Mesa Boogie Bastards (next 1000 page thread?)

[bob p]

When it comes to complex circuits, I'm an equal opportunity hater.
But I have to give Mesa a thumbsup because they will help you.
They're much better than a company like Bugera, who will not.

Fortunately I'm at a place in life where I don't have to take on work that I don't like. Truth be told, I don't have to take on work at all. So I have the luxury of only working on amps that I enjoy working on. I guess that makes me a cherry-picker, as I leave the messy stuff for guys like Leo and Enzo. <-- closest thing we have to a devil emoji.

[Chuck H]

Right. Mesa WILL help you. And... MESA SELLS TUBES!!! If a tube vendor is handing out Mesa schematics it seems reasonable for Mesa to consider it a conflict.

Now... A particular on line schematic resource that we all enjoy and shall remain nameless to keep them off the radar in case Mesa is reading this thread (and they might be) continues to have all the old schematics and some new-ish ones. Why do you suppose Mesa hasn't hammered THEM yet. It's obvious. It's not a financial conflict. That site isn't competing with Mesa for sales of anything and Mesa knows that it would look too dickish to pester them and undermine the resource for a large number of users. So... It's money, not politics.

[The Dude]

....... So... It's money, not politics.

There's a difference?

[Mick Bailey]

I'm finding increasingly that for a large proportion of 'repairs' where a unit is sent back to a manufacturer, they replace the entire board. A lot of problems are intermittents and they can soak up hours. Manufacturers or their approved repair shops are disinclined to spend the time on diagnosing and fixing hard-to-recreate faults on complex equipment. It was interesting to see just how much equipment Peavey had just issued replacements for. I'm talking about warranty-return amps where no repair was even attempted - they just sent a new one out and then sold off the broken ones through the trade. I had 12-month run on fixing these. Some of the guitar amps had minor faults that were fixed in 30 minutes. The PA heads were nightmarish in the number of components that needed replacing on three-month old amps - each one with the same faults.

I wince when someone gives me a call about recent Mesa amps. My experience of them isn't positive. I used to get assistance from the factory and this helped me to support their products, but the last time I contacted them they wouldn't deal with me and referred me to the UK importer. I'd previously had good experience with them and found them to be helpful, but they will no longer give me any technical information or assistance. Another downside is that the new products that carry a 5-year warranty in the US only have a limited 2-year warranty in the UK. There's a really amusing incident - a well-regarded UK player bought a 4:88 bass amp and had an issue with it. I took a look and just needed some clarification on part of the circuit from MESA. they wouldn't give me any technical help. I then found out it had a few weeks to run in the warranty so it was booked in for a warranty return. The amp got crushed flat in transit and they hadn't insured it, so the owner got a brand-new boxed amp in return. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

When people ask me which Mesa amp to buy I say get one that says Marshall on the front.

[mikepukmel]

Ive got a good friend from my high school days, who's been an electronics tech for 30+ years, he's at your guys level. The stories he has about the mesas he has owned! EEek. Went through a very long and painful debugging and repair session with this mesa amp he owned. Found it was a design flaw. Fought tooth and nail with the first level tech support (who we know for every company are about useless). A little while later, he got a call back from an engineer there, who said basically "Dayyum you're right, this is a f**k up". And that's the last he heard of it. So, he fixed the amp, sold it and now, as Mick says, he only has the Mesa Boogie amps that say "marshall" on front! Heh. Great line, I have to remember that!

[Mick Bailey]

The Mesa schematic drawings are copyrighted artwork that belongs to Mesa.

In the UK at least, there's a deeper level to this and I don't know if this applies in the US: even drawing up and publishing your own schematic doesn't sidestep copyright. I've been personally involved with defending copyright issues whereby someone thought they'd publish their own drawings and in every case the offender had to withdraw their material. It's interesting to see sometimes a schematic will be drawn up and published by an individual who then adds their own copyright notice.

[mikepukmel]

In the UK at least, there's a deeper level to this and I don't know if this applies in the US: even drawing up and publishing your own schematic doesn't sidestep copyright. I've been personally involved with defending copyright issues whereby someone thought they'd publish their own drawings and in every case the offender had to withdraw their material. It's interesting to see sometimes a schematic will be drawn up and published by an individual who then adds their own copyright notice.

Oh boy Ive seen so many similar type cases over the years!! Struck a nerve here. there was this fantastic drum beat, put on a song recorded back in the 60's, (as my lousy memory goes, I can't recall the details). Mimicked over the decades in various recordings. So, when digital stuff came out, some company stole (stole, literally) a whole bunch of clips from these recordings, without permission of the recording artists, or record label, many of which are out of business, then proceeded to publish, with copyright notices painted all over, these clips on a CD.

And, someone took one of the clips, did something with it, and ... you guessed it, got sued, by the people who stole the clips and put them on a CD. Copyright law mostly gives crooked lawyers a venue to try to squeeze money from people, unfortunately, it doesn't often do what the original intent was. Or maybe squeezing money out of random people was really the intent and not 'protecting intellectual property' as most of us think.

[bob p]

When people ask me which Mesa amp to buy I say get one that says Marshall on the front.

Ooh! That's so good I might have to "sig" it.

[nsubulysses]

I was feeling kind of bad in retrospect, blasting Mesa so hard. But, another day another Mesa and yep, hmmmmmm

I will feel bad for the person that has to recap this triple rec from mid 90s one day. Power supply caps above and below the board andthe board is mounted on those cheap plastic standoffs that dry out over time and easily crack when the day comes that you actually have to work on it. and then the board will be floating, just like most of those old sunn concert series amps that use the cheap plastic standoffs . Also have fun unsoldering and resoldering most of
The wires on the board to do it. This brand is unfriendly

[Chuck H]

That's why I just snip the cap lead close to the cap body and solder the new caps to those. I put hook bends at the connections and clip a plier between the work and the board to act as a heat sink so I don't melt the actual pad connections. Bob is SURELY going to take issue with this (that's why I wrote it down ) But it works fine and no failures due to workmanship as yet. Cuts repair time (and therefore customer expense) considerably.

[nsubulysses]

But then you look like a hack

But...........maybe this amp deserves the hack job anyway. Since they built it in such an unfriendly way.

It's a hard choice, do a weird, worse job to save the customer money or do it proper and they have to pay because that's just what it takes to work on this amp?

I only like rigging stuff on my own gear, but I hear ya

[nosaj]

That's why I just snip the cap lead close to the cap body and solder the new caps to those. I put hook bends at the connections and clip a plier between the work and the board to act as a heat sink so I don't melt the actual pad connections. Bob is SURELY going to take issue with this (that's why I wrote it down ) But it works fine and no failures due to workmanship as yet. Cuts repair time (and therefore customer expense) considerably.

5...4....3...2....1....

Where's bob?


nosaj

[Chuck H]

I am the rare kind of hack who's work continues to operate just fine even though I piss on protocol sometimes under my own considerations. Lets look at this another way...

That Mesa is big smelly turd to work on. So "Hey customer guy, that'll be $350 for the labor. Sucks to be you! Ha ha ha, ha hah ah, ha haaa...." Or, say you go out to eat and order some foofy thing with a fried quail egg on it. Turns out they're all out of quail eggs, but they offer to use a chicken egg and charge you half price. The meal will still "work" just fine. Only a very small aesthetic is missing. The flavor, if you were blindfolded would be the same. Half the price. And you ARE blindfolded because the wee hooks in the component leads are not visible for 99.9% of all the amps purposes. JM2C

[bob p]

Where's Bob? I was out having lunch. My foofy thing would be masago with a raw quail egg, Chuck.

[bob p]

regarding that Mesa board -- I have no problems with turning old leads into turrets. That's a PCB amp, not a turret board amp or an eyelet board amp. I only get persnickety about construction methods when I'm building something DIY. as far as I'm concerned when you're working on someone else's design, all that's required is to meet their standards or exceed them.




Me? I think that photo of that Mesa actually looks pretty clean inside. I've seen mesas that are much worse, and that amp is what i think of as an easy mesa. I'd disconnect all of those wires, pull the board, populate it outside of the amp, and put everything back together. IMO that's the easiest way to do it and have something that looks professional. And I'd charge what it costs to do it right.

Removing all of those wires looks harder than it really is. Once you bite the bullet and decide to do it, it isn't all that hard. Instead of removing wires on the switches and pilot lamp, i'd just unscrew them.