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Mesa
Engineering F-50 Combo
Guitarist RATING  |
The F-Series makes its UK debut, and
we get the first look at one of Mesa's best ever by
Nick Guppy
For many young guitar bands today,
Mesa Engineering is best known as the company that makes the
awesome Rectifier series of amplification – the ‘must
have’ backline being used by almost every American nu-metal
band out there at the moment. Today the company might appear
almost mainstream, but those of us who are a little more chronologically
challenged can remember when Mesa only made one amp – the
Mark series Boogie – and was pioneering many of the features
we take for granted on modern guitar rigs such as cascaded-gain
preamps, channel-switching, multi-function tone circuitry and
more. It’s a long time since Santana’s debut at
Woodstock with the original Boogie (a radically reengineered
Fender Princeton), and since then Mesa has changed and grown.
Nevertheless the ideals which inspired Randall Smith and his
team to come up with that revolutionary amp are still just
as strongly held today. This year’s innovations include
the mindbendingly complex Road King head (a real wallet burner
even by Mesa standards) and the affordable but no less exciting
F-Series, which comprises three amps: a 100-watt 2 x 12, a
30- watt 1 x 12 and the reviewed F-50.
Chatting to long-time Boogie enthusiast Jon van der
Schoot of Westside Distribution (Mesa’s UK distributor),
it seems the new F-Series may have been at least partly inspired
by them: “The Rocket Series was always a good seller for
us because it was affordable, and when Randall was last over here
he was chatting to the guys and it’s possible he took on
board some of the comments we made about being sorry to see it
go. I wouldn’t say we were responsible for anything in the
new amp beyond that, but I guess other dealers besides us were
talking along similar lines and Randall may have had affordable
performance in mind with the F-50.”
Mesa isn’t just a master of high-gain,
it knows how to make an amp look good too and the F-50 is no
exception. It says something when you can recognise
a manufacturer’s product by styling alone – the F-50’s
immaculate cabinet is a case in point. There’s a tiny embossed ‘Mesa
Engineering’ badge on the front panel, but that’s
all; you have to look around the back, or on the footswitch,
to find the model designation. Despite this strippeddown ‘prototype’ appearance,
the F-50 looks as cool as any other Mesa design. Style is just
as important for an amp as it is for a guitar, and we really
like this simplistic ‘stealth’ approach.
The controls appear equally simplistic with just
two rows of gain, bass, mid, treble, master volume and reverb.
One small toggle switch selects Channel 1 or Channel 2, with or
without the F-50’s contour function, and there’s one
push/pull pot which engages a bright switch on Channel 1’s
gain knob. It’s all very straightforward, simple to use and
understand, and by Mesa standards it’s almost miserly. But
this is no ordinary amp and there are all kinds of clever things
happening behind that front panel.
On the rear there’s a pair of sockets for the
parallel effects loop (plus an FX mix control), a mute switch for
silent recording or practice through the headphones/recording output
socket, and a trio of speaker sockets. There’s nothing extraordinary,
but everything you need is here.
Internally, it’s the same layout that all Mesa
amps share with a high-quality through-plated main PCB linked by
flying leads to chassis-mounted pots and switches. The soldering
appears perfect at every joint. The valve bases are PCB-mounted,
however the surrounding board areas are well supported so there’s
no problem with flexing when valves need replacing.
SOUNDS: With the F-50’s red light glowing,
it’s
time to put down the pen and pick up a guitar. The first pleasant
surprise is the lack of hiss and hum; in recent years some Mesa
amps have suffered from excessive background noise. It’s
difficult to design a high-gain amp and keep the noise threshold
down, and considering how much gain the F-50 has on tap the noise
levels on this sample are exceptionally low.
Channel 1 is where the F-50’s clean
sounds live. It’s very reminiscent of the Mark
I with a shimmering treble and plenty of tonal range to cover
any base, from plummy jazz to clean compressed funk riffing,
to jangly open-string chording. The bright switch adds just the
right amount of snap to bring midrange- heavy humbuckers to life.
This would be enough for many players. However,
the F-50 has a Mesa Engineering badge and that means you can
expect the unexpected:
we were blown away by the gain on this channel, and the sounds
you can pull from it. Wind up the gain and treble as far as they
go and the resulting tone is a rich, aggressive barrage of distortion
that makes you want to hammer every power chord in the book.
Back off to around 10 o’clock, and you’re playing
a different amp with stacks of clean headroom, no loss of treble
and the gain range is tuned perfectly so you can add just a hint
of grunt for soulful blues lead/rhythm stuff.
The F-50’s lead channel is equally
special. There’s a definite Rectifier influence
here, but with more warmth and only slightly less gain. It’s
one of the best lead sounds we’ve heard, and with the master
volume up to gigging levels the F-50 has that same vocal quality
as the best Mark IIs, changing in character as notes are attacked
at varying strength. At full-tilt the gain levels are gleefully
mad, but totally useable with no feedback or oscillation problems.
Channel 2’s contour function adds the same punch Boogie
owners get from setting the graphic EQ to a ‘V’ shape – pushing
the sound forwards and propelling everything with more urgency,
cutting through the muddiest of live mixes. Lower gain settings
are just as rewarding, which wasn’t the case with the Caliber
series, but here’s where the F-50 sings the blues with
a tone to die for – it’s highly touchsensitive and
full of expression.
On both channels the reverb also makes up for past
disappointments – there’s lots of it with no real increase
in noise, and the tone is just right: not too shrill or boomy.
Oh, and this amp is bone-crunchingly loud!
Verdict: No amp is tested by us more critically
than a Mesa, they cost a substantial amount and promise
a lot, and we try to make extra certain they deliver. The F-50
delivers, big time. Behind that ‘stealth’ design
is a huge range of sounds that are easily accessible from the
simplest of control layouts. It’s got all the essential
features you need, and tonally we think it’s one of Mesa’s
best ever; combining Mark I, Mark II and Rectifier influences
with low noise performance for a superlative result. It isn’t
cheap, but it’s one of Mesa’s most affordable amps
with no compromise on tone or build quality. We think it’s
one of the best designs ever to come out of the Petaluma workshop
and it fully deserves our Gold Award for such awesome performance
at a very realistic price. Plug into one and, like us, you’ll
probably find it very hard to stop.
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Mesa
Engineering F-50 Combo
Guitarist RATING |
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| Things are kept simple 'round the back too,
but everything you need is here. Click
to enlarge |
Randall
Smith talks about designing the F-50 |
