You would think that since I have a Transatlantic and a Mini Rectifier, I would not be in the market for a new guitar amp. Well, I will be honest in saying that the Mini Rectifier was causing some problems - in particular with the switching relays and input transformer. But do not take that as bad press for that amp. Randall Smith and his team have made an incredible amp, and the warranty service they have is nothing short of spectacular. But after several trips to my local repair guys and a lot of waiting for my amp to come home, my dealer gave me the option to upgrade.
I tried out a Mark V, which is a bit too much gadgetry even for my level of technicality. I think it's more driven towards the live performance guitarist. And it's definitely too expensive for me.
At first they presented me with an Orange, thinking I might not want to get another Mesa/Boogie.
They thought wrong.
After trying out a couple options, I took home the 5:50+.
Then I tried the Royal Atlantic. I love this amp. It sounds amazing. But it's a bit to simple on controls and versatility, and once again a bit too expensive.
I was considering the 5:25+, but for the small additional cost - having a pair of 6L6 tubes was so appealing.
The Express 5:50+ is the smallest of Mesa/Boogie's "Big Boy" amps. Their EL84-powered amps never seemed to be of the same heritage and road-worthyness. This is an amp that has it's roots in the amp that I dreamed of as a teenager - the .50 Caliber +. The Plus meant it had a 5-band EQ, and the tube-driven spring reverb was the cherry on the cake.
The first thing you do with a Caliber/Express amp is dime the gain and put the EQ in the classic "V" formation and riff out some power chords - listening to the low-end thud that pounds like locomotive and the sizzling highs that scream. This is THE Metal sound.
As a kid, I did this on a .50+ Caliber combo at my favourite guitar shop. And now, I brought home my 5:50+ head, plugged it into my Mesa 2x12 Roadking and became sixteen all over again.
Overall, this amp is definitely not as "high-gain" as the Mini Rectifier. But it's tonal versatility is far beyond.
The big four-button foot control featuring channel switching, Reverb on/off, EQ bypass and Solo - is awesome.
The four voicing settings are divided into two channels - on channel one you have Clean and Crunch, and on channel two you have Blues and Burn.
Clean is everything you would expect, and once you go past 7, the breakup is subtle, but perfectly controlled.
Crunch is my favourite - it does everything from a subtle biting overdrive to all-out tube hi-gain distortion.
Blues is my least favourite - it sounds a bit too mushy, lacks clarity - and to be quite honest, just sounds like you put a pile of pillows in front of your amp.
Burn is not at all what I expected. I expected it to be Crunch "Plus". But, like Blues, it lacks clarity, and when driven at 10, it actually seems to have less gain than Crunch. If I plug in my ESP with EMG active humbuckers, it sounds great - but my Les Paul and PRS sound nasal. It still sounds better than a Marshall in my opinion, but just not quite the Mesa lead channel I expected.
Here is where we touch on my biggest issue with this amp - the TMB (Treble, Mid, Bass) controls seem to be almost USELESS at higher gain settings. They are perfectly fine for Clean, have a noticeable impact on Crunch, less-so on Blues and almost no effect whatsoever on Burn. The only way to get any effect on Burn is to put all three knobs at zero, then turn treble to 1 - which gives a bit of sound, and then if you turn any other knob up - there you go - It just all sounds the sam from there.
Now at this point I would be quite frustrated. But this is where the PLUS feature comes in.
The Graphic/Contour EQ actually redeems the rather disappointing passive TMB EQ sections.
Each channel has the ability to either use No EQ, the 5-band EQ, or a Contour knob - which is basically like going from no EQ effect (knob at 0) to a big V-shape graphic EQ (knob at 10).
Once you make EQ adjustments from the EQ/Contour section then all four preamp voicings come alive.
If I could ask Randall Smith to make some changes on the amp design, I'd have the following suggestions:
Put Clean and Burn on channel one, and Blues/Crunch on channel two. Seems more usable that way.
Redesign the tone stack for this thing - I wish it was more like the Mini rectifier - and turning a knob actually made some more noticeable variety in the sound.
As far as the power section - Damn.
6L6's are AWESOME.
At the 5W setting, one 6L6 is running in Class A. You can get this head pretty loud and get some power amp distortion without blowing your head off.
the 25W setting is running both 6L6's in Class A push/pull, and for my purposes this is more power than I can use in my studio.
If I were to play a live gig, I am sure the Class A/B 50W setting would be ample headroom.
At all settings, the warmth of the 6L6's versus my previous experiences with EL84 power is very apparent.
All in all, this is a very versatile amp, and even with the few complaints I have, it is a lot of amp for the money.
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