Lonestar.... a beatiful thing!

Well, I've been gettin' real serious about amplifier hunting these days - need to get a good amp to record and gig with - been borrowing waaaaay too many amps over the past 5 years (thanx to all you who've helped me out with the loners). Anyway, went down to Long & Mquade's with Matt to trial a few amps and man, we spent from about 1:00pm - 4:00pm pushing some great amps to the limit to see what kind of tones we could get out. We auditioned mostly mesa...like all day - with the exception of the Peavey JSX 212 combo amp just to see what the hype is all about - conclusion: great amp if you're into shredding ...like... alot. Anyway, of the mainstream brands we really prefer mesa anyway - like totally.
I've been puting lots of thought into the fact that huge amp stacks put out way too much wattage for my liking - i doubt i'd ever turn the master above 1 or 2. I wanted to see if I could really get an amp to sound great on its clean and dirty channels while pushing it to its middle range pot settings - maybe take a 30 - 50 watt amp and push it and see what i can do instead of going huge triple rectifier head and only using 1/16 of its capabilities - u get the picture. btw: whoever is making reverbs at the factory to put into these amps: stop making them suck! Sheesh. To this day I have yet to find an amp that's got a "great" reverb sound. If anyone out there could convince me pleeeease let me know.

Well, after going thru the mesa F50 for a while we slipped over to the Lonestar 1x12 and 2x12 combos for a while. My PRS sounded unreal thru the Lonestar 1x12 combo - like amazing! Nice clean tone from the single coils and good chunk on the drive channel thru bridge. We were playing these amps for like an hour or so when shop Mesa guru Don says that mesa puts out the exact same technology as the combo but in a head/cab model. We thought hey, why not just check it out. Well... WOW... like WOW! It was the same brains inside the head but took the tone like 100% thru the roof! We must have played the thing for like a good hour - cranked it loud..i mean loud. Guys at the front desk came up to us with a smirk and asked if we could just one it down a touch - they couldn't even hear their telephone ring in the store..lol. Er..umm...sorry (whatever)...this amp was unreal. Some real earcandy to chew on. And yeah, to boot it had a not-sooo-bad reverb on it. I think my ear drums were creating their own reverb effect after cranking it that loud for so long..lol. Real impressive combination. Nice thing about this head was the 30->15->5W selection settings - switch it to create some drastic tonal changes! Really amazing sound - very "matchless" without spending the big$$. Matt and I are both looking to pick up a Lonstar Special Short head/2x12 OB cab after the quest. Man, if you haven't yet, check out the Lonestar.... a mesa amp that's a bit more than a mesa...

• Check out the official specs of MesaBoogie Lonestar Special here.

• Harmony Central Review for the Mesa Boogie Lonestar Special head/cab here.

• Just for fun, click here.