The Steel Guitar Forum

Anyone using one of these amps for steel? I’ve had one for years and have heard they make killer steel amps. Just curious who’s using em and how you set your EQ! Thx in advance

Yes! I have one that I run at 50W through a 2x12. I am a new steeler, but a 6-stringer of many years. This is a great big clean amp, like a twin on steroids. I just tweak until my ears are happy in channel 1. The most impactful tweak for me so far has been turning the bass up to noon.

I have one, an early model like yours, but it's a combo. It's a great steel amp, super clean, very smooth tone. I run 12AY7s in V1 and V2, lower gain. I use the top channel for steel, 100w setting. It behaves very much like my '66 Twin and I EQ it basically the same, treble at about 9 o'clock, mid at 2:30, bass at 10, presence at noon (it's sort of like a variable bright switch on a Fender). The combo is very heavy to schlep around like a Twin, splitting the amp into a separate cabinet like you have is definitely the ticket.

It seems to have a thicker, weightier sound than a Twin. It would be surprising then to back off the highs and punch the lows, but doing that brings out quite a beautiful tone and low mid articulation.

I've actually modified mine to add a lot of gain in the 1Khz to 3Khz region. You can still get that warmer, bassy sound by backing off the highs a little more than before. But now the upper mid range just shines with beauty and power when you want it to do so.

Steve Sycamore wrote:...back off the highs and punch the lows...

Not sure if this refers to what I wrote above, I wrote "bass at 10", by which I meant 10 o'clock, not 10 on the dial (no numbers on the Mesa). More bass just sounds muddy/mushy to my ears. As with my Twin the sweet spot for me is to run the mid control higher, around 7 on the dial, which is functionally like the tone stack in a Deluxe or similar amp with no mid control, and back off bass and treble. Both amps still produce sweet sparkly highs with these settings, the right amount of punch in the middle but without the harsh bite in the high midrange frequencies.




Perhaps you can explain the mod you did to your tone stack Steve, and what settings you use to get your preferred tone?

Hi Ian,

It's great to see the 2 amps lined up like that with comparable settings.

Yupp, I first interpreted your bass setting to be full on and that was surprising. I agree the amp can easily sound mushy with too much bass and little gain.

My modification was to add a bypass capacitor and series resistor across the second gain stage, if I remember correctly. The values were chosen to give roughly the upper mid to high boost in gain I mentioned. That scheme came from Mesa's Tweed channel of their Road King II amp (which I dearly love for 6 string guitar). That gives a certain kind of wonderful fluidity, not too gainy sustain and liveliness to my ears. It can sound a bit gainy though if you want something ultra clean.

I've used it mostly for 6 string guitar so I don't yet have a go to setting for PSG. I also tend to add a specialized EQ (either Alesis DEQ230 or Source Audio EQ2) for very fine grained customization for each separate guitar, so my settings probably aren't comparable to anyone else's. But yes, I tend to push the mids a lot too.

I really like clean settings with the Single-Ended 10 Watt power option. But that lacks the power and volume for playing with a loud band of course. Maybe it's the particular tubes that the amp was shipped with, but I mostly use the 100 Watt option as even the 50 Watt unrectified power option seems to lack the gusto and punch I tend to expect. I've heard others express the same perception. Maybe that is due to the modifications to the original design so that the 10 Watt option could be added?