Lee Ritenour has invited us down to his studio in Los Angeles to take
some photos of him with his Maverick heads and Simul 2:90 power amps.
Last but not least Pat Martino will be doing a photo
shoot for us in his native Philadelphia later this month. Pat recently
switched to an all Boogie rig and is now using a Tri-Axis through
a Simul 2:90 into 2 2x12 Recto cabs. It promises to be a great Ad.
Also in town recently was Al DiMeola. He tore up Yoshi's
Nitespot in Oakland for four nights. I got the chance to show him
some of the new products we have been working on recently. He currently
uses a Tri-Axis through a Simul 2:90 into a very old Marshall 4x12.
First I let him compare his cab to our new 4x12 Traditional cab.
He immediately noticed how much more articulate and punchy the Mesa
cab was. I also took him our new Formulaä preamp to check out. He
was very impressed with the crystalline clean sound it produced
when playing his Gibson L-5 through it. He then switched to his
signature series Les Paul to try the dirty channels. He loved the
organicness of the Lead I channel and thought it was a great sound
for playing blues. Although he would like to try a Formula preamp
for the next record he ended up still preferring his Tri-Axis for
the majority of his sounds as in his words " It has amazing articulation
to the lead sound when I play fast runs like this( demonstrating
with a blinding flash of 128th notes ) and is very smooth and sweet".
The Artist recently funked through town and guitarist
Mike Scott wanted to check out the Formula preamp. He currently
uses a V-Twin rack preamp into a Strategy 500 for his clean tone
and was a hard man to sell on the idea that the Formula had an even
better clean tone (not to mention killer lead tones). I took the
prototype (Frankenstein with wires hanging out everywhere )down
to the show for him to hear.
Randy and Doug had just spent an entire week tweaking
this unit and I wanted Mike to hear the fruit of their labors. We
set the unit on top of his rack and plugged it in. He was blown
away by the clean tone of the piece and had to admit that it smoked
the V-Twin. He insisted that I let him use it for the show that
night. Mike and the Artist also have a couple of Revolver spinning
speakers that are used during the show.
A few weeks back I went to see the Family Values tour.
Some friends of mine were teching for a couple of the bands and
it turned out to be a complete Boogie fest! First on stage were
Limp Bizkit. Guitarist Wes Borland was using 2 Dual Rectifiers into
4 4x12 Recto cabs with 2 Mesa 2x12 guitar wedges down in front.
His sound was crushing! Bassist Sam Rivers was using 2 Basis M2000
amps into 2 8x10 Roadready cabs and 2 2x10 bass wedges. One of the
sickest bass tones I've heard and stupidly loud! Next up were Rammstein.
Their stage looked like a Boogie music store! Guitarist Richard
Kruspe had a 20 space rack filled with Tri-Axis, Simul 2:90's and
a pair of rack mount Rectifiers. All this was through 4 4x12 Recto
cabs and 2 2x12 guitar wedges. Last but not least Korn hit the stage.
Guitarists Monky and Head were playing through their trusty Triple
Rectifier heads and bassist Fieldy played a pair of Basis M2000's.
Mike Dirntz of Greenday came up the factory a few
weeks ago. He needed to get some more 6x10 and 1x18 Roadready bass
cabs. His existing cabs have seen 18 months of torture and abuse.
They have constantly been knocked over, doused in water and set
fire to as part of the show. Suprisingly they are still going strong
and sound great. He powers them with 3 Basis M2000's which in his
words have been "Bulletproof".
