Guitar Gear Forum

Just bought another Mesa F-100. I really regretted selling the one I had. This is quite possibly one of my favorite Mesas. I saw one on Reverb today, made an offer and the guy accepted. Really nice guy too, we've been talking shop on Reverb messenger all day so it all worked out. I will post pics etc when I get it.

I figured it was going to be a DSL.

Press F-100 to pay respects

They are great amps. The f30 was a killer combo, and when I tried it through a non-el84 power section it came alive. The f-50 and f-100 are the pick of the liter though. If you can, try it with a BB preamp or clone as a boost, and try setting the drive channel like a Mark series amp (bass < noon, mids @ 2-3o'clock, and treble at 3-4 o'clock).

I’ve never played the F series. Always wanted to try one. How do these compensate for not having the 5 band EQ? Is there a contour knob? If so I could probably live with that. Or toss an EQ in the loop.

Heath wrote:They are great amps. The f30 was a killer combo, and when I tried it through a non-el84 power section it came alive. The f-50 and f-100 are the pick of the liter though. If you can, try it with a BB preamp or clone as a boost, and try setting the drive channel like a Mark series amp (bass < noon, mids @ 2-3o'clock, and treble at 3-4 o'clock).

Yep, that's the key with these amps, the drive channel needs to be set like a Mark series. But the clean channel does not. So it's a bit confusing and I think that's one of the reasons they were not very popular. People would dial the EQ on both channels like a regular amp and the drive channel sounded really muddy. On my last one, I had the Bass almost at 0 on the drive channel.
I need to pick up another BB preamp.

BB preamp + mesa =

greatmutah wrote:I’ve never played the F series. Always wanted to try one. How do these compensate for not having the 5 band EQ? Is there a contour knob? If so I could probably live with that. Or toss an EQ in the loop.

Unlike the express models that replaced it, there is not a contour knob that can be dialed in, but rather a contour mode that is foot-switchable. The F series sounds better though. Looking at the schematic you can see when the contour is engaged it is the 5-band eq from the old mark amps but with a fixed setting which is pretty close to the classic scoop.

I used a bb pre in front of the amp and wired up a true bypass looper with an ep booster that was activated when the contour mode was turned off. Gave me six very useful options. Clean, boosted clean, contour lead channel (heavy crunch), boosted lead w/ contour (metal), Lead channel with the ep booster in the loop to make up the volume difference between contour and no contour, and then the same with the boost.