Mesa V-Twin Pedal REVIEW (Guitar Lesson GG-201) How to play

Hello groovers,

here we are for my review of

the Mesa V-Twin distortion pedal

Um, a little bit about it first,

the general gist of it

The first thing you are going to notice,
it's a big pedal

it's quite heavy as well
and it's made like a tank

it's a really big solid metal pedal

which I think is great

if you are going to go out on the road

then this is going to be a good sturdy,
touring companion

the first thing to do,
interesting about it

is the power supply

so it's not like a regular pedal

that you can just plug in,

like plug into a 9-volt power supply

it's got a big "wah-wah" thing

you know, like, that you have to plug into

the main power socket

that's the first thing to

make sure that you are aware of

if it means that you are having
your pedals at the front of the stage

you're going to have to run a power supply
out to this particular pedal

if it's the only one you are using

although, most pedals you will have to

have some sort of power supply anyway

but it definitely doesn't run on batteries

What I'm gonna do now,

before we actually listen to it

is go through and do a close up
and I'll explain

all of the different bits,
what they do

and then we'll start playing it

and have a bit of fun

so, here we go

well, here is our Mesa Engineering
V-Twin distortion pedal

possibly one of the best and fanciest

distortion pedals I've ever had

and probably that's ever been made, really

I'm not even sure if they still
make one

exactly the same as this one anymore

Let me go through and explain

the basic features of it

first thing, we've got
two buttons on there

The first one is,
you can see

it lights up the little red light there

is a bypass switch

which basically in effect,
turns the pedal off

so when the lights on,

it's not working

click that on and your pedal is then
in action

Now this one changes between

a few different things

depending on how you set it up

with this center button depressed

it's going from clean
(clicks button)

Click it on, and it goes to solo sound

which is kind of a lead guitar

kind of, you know, big heavy metal sound

if you've got the button up

it goes from blues

(clicks button)

to solo

so two different distortions

of course, your regular state

if the amps in bypass

would give you a clean sound

and then, if you turn that off
(clicks button)

you've got a blues sound

(clicks)
kick that on for your lead solo

(clicks)
and then back to your rhythym sound

(clicks)
back to your clean sound, so

it effectively gives you three channels
of distortion

so, or two channels of distortion

and bypass, which will leave you clean

it's got a really good range of EQ
on this one

we've got gain, of course

which is how much distortion you've got

you've got bass, middle, treble,
and presence

which are all EQ

so very versatile for your EQ sounds

and of course, you've got a master volume
over there

which will sort out your overall level

now you can see inside

this little cage part here

is actually two real valves

which I can actually pop out

I probably shouldn't be doing this
without turning the power off

but just so you can have a little of
a look-see, this comes off

and they've got actually two proper

AX7, I think

yeah, AX7 valves

I've got Mesa Boogie ones in there

but you can, of course, put other valves
in there

if you wish

it does change the sound a bit

but, to be honest I've been pretty happy

with the ones in there

so, I really haven't had to do
a whole lot to that

let's put that cage back in before
I show you anything else

okay, so, other features

if we look over the back here

you see, we've got quite a few

little holes here

so, the first one is the instrument input

pretty obvious

external bypass

which will turn the pedal on and off
from an external source

like a channel switching thing

which you can use a seperate pedal for
I don't know why you'd wanna do that

an external select,

which changes, is kind of an external way

of changing your channel

I use that with my TC Electronic
G System

and that, the G system,

can change the channel for me

depending on what sound I want and when

so that's kind of a pretty useful feature

we've also got, on the back here now,

we've got a two-guitar amp

two power amp

and mixer/headphones

now, of course, if you're using it with
a guitar amplifier

you are gonna plug your output

from here into your guitar amplifier

if you are using a power amp

that doesn't have a pre-amp,

like doesn't have a clean sound
or whatever

directly into your power-amp

you would use this to the power-amp

so they're slightly different

they've got a different EQ

depending on what output of the pedal
you are going to use

and then also, you have this
mixer/headphones which means

that if you were just playing at home

and you wanted to

really rock in distortion
you could

plug your headphones directly into here

and listen to it from that

also if you wanted to go directly
into a mixing disk

if gives you kind of a speaker simulation

kind of effect

by plugging it straight into the disk

I have done a few gigs with this

plugged straight into the disc

and it sounds pretty good

it's probably the best

of this type of effect

you know the speaker simulation

that I've come across

except the Mesa Boogey recording pre-amp

which is what I use most of the time
in my rig

it's also got one switch over here

which changes between
mixers and headphones

of course, that only really works

if you are using the mixer/headphone
output there

another interesting thing,

which I didn't discover for a while is

it's got a couple of switches
on the back here

you can see I've got the screw missing
from here

so I can just flip it open

you can see there that this one

is a clean gain adjust

so you can adjust the volume
of your clean sound

which is a really useful feature

if your clean sound is a bit too quiet

you need a really small little screwdriver
to get in there

and also you've got a switch here
solo to blues

which can change over

instead of having clean,

if we flip it back over here to,

we've got this here going blues and solo

we can have that going here, clean to solo

if you put that switch on

instead of going clean to solo

it goes clean to blues

(guitar playing)

this is now in bypass mode, so

(guitar playing)

that's kind of our starting sound

it's going through my
Mesa Boogey Express Amplifier

and I'm using a Telecaster

but it's kind of hotted up a bit

so I'm using the bridge pickup

(guitar playing)

so that's the pedal not functioning

so the first thing, let's have a look

at the effect of using the clean channels

so I've just turned bypass off

(guitar playing)

That's the Boogey clean

so bypass (plays guitar)

with the clean sound (guitar playing)

kind of makes it a lot warmer

it's a really good effect here that gives

it that really "valve-y" warm clean sound

which I think is a really cool trick

okay, (clicks) so now lets kick it

over to here (clicks)

and let's start off by listening to

the blues channel, so (guitar playing)

generally, really really solid little
blues sound

really nice (guitar playing)

not too heavy, not too light
just right

of course we've got a gain adjustment here

so if we turn the gain right down

we're not getting any sound
(guitar playing progressively louder)

and on the blues channel
(guitar playing)

you're still getting quite a lot
of distortion there

I don't know if you can see on here or not

I've got these little black lines

all over the amplifier pedals

just to remind me where the
pedal settings go

in case I knock them

it's not a bad idea to get into the habit
of doing that

(guitar playing)

so, there's your blues sound

from quite a clean, you know
(guitar playing)

clean (guitar playing)

hardly any distortion on the blues

so you can get (guitar playing)

up to quite a gnarly kind of distortion

but it's still very blues-y

now, if we flip that over to solo sound

(guitar playing)

we're straight away

into proper rock territory

(guitar playing)

let's turn that presence up a little bit

(guitar playing)

really, really, really good solid

lead guitar sound from this pedal

it really has,

this is kind of all bells and whistles

great having the three channels

so it really is,

for me,
this is kind of the best

distortion pedal that I ever had

I still use it all the time,

it's great, it's a bit big

so it's a little bit of a pain
on the old pedal board

but, other than that

this is really a top-notch pedal

well I hope you enjoyed my little

talk-through the Mesa Boogey V-Twin Pedal

great pedal,

yeah, I really really rate it

I've had it for quite a few years now

and it's, yeah, really is my favorite
distortion pedal

yeah, I hope that's cool

go and check them out in a shop near you

and see if you dig it as much as I do

take care guys

I'll see you for another review soon

bye-bye!