NAD - Mesa Stiletto Ace

welshboyo

So...

After a few wobbles and deals/no deals I have finally got my hands on a Stiletto..

Picked this up at the weekend and it really is in mint condition, recently revalved with complete compliment of Mesa valves, a full set of spares as well (!!), it's footswitch (yes, its comes with a footswitch...you know who you are), all manuals, warranty cards, branded cover etc etc - I've seen worse in a shop!!

Had it as one of them ebay deals where they (or the seller?) drastically reduce the price.

Guy had it as local pickup only but through messages he met me halfway.

1st impressions are very very good, usual Mesa head fuck with dialling it in but I am used to them and used them for years and years, totally different animal to the other Mesa's - British with a Mesa flavour I suppose.

Bought as a replacement/alternative to the Shiva - will it beat it, I'm not sure yet - need to give it a few weeks of using it live to see - quite similar in some ways, but the Mesa seems to have more flexibility with the channel voicings and its a lot brighter/aggressive sounding too - we'll see...


 

Cirrus

Lovely, I've got the 2x12 combo with old G12-65s I pilfered from a Marshall JMP, they're such good amps and so practical with the solo boost, decent FX loop setup and voicings for the channels. Plus they don't need to be cranked to sound good (though they do sound good really loud)

Their only downside is that it's so easy to make the crunch voicing way, way, way too bright - which is weird because that's supposedly where Mesa started when designing the circuit. In that mode, I typically start with the Treble, Mid AND Presence knobs at 0, bring up the mid knob until it's bright enough (it seems centered around quite a high frequency) then crack treble and presence open a tiny bit to control the top end. It's not that different to what I'd do with a bright Marshall, but I have to admit I'd like it if the mid control could be used to bring out thicker mids.

Tite gain is my favourite all round distortion sound from the amp - the low mids are thicker, it's punchier and the tone controls make more sense in that mode. It's where I keep channel 2, and have the gain low enough that boosting with a pedal gives more sustain - it's possible to get enough gain that a boost becomes totally superfluous. Fluid Gain is lovely but just way too compressed for anything I'd play.

When I first got the amp, I pretty much cranked the bass knob on overdriven sounds as a reaction to the propensity to brightness, but over time I've brought it back - On tite gain I quite like it at 11 o'clock, seems to let the low mids shine a bit more.

The two clean modes are nice, very dynamic, high headroom and glassy. Fat clean with a Strat and SD-1 is a pretty awesome bluesy tone.

I've read people say they prefer having the channel volumes lower and the master volumes higher when the masters are activated, but I prefer the other way - channel volumes up around 2 o'clock and master volumes as required.

welshboyo

cheers @Cirrus ;

Looks like we are in the same ballpark then channels/settings wise - I'm actually using Fat Clean with a Tube Driver (out of the Helix) for my crunch sounds which looks to be working well and my Bass is slowly being turned back very much like you say.

2nd Channel was Tite Gain and it has more than enough gain for me, got a Klon as a low gain boost for the bits where I need more, but as of this morning I'm in Fluid Drive with the gain at about 10 o clock and its giving me that big 80's lead sound especially with some nice delays going on.

I'm pretty set on the channel masters being around the 10 o clock mark too mainly to keep the loop in check (running the fx send at 12) and I'm finding that running the global output up a bit tends to fatten things up a little.

Typical Mesa wall of sound though, it really punches you hard!!! Loud bastard alert...

timmysoft

Great amps. They benefit from upgrading the v30, which I think makes the amp a bit too shouty. 

RandallFlagg

Looks lovely condition, Helix at less than 1/2 volume?

welshboyo

RandallFlagg said:

Looks lovely condition, Helix at less than 1/2 volume?

@RandallFlagg Helix itself is at unity (easy to do - just unassign the large controller from Multi - put it to digital - so the knob's position in the picture is irrelevant), the loop has been dialled in so no drop/hike in volume with Helix plugged in

RandallFlagg

ah OK!