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!