Didn't think I'd end up taking advantage of the sales but I was wrong. The short of it for now is that I only really need one amp, and was considering changing from my DSL1 to something that is all in one, however what I have ended up changing to is not what I would have imagined originally. After some reading here and other places, and coinciding with GuitarGuitar's end of line/large reduction sale, I talked myself into buying this which arrived today.
And the most surprising thing is, along with the sound/gain level being exactly what I was after, I like it better than the Marshall's I have pretty much been stuck to mostly in the past. Despite only having one set of controls split with 3 channels, it really works rather well which I love. And feature wise it is loaded with everything you could want yet it is just downright simple. Because I plan to mainly play using the IR/Loadbox route it works well, although even through a speaker and having it at house volume it sounded superb too. Basically it has everything I wanted under one roof (or head) and does it very well.
I just didn't think I'd end up with a Mesa Boogie, mainly because the last time I had experience with one was when I tried an Express 5:50 in a shop years ago and I ended up with what a few have said in which I couldn't get a sound I liked dialed in very easily.
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"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Yeah I agree with you on it doing a better than Marshall sound than a Marshall itself, that's what I'm finding here. The Vintage Hi mode has surprised me a lot as I thought it would be the most unusable, but I'm finding it has just the right amount of gain if I want to do the heaviest types of sounds I like. Basically it is JCM 800 level but with that extra bit of gain, so slightly hot rodded but not stupid levels. Lead solo lines sound great on it as well as the higher gain rhythm.
I also found by maxing the volume/gain on the clean channel you get that classic light distortion too. It is really showing to me that the little DSL and JVM I went through while sounding good in its own right, they have far too much gain for my tastes.
They are big and heavy things as well I'll admit haha!