Mesa Preamp and other pedals ahoy !

Yeah. Sure. I have a problem. An addiction to preamps.

This weeks impulse purchase.... A Mesa v-Twin preamp pedal.

Supposedly a bit like a dual rectifier (I wouldn't know). It has 2x tubes (Mesa ones !!!), a clean channel, a blues channel (clean, edge of breakup, grit and crunch), and a lead channel (mayhem).

It sounds really good as a preamp / ampless rig with its onboard headphone socket. But has outputs for an amp, or poweramp (different levels/voicings apparently).

The only downside.... its HUGE. Its not going to fit on a Nano pedalboard Ha Ha ! It also takes 12v AC 1Amp.... so needs its own powersupply.

I've harvested the tubes and put them into my Triaxis (making matching set of all original Mesa tubes) and popped in some EHX valves (sounded the same). In man-maths this makes the pedal almost free.

Its an excellent pedal. Its a drive pedal. Its a 3 channel preamp to go into a power amp/cab, its got speaker emulation to go straight to a desk or headphones. Its EPIC !

Yippee.

A Carvin Legacy Drive. Drive pedal / preamp / headphone amp. With valves !!!!

(in fact, the functionality is really similar to the V-twin pedal, which I really like.

Vai fanboi ? Me ? Yes. Yes I am.

Am I going to play my swirly Evo loaded Ibanez through it ? Yes.

Will my Jemini pedal come out of the box too ? Also yes.

Quote from V8guitar

I remember the mesa pedal - it was marketed as a Dual rec in a box. It was really expensive at the time and big and heavy....but oh so cool.

I never got one but how cool! Thanks for sharing.

The Carvin looks amazing. In the UK we didn't get much Carvin stuff and most of that was associated with Vai - so I only ever saw Carvin in the US guitar mags..

The V twin is very very good. So is the Carvin - they're fairly rare in the UK. Unless you have a Line 6 product.... then they're a digital HX model !

Quote from DonPetersen

that's just the label

Thanks Don. I replaced them with EHX labelled ones. Probably made by the same folk in eastern europe/Russia with names ending in 'ski' and 'ov'.

Both of those pedals take drive pedals pushing the front REALLY well. Either the clean or dirty channels.

To this end I've added to the 'drive pedal collection with some 'hard' and 'asymetric' clipping to go with my plethora of soft clipping/transparent pedals.

(its not lost on me that one half of my Jemini pedal is a DS-1)

Quote from V8guitar

I would like to request that this thread is banned as it verges on guitar porn! Ha!

Very jealous!!!!!

[Slowly opens a pedal drawer]

NB. The Ikea Alex drawers are very good for pedal storage.

[opens another...]

[and another.......]

Then stops.