Greetings
Power Amp Update: I bought a Mesa Simul 2:90 from a fellow forum member
OK - A little Recap...
The rig building journey led me to a point where I wanted to have a rack with the equipment needed to emulate "Hair Metal" bands (the original goal)
and a quality modeling unit to go after more "processed" sounds. Granted, the second part of the equation was added after the fact, but the additional flexibility of this approach should prove to be worth the effort and change in direction.
What I wanted to do with the rig was to have, essentially, two different amp “systems” inside of one rack; either of which I could select via a patch on the MIDI foot controller. More or less, this:
Scenario 1:
Mesa V-Twin --> Midiverb III --> Stomp Boxes --> EQ --> Power Amp L/R --> Dual 2x12 Cabs
Scenario 2:
Eleven Rack --> Midiverb III --> EQ --> Power Amp L/R --> Dual 2x12 Cabs
Because of the way that Mesa implemented channel switching on
the V-Twin pre amp; it would take 6 separate loops on
the GCX Audio Switcher to accommodate all of the voicing options. Even if I chose three “go to” settings clean/crunch/lead, for example), I’d need 3 loops to accommodate it. All of the processors and effects I bought are stereo (or in the case of the V-Twin, have L/R outputs…), so I would presumably need 2 loops for each piece of stereo gear. There are only 8 loops total on the GCX, so I have a problem. You can daisy-chain GCX’s to increase the loop count, but even with a second one I’d either run short or not leave room for future expansion. In addition to that, the signal routing to have two pre amps in the rack, and keep stereo separation, gets more than a little cumbersome. The best solution for that seems to be a rack mount line mixer. So, to do everything I wanted, I would need at least one more GCX (and limit the number of stomp boxes…), and a line mixer. That would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 on top of what I have already spent. I may consider that option in the future, but I can’t justify it right now.
Here’s what I’m going to do. Granted, this is somewhat of a knee-jerk change, but after thinking it through, it should be a pretty solid solution.
I still have my old (small) rack rig that has a 50-watt Peavey tube power amp and a Digitech GSP-21 guitar effect processor. The GSP-21 is old school, but it has a great footswitch and it works reasonably well for 80’s Hair Metal sounds. My only complaint with it was that it sounded solid-state (because it is…) and it lacked the balls that a tube pre amp has. If I put the Mesa pre amp in that rack and use the GSP-21 in the effects loop, I’d have
a tube pre amp, a tube power amp and decent, albeit old school, effects. It would be a portable “Hair Metal” rig that would crank. That leaves all of the new equipment for the big rack. It will still be a challenge to connect and program, but it gets easier and less-expensive by moving the Mesa pre amp outboard. I would essentially have two amp systems – one “old school” tube-based 80’s rig and a “new tech” modeling rig with a kick-ass tube power section that should be able to do almost anything. The new rig would still have the control features like I listed in
Scenario 1, I just wouldn’t be able to control both rigs via the same MIDI foot controller. And, if I wanted to, I could still use both systems live at the same time by routing the guitar output through a switcher to the input of each rack. It wouldn’t be quite as cool as selecting which chain of equipment I want via MIDI commands, but it’s a lot easier to do and quite a bit cheaper.
I started bolting the equipment in the racks yesterday - here are some pictures. The 1U at the top of the big rack is for a tuner. The 2U in the middle is for future effects expansion (but will be covered) and the 2U just above the power amp is for the slide-out shelf with stomp boxes.
Questions? Comments? I'm open to either. Constructive criticism is always welcome - let me know what you think
rock On
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Did they drop it to the tarmac while flying over the hub??? There are several knicks and a few small dents in the aluminum edging, a ding in the wood door panel and one of the ball corners is partially smashed. None of it is bad enough to go through the hassle of shipping it back and it won't affect the usability, but whatever happened to quality service?
