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Reviews (2)
Feb 07, 2009
The best modern tube guitar preamp?
3 of 3 found this helpful For background, I've owned vintage Marshall, Sound City, and Fender amps, owned various Randall, Peavey, and Line 6 solid state amps, and have played Mesas for the last 10 years: The Triaxis, 2 and 3 channel Dual and Single Rectifiers, and various versions of the Stiletto. I've had my self produced and engineered music on film and network TV (MTV) so I have a very good ear. I use this preamp with a Mesa 2:90 power amp and Mesa Recto 4x12 and 2x12 cabinets.
I LOVE this amp! This preamp is geared more toward the modern rock end of the spectrum and metal in general. It's the tightest, most aggressive amp I've ever owned. You can get a signature sound out of this preamp that's fresh, modern, and unique. Try that with a Triaxis.
The cleans are beautiful and can go from Roland JC120 clean urgency to an old Marshall sparkly clean. It doesn't feel like any of those amps in the way that it responds, though. It has more of a clinical, controlled feeling instead of the saggy, loose feel of those old amps. Whether that's a plus or minus to the player depends on what they're looking for. Playing Mesas all that time, it can be strange to have that kind of urgency and response but it sounds every bit as good. It just may take some getting used to, as all sounds on this amp will be for anyone who has never played an amp with this much resolution.
The crunch sounds very good but it will not do a clone of a classic sound like an old Marshall or Mesa can. You will not get an exact duplicate of ACDC with this thing but you can get close. That is not a criticism. The crunch tone has a very modern vibe to it. JCM800 like tonality but with modern tightness, polish, and again, urgency.
The Lead 1 channel is almost overly bright. That's my only criticism of the amp but it's really not a criticism because you can just simply turn the treble down to 10 o'clock or below and you're good. This channel is good for heavy rhythms especially, because the circuit keeps the volume consistency of each note the same. This isn't the same as compression. Notes are not squashed. Somehow, the picking dynamics from note to note are levelled off. This would not be good for someone like a roots player who wants to control the volume of each note by picking lighter or harder but for extreme metal styles, it's brilliant. You could always switch the classic switch on in this channel if you want it more touch sensitive. All switch settings, channel settings, etc, can be stored as MIDI presets anyway.
The Lead 2 channel is more touch responsive, a little bassier and smoother, and has a little more gain. I don't run the gain above 11 o'clock on either Lead channel anyway but if you do, it's still super tight. You can not get sloppy distortion out of this amp. You can almost get a Dual Rectifier sound out of this channel if you want but it's still tighter on the low end. This is a beautiful, singing lead or rhythm channel.
All in all, an amazing amp. I thought having 4 channels with an eq shared between Clean and Crunch, and another eq shared between Lead 1 and lead 2 would be limiting. With all the various eq and timbre switches that are under MIDI preset control, I've found that I have about 25 distinctly different, beautiful, useable presets I've stored for use. If you want a unique, individual sound, you should definitely spend some time checking out this wonderful preamp with a good tube poweramp and speakers.
Nov 03, 2020
Great if you've always wanted a Nightswan. Not so great if you just want a plug and play guitar
1 of 1 found this helpful I've always wanted Nightswan but had no desire to spend 5k on a beat up one. The finish is nice, design is what it's supposed to be. But Gibson is over-pricing these. With the quality, I'd say it's more like a $600 guitar and not a $900 guitar. The hardware is cheap, soft metal, including screws, one of which twisted right off as I removed the locking nut, since it was so high, I needed to file the wood below it to lower it. The neck radius is 16" but the floyd bridge and nut were 10" radius, so the outside strings were too low and inside too high. I shimmed the bridge to 17" radius and replaced the nut with a 12" radius Kahler and all was well. Extremely low action at this point with no buzzes, though the frets were not polished so they are really scratchy when doing vibrato. Some steel wool will take care of that. The JB in the middle position actually works surprisingly well for not having a neck pickup. It has that smooth compression of a neck pickup, but with a stringy, single coil out of phase tone that's nice. JB in the bridge is not like the original Full Shred bridge pickup but it sounds good so no need to replace for me. So the guitar itself is fine with a little setup, hardware isn't great but can be replaced, but if you want a Nightswan, it's a great chance to get one with a little work involved. I'm glad Gibson reintroduced these under the Kramer brand.