anybody like to Boogie?

ICBM

thisisguitar said:

@ICBM - I had heard that too. It just pissed me off that my amp had a potentially dangerous manufacturing fault and they didn't even acknowledge me. I spent around £240 to eventually solve the fault, to say nothing of borrowing and carrying of a spare amp around for a few gigs. I feel aggrieved that they didn't give a fuck, and because of their fault I have been massively inconvenienced. 

Apologies, first time I've had a mini-rant about it, but as I said they'll never see penny one from me.

I don't blame you. One of the things I like least about Mesa is their intransigent approach to international customers - they use restrictive exclusive distributorship deals which result in the amps being massively overpriced overseas, and protect that by further overpricing replacement parts like mains transformers in order to block grey imports… try getting a replacement UK transformer from them for perfectly legitimate reasons - the price is eye-watering. If they didn't overprice the amps in the first place they wouldn't need to since no-one would bother importing them privately! And I'd guarantee they'd sell more amps here too, if they were priced closer to how they are in the US.

It's about time they moved into the modern world. Most of the other big US companies who also went in for this sort of thing have changed. I'm certainly not expecting the price to be the same here as in the US, but most other US products are not marked up to the same extent Mesa are, so why do they need to? It simply should not be cheaper to privately import something by the back door than buy it legitimately over here, when the economies of scale are all on the side of the large importer.

thisisguitar

@ICBM - I guess they get away with it because people keep buying them regardless. The mark up is ridiculous. 

After looking inside my Express I decided that I would go for a far more basic amplifier, Mesa internals are so convoluted that I feel I am just waiting something to fail. I'll admit it's a great sounding amp, though the gain channel is left wanting at times.

The fault on mine was caused by the glue around some of the components melting and seeping into two of the preamp valve sockets, causing the amp to sound like an open fire with damp logs on it. It took two techs to work it out, and even the second one almost gave up trying to find the fault. He did say he'd never seen anything like it though. 

ICBM

thisisguitar said:

@ICBM - I guess they get away with it because people keep buying them regardless. The mark up is ridiculous. 

After looking inside my Express I decided that I would go for a far more basic amplifier, Mesa internals are so convoluted that I feel I am just waiting something to fail. I'll admit it's a great sounding amp, though the gain channel is left wanting at times.

The fault on mine was caused by the glue around some of the components melting and seeping into two of the preamp valve sockets, causing the amp to sound like an open fire with damp logs on it. It took two techs to work it out, and even the second one almost gave up trying to find the fault. He did say he'd never seen anything like it though. 

A friend of mine has a Rectoverb with the same problem, just on one preamp valve. Generally they are very reliable though, despite the complexity.

But I for one will never buy any Mesa amp new in this country until the pricing and spare parts policy changes… and I would advise anyone who doesn't like the prices to do the same.

thisisguitar

@ICBM - Mine used to have an appetite for valves if I ran full gain. On the advice of a tech I stopped doing that. Started using the amp at half gain to get a good crunch sound, then I put a TS-9 at half gain in front for lead work. Didn't change another valve in it for years (only reason it needed doing last time was trying to solve the fault). 

Amazed they would use a glue that could melt at typical running temps.

They don't hold their value secondhand for sure. A bargain if you pick one up down that route. 

I like my Two Rock, simple and brilliant :-)                                       

Si_

I've had a few Mesa/Boogies over my time, currently got a Mark V (although it's for sale). 

Great amps, but can be hard to dial in with their active EQ.. 

Cacofonix

Edit: deleted through lack of interest.