with time can't figure out with the board itself. They also tend to use pretty small pads, and the board layouts often don't make any logical sense at times. Like, "why is the next component in the chain half way across the board". They also love to use these plastic nylon standoffs for their boards, which I guess is ok, but you need to make them easily available to anyone who wants to repair amps. Then there is their love of carbon comp resistors in the screen grids.

A lot of the issues with Lyle at Psionic Audio has is that they are overpriced for what they are, and tout themselves as the end all be all, but at the same time make amps that are much harder to service than others in that price point. Some of that is from the huge amount of features and necessary muting relays, but other times enough is enough. I will say though that the worst Mesa Boogies both Psionic Audio and Brad's Guitar garage worked on had all been screwed up by previous bad tech work.

Too many "amp techs" try to repair stuff they shouldn't be, and Mesa amps are built more like electronics than old school amplifiers. They are not the amp that someone who is used to working on nothing but PTP, eyelet board, and turret board amps should be going near.

Then there is some criticism I see regarding parts availability for amplifiers that were made 30 years ago. Mesa Doesn't make pots, and they love to use lots of push pull pots, which unfortunately sometimes are no longer made by the supplier. Saying that any company should have parts for an amp discontinued that long is kinda nuts.

[Biz Prof]

I bought a V-Twin preamp pedal during the first production run in the early/mid '90s.  It developed a problem with a bank of ICs within a couple of months, and after some haggling by phone, Mesa agreed to ship me the ICs and allow an authorized service center do the repair.  For some reason, they initially insisted I send it back to Petaluma with no guarantee as to when I'd get it back.  Eventually, I quit gigging and it got boxed up with other pieces of my gear for 20 or so years.

When I pulled it out to noodle with it a couple of years ago,  an indicator LED had quit working and it produced no signal. Upon searching the web, I found that Mesa had never published a schematic for the V-Twin.  Nothing. Nada.  I did find a bootleg schematic made by a hobbyist, but it had several errors in it. Subsequent inspection by two different audio electronics techs yielded pessimistic diagnoses. Both said that while individual component values suggested healthy parts, the circuit was so exceedingly complex for its intended purpose that they'd likely spend hours disassembling the board to look for trace fractures or other easter eggs. 

I put lt back in my pedal tote and haven't worried with it since. I will say that BITD it sounded glorious on the blue channel into my old Marshall. Mesa makes cool stuff, but I think I prefer the early Mk circuits to the more blinged out modern stuff.

[django49]

My go to Mesa amp is the Blue Angel. It has a "Mojo Module" that came covered in black epoxy, seemingly to protect their "tone secret." Since I love the amp, I am hard pressed to call it a bad thing.

That said, I did have a problem with one of my Blue Angels a while back. I did find a great local tech who traced the issue to "something inside that glob." He did some sort of work to bypass it......Cannot say what else he did to the circuit. But it seemed as good as new thereafter.

[tbonesullivan]

22 hours ago, django49 said:

My go to Mesa amp is the Blue Angel. It has a "Mojo Module" that came covered in black epoxy, seemingly to protect their "tone secret." Since I love the amp, I am hard pressed to call it a bad thing.

That said, I did have a problem with one of my Blue Angels a while back. I did find a great local tech who traced the issue to "something inside that glob." He did some sort of work to bypass it......Cannot say what else he did to the circuit. But it seemed as good as new thereafter.

Wow.. I had never seen pictures of the internals of a Blue Angel until now, but what the heck? They covered it in a big black block? I have a Maverick, released about the same time, and there is nothing like that inside of it. From what I have read online just now, it's a Mesa 5 band EQ circuit set flat, because it improves the tone?

[RobB]

8 hours ago, tbonesullivan said:

I have a Maverick, released about the same time, and there is nothing like that inside of it. From what I have read online just now, it's a Mesa 5 band EQ circuit set flat, because it improves the tone?

I wonder about that. The EQ on my .50cal + has a cool, “bump”, in the flat position that is not unpleasant. Seems to sound best with a slight mid-boost, though. I HATE the sucked-mids, Mark EQ tone. 

[LucSulla]

They should bring back the Mark III with a volume knob for Channel 2.