WEBVTT

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Hello groovers,

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here we are for my review of

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the Mesa V-Twin distortion pedal

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Um, a little bit about it first,

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the general gist of it

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

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

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it's a really big solid metal pedal

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which I think is great

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if you are going to go out on the road

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

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the first thing to do, 
interesting about it

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is the power supply

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so it's not like a regular pedal

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that you can just plug in,

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like plug into a 9-volt power supply

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

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you know, like, that you have to plug into

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the main power socket

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that's the first thing to

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make sure that you are aware of

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

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

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if it's the only one you are using

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although, most pedals you will have to

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have some sort of power supply anyway

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but it definitely doesn't run on batteries

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What I'm gonna do now,

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before we actually listen to it

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

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all of the different bits,
what they do

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and then we'll start playing it

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and have a bit of fun

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so, here we go

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

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possibly one of the best and fanciest

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distortion pedals I've ever had

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and probably that's ever been made, really

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I'm not even sure if they still 
make one

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exactly the same as this one anymore

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Let me go through and explain

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the basic features of it

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first thing, we've got 
two buttons on there

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The first one is,
you can see

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it lights up the little red light there

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is a bypass switch

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which basically in effect,
turns the pedal off

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so when the lights on,

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it's not working

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click that on and your pedal is then
in action

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Now this one changes between

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a few different things

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depending on how you set it up

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with this center button depressed

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it's going from clean
(clicks button)

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Click it on, and it goes to solo sound

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which is kind of a lead guitar

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kind of, you know, big heavy metal sound

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if you've got the button up

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it goes from blues

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(clicks button)

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to solo

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so two different distortions

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of course, your regular state

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if the amps in bypass

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would give you a clean sound

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

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you've got a blues sound

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(clicks)
kick that on for your lead solo

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(clicks)
and then back to your rhythym sound

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(clicks)
back to your clean sound, so

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it effectively gives you three channels
of distortion

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so, or two channels of distortion

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and bypass, which will leave you clean

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

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we've got gain, of course

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which is how much distortion you've got

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

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which are all EQ

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so very versatile for your EQ sounds

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

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which will sort out your overall level

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now you can see inside

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this little cage part here

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is actually two real valves

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which I can actually pop out

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

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

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and they've got actually two proper

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AX7, I think

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yeah, AX7 valves

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I've got Mesa Boogie ones in there

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

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if you wish

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it does change the sound a bit

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but, to be honest I've been pretty happy

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with the ones in there

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

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

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okay, so, other features

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if we look over the back here

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you see, we've got quite a few

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little holes here

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so, the first one is the instrument input

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pretty obvious

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external bypass

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

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like a channel switching thing

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

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an external select,

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which changes, is kind of an external way

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of changing your channel

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I use that with my TC Electronic
G System

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and that, the G system,

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can change the channel for me

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depending on what sound I want and when

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so that's kind of a pretty useful feature

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

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we've got a two-guitar amp

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two power amp

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and mixer/headphones

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

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you are gonna plug your output

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from here into your guitar amplifier

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if you are using a power amp

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that doesn't have a pre-amp,

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like doesn't have a clean sound
or whatever

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directly into your power-amp

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you would use this to the power-amp

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so they're slightly different

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they've got a different EQ

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

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

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that if you were just playing at home

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and you wanted to

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really rock in distortion
you could

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plug your headphones directly into here

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and listen to it from that

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also if you wanted to go directly
into a mixing disk

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if gives you kind of a speaker simulation

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kind of effect

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by plugging it straight into the disk

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I have done a few gigs with this

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plugged straight into the disc

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and it sounds pretty good

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it's probably the best

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of this type of effect

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you know the speaker simulation

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that I've come across

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except the Mesa Boogey recording pre-amp

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

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it's also got one switch over here

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which changes between 
mixers and headphones

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of course, that only really works

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if you are using the mixer/headphone
output there

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another interesting thing,

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which I didn't discover for a while is

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

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

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so I can just flip it open

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you can see there that this one

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is a clean gain adjust

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so you can adjust the volume 
of your clean sound

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which is a really useful feature

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if your clean sound is a bit too quiet

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you need a really small little screwdriver
to get in there

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

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which can change over

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instead of having clean,

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if we flip it back over here to,

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we've got this here going blues and solo

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we can have that going here, clean to solo

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if you put that switch on

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instead of going clean to solo

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it goes clean to blues

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(guitar playing)

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this is now in bypass mode, so

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(guitar playing)

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that's kind of our starting sound

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it's going through my 
Mesa Boogey Express Amplifier

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and I'm using a Telecaster

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but it's kind of hotted up a bit

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so I'm using the bridge pickup

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(guitar playing)

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so that's the pedal not functioning

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so the first thing, let's have a look

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at the effect of using the clean channels

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so I've just turned bypass off

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(guitar playing)

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That's the Boogey clean

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so bypass (plays guitar)

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with the clean sound (guitar playing)

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kind of makes it a lot warmer

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it's a really good effect here that gives

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it that really "valve-y" warm clean sound

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which I think is a really cool trick

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okay, (clicks) so now lets kick it

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over to here (clicks)

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and let's start off by listening to

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the blues channel, so (guitar playing)

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generally, really really solid little
blues sound

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really nice (guitar playing)

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not too heavy, not too light
just right

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of course we've got a gain adjustment here

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so if we turn the gain right down

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

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and on the blues channel
(guitar playing)

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you're still getting quite a lot
of distortion there

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

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I've got these little black lines

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all over the amplifier pedals

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just to remind me where the
pedal settings go

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in case I knock them

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

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(guitar playing)

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so, there's your blues sound

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from quite a clean, you know
(guitar playing)

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clean (guitar playing)

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hardly any distortion on the blues

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so you can get (guitar playing)

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up to quite a gnarly kind of distortion

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but it's still very blues-y

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now, if we flip that over to solo sound

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(guitar playing)

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we're straight away

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into proper rock territory

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(guitar playing)

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let's turn that presence up a little bit

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(guitar playing)

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really, really, really good solid

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lead guitar sound from this pedal

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it really has,

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this is kind of all bells and whistles

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great having the three channels

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so it really is,

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for me, 
this is kind of the best

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distortion pedal that I ever had

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I still use it all the time,

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it's great, it's a bit big

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

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but, other than that

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this is really a top-notch pedal

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well I hope you enjoyed my little

00:09:24.334 --> 00:09:28.030
talk-through the Mesa Boogey V-Twin Pedal

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great pedal,

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yeah, I really really rate it

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I've had it for quite a few years now

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

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yeah, I hope that's cool

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go and check them out in a shop near you

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and see if you dig it as much as I do

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take care guys

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I'll see you for another review soon

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bye-bye!