| Guitar Buyer Interview
Randall Smith is the founder and designer of Mesa Boogie amplifiers. From the first Boogiemodded Fender Princetons, all the way through Mark Series amps right up to the latest Rectos, Randy has brought you the lot. The latest amp from the Mesa ‘Home Of Tone’ is the Stiletto (reviewed on the previous pages), so we took the opportunity to ask him about his new baby.
GB: How did the concept for the Stiletto come about?
Randall Smith: “We were interested in making a sonically compatible ‘partner’ for the Rectifier, especially for bands with two guitars. We wanted to enable each player to carve out and OWN a niche in the spectrum such that the individual sounds were distinctive, identifiable and ultimately compatible.
“Using EL-34 power tubes put us on the path toward tones that are distinctive from, yet complimentary to the 6L6s used in the Rectifiers. Both the dynamic and harmonic characteristics of these two tubes are quite different. Where the 6L6es have massive, airy low end that seems to emanate from the center of the earth, the EL-34s, by cutting off that ‘sub-sonic’ octave, are more tightly focused and punchy. Their frequency response goes to the bottom of the musical spectrum and stops there. But the 6L6s just keep going, almost gathering momentum as they drop below the lowest musical frequencies – kind of suggesting the movement of tectonic plates far beneath the earth’s surface! And moving this kind of heft makes them slower and less urgent than the EL-34s.
 The high-end distortion characteristics are also way different. The ELs have a fine crystalline granularity that pokes out above the presence region where the 6L6es are smoother and less peaky. They actually go higher even though that harmonic peak of the EL makes them seem brighter. The job was to develop circuitry that accentuated these different characteristics and took them further out, while paying homage to the classic ancestry of British amplification.”
GB: Were you concerned about cannibalizing the market for the Dual Rectifier series?
RS: “No, not really. For some players, the Rectifier is just right; for others, it isn’t. We wanted to offer something for those other guys.
“One of the hippest things about what we get to do is that different amplifiers create different musical styles. You can play a lot of different musical styles on a piano, and yet the instrument always sounds the same. But you can take one guitar and, depending on the amp you use and how you set it, totally different musical styles are suggested and become possible. It’s the AMP that’s setting the style and in many cases DEFINING the style. With the Stiletto we’re just offering another sonic palette to play with.”
GB: How different is the Stiletto to a Dual Rec in terms of the circuit?
RS: “Well, there are lots of similarities, but when you look close, everything is different, often substantially different. For example, we amassed a PILE of prototype transformers, both power and output, before we were satisfied. They may look like Recto transformers, but everything inside is different – same thing with the circuitry. You can see familiar bits here and there but on a closer look, everything is different. Remember, most everything can be traced back to the original source, which for both amps is the four-ten Bassman. And that’s pretty much like tracing all hot-rods, race cars (and most modern cars) back to the ’32 Ford with a flat-head V-8 – The fabled ‘Deuce Coupe’. I like to give credit to the original source, because NONE of us would be doing amps otherwise. And yet... everything is different.”
GB: Are there technical barriers to making the Stiletto’s modes footswitchable, or is there another reason they’re nonswitchable options?
RS: “Making the modes footswitchable would put us on the slippery-slope toward compromised performance. You would need to re-set the controls in order to dial-in the optimum tone for each sound. So if we had made them footswitchable you would then want to have a separate gain control, then you would need another master, and at least a treble, but better a whole ‘nother tone stack. And actually, the presence is kind of crucial to getting it just right... See what I mean?”
GB: Anything else you’d like to add?
RS: “Yes. Thanks. For the opportunity we’re given by guitarists to do something we love. I’m speaking for myself, Doug [West], Jim [Aschow], Steve [Mueller], Tien [Lawrence] and the Mesa/Boogie crew.
“There’s a circular reinforcement, not just among ourselves but with the whole world of guitar players out there. We often talk about how fortunate we are to be doing something we love and the positive feedback we keep getting just pushes us to go for it even more. Just like hitting a great groove on the bandstand and getting that audience feedback.
So, Thanks, thanks again!” GB
Check out the Full Review of the Stiletto.
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Guitar Buyer Magazine - UK |
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