Mesa lonestar

woj74

Junior Member
Messages
153
Hi
Thinking of a new amp in my rig. What is your opinion on Mesa Lonestar combo 2x12? I don't play really distorted things. Clean, crunch and moderate eoverdiven sounds is my style.
 
It's a keeper.. I owned one for a while, Until it came down to that or food.  :-\

But it gets a really nice overdrive sound and some wicked "Almost" fender cleans.

Every Lonestar tends to be different to me.. they all have their own personality.. So I say Go try a few differents ones and see if you can't find one you dig. :rock-on:
 
Hey all,

Woj.  I've got a lonestar head that I use with a
2x12 vertical rectifier cab.  Sounds awesome.
Like others say it does clean to 70's Marshall sounds
really well.  It's pretty easy dial in a nice mid gain
lead sound (think Mark Knofler). I also use a Hermida
audio Zendrive in front of it when I really want it to
get nasty.  The lonestar LIKES the zendrive. 

A couple of notes.  I really was not crazy about it
initially until I moved all my time based effects
(chorus, delay, etc.) into the effects loop.  It made
a huge difference. Like most Boogies, it's a tad
touchy about putting stuff in front of the preamp. 
Distortion and wah work fine there.

Later,

Boogie2
 
boogie2 said:
I really was not crazy about it
initially until I moved all my time based effects
(chorus, delay, etc.) into the effects loop.  It made
a huge difference. Like most Boogies, it's a tad
touchy about putting stuff in front of the preamp. 
Distortion and wah work fine there.

that is the conventional wisdom for amps with effects loops.
 
Yeah,

Different amps respond differently.  It all sounded
better in front with my MkIII.  This is a very different beast.

Boogie2
 
I own the lonestar combo, and highly recommend it...especially for what you are looking for.    If you need clean to moderate crunch it's got a great variety of very usable and expressive tones.  It's not as compressed as most of the Mesa's I've tried out....very open and "alive" sounding.  My only gripe (and it sounds like it's a non-issue for what you're looking at it for) is that every once and a while I get the urge to whip out a heavily distorted/metal guitar tone.  Not really possible with this amp.  For 95% of the tones I look for though, it's got 'em.

On that note, if someone could recommend me a good pedal to slap in front of my lonestar to turn it into a metal machine every once and a while, I'd definitely appreciate it....haven't been able to track down a distortion pedal that I really like.
 
Jmohill,

Try the Hermida Zendrive.  You have to order from the
Hermida Audio website, and there's a waiting list, but
it sounds amazing with the Lonestar.  Gain and harmonics
for days.  4 controls: volume, gain, tone, and voice, so
it has a lot of tonal adjustability. 

I haven't used it much on the clean channel, but stacked
with the gain channel... Whoa!

Later,

Boogie2
 
On that note, if someone could recommend me a good pedal to slap in front of my lonestar to turn it into a metal machine every once and a while,

Boss Metal Zone.  It could turn a Roland Jazz Chorus amp into a metal monster.  It's kind of a one trick pony, but fun nontheless.
 
I thought my question died without a response but not. I think i would try a Lonestar and convince myself. Do you know the price of a new one in US? Can hardly find used Lonestars. Can you suggest where to look for?
 
One f*cked up thing about Mesa is that they tightly control their dealer network and you can't really find pricing online...

Clean used ones are in the U.S. $1500 dollar range for the 2x12 combo, a little less for the 1X12; you don't see many, I think it must be a pretty low volume model.

How much are they from the dealer in Poland?

There's another amp that hasn't been released yet, but has 30w/60w ClassA/50w/100w Class A/B switching in a head form factor from Blackheart Engineering; should be shipping by sometime next month; online preorders were running $699:

http://blackhearteng.com/bh100h.html
 
I'm thinking about 2x12 Mesa Lonestar, there's another  Lonestar Special with 30W power but don't know how to compare them. I found two prices for a new one - Polish dealer around $3200 and a German one for $4000. Don't know whta you say cheap or expensive but should know that European currences both Euro and Polish Zloty are very strong right now and e.g. exchange rate two years ago was $1= 3.5 Zloty and now is 2.15. That is bad to our economy but nice when you boy abroad - you just pay substantially less. Sorry to say about economic aspects on musical forum but that influences decissions on where to buy. If decided to get it form US must consider shipping +customs+VAT but it still might be reasonable.
It is quite strange to me you can find hundreds of JCM900s, Rectifiers,Fenders etc on Ebay but when you type Lonestar you will see nice ATA cases...
Can anyone of you nice american friends tell me how much a new one is or help find a good condition used one with chnaces to ship it overseas. :help:
 
http://cgi.ebay.com/MESA-BOOGIE-LONESTAR-50-100-watt-combo-MINT_W0QQitemZ260242529951QQihZ016QQcategoryZ10171QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/mesa-boogie-lonestar-amp_W0QQitemZ300228311119QQihZ020QQcategoryZ10171QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mesa-Boogie-Lonestar-Head-NewRare_W0QQitemZ140235464645QQihZ004QQcategoryZ10171QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mesa-Boogie-Lonestar-or-Lone-Star-50-100-Watt_W0QQitemZ110254955224QQihZ001QQcategoryZ10171QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
thanks jackthehack for the links, i appreciate your engagement in my enquiery. Unfortunatelly 1st,2nd&4th links are 1X12 combos and 3rd is head. What i've learnt at harmony central rewievs retal price is around $1800- Can anyone confirm this?. I that case even with shipping&customs fees it would make considerably less than buying it directly at any European dealer for minimum $3200 :icon_thumright:.
 
Coming back to this topic because just bought a Mesa Lone Star Classic Head. I temporarly play on a borrowed cabinet but need to have my own. Due to weght&dimensions issues the choice is 2x12. The idea is to buy a cabinet without speakers and than fit them with the ones i like. I would like to go as far as possible form British mellow mids and jump to American sparkling sounds. I think Eminence offers quite a wide range of that type speakers. I play both single coil and humbucker guitars on cleans or medium drive sounds. As for technical details spekers should be at least 75W each at 16 Ohm wired in parallel.Can you recommend anything that would meet my expectations?
 
I myself have very specific tastes and don't use try a lot of different speakers. To get better feedback from people who do, you might cite an example of speaker or cabinet you like that they can extrapolate from. My answer to any speaker question is Celestion Vintage 30s.
 
I may be totally wrong but Celestion V30, Eminence Legend series etc. seem to be pure British voiced speakers. Another question is: How much a speaker influences overall sound?
 
I don't know if I catch exactly what you mean by "British-voiced"? I always thought of that more in terms of the amplifier design driving the speakers, like Marshall vs. Fender. I'm more partial to Fender tube amps and the Celestion Classic 30s sound damn good as replacement speakers for the junk that Fender puts in these days.

The "holy grail" to me would be the JBL D120s Fender used in their best classic Super/Twin Reverb models, but those are no longer available. I have heard good things about the California 12's that Weber makes as a reasonable facsimile for the JBL D/E-120s, but at $210 each haven't gone down that road yet, as I've never had a chance to hear/test them in person.

Are there any music stores around where you live in Poland that carry a variety of cabs with different speakers you could go test your Mesa head with? That would be your best first shot, I think...
 
To put things as simple as possible, but believe me i tried hard to avoid the words, i would say "i'm looking for kind a SRV" brilliant sound.. It doesn't mean i want to pretend i'm Stevie but that kind of sound is sth that  i like. Initially i was looking  for a Fender amp but due to tha fact that it's hard to find a good condition used amp and the new ones are not worth any attention i chose Mesa Lone Star and trying to match a good cabinet. Maybe i pay too much attention to what speaker descriptions say about British-voiced stuff  but today i played most of sound samples of Eminence speakers on their web page and can say they differ a lot. http://www.eminence.com/soundclips.asp
I'm afraid Polish music stores don't stock too many various cabinets to compare them. It's more like you know what you want, you order and you wait.
 
Back in the day playing clubs around Dallas/Austin Stevie usually played old blackface Super Reverbs/VibroVerbs (VibroVerb about the same as a SuperReverb amp circuit in 1x15 or 2x10 cab, Stevie has the 1x15 version); he'd also play through an old Fender Bassman head, think he used a Bassman or Dual Showman cab with that, pretty much every thing you've heard recorded was through one of these amp setups. I don't know that he ever changed out the stock speakers, but from the amps probably had either JBL or Jensen speakers in them to start out with. Later on after getting more famous I think he used Marshalls of some ilk in large venues and cut an endorsement deal with Dumble and used dome of their amps, but vintage SRV sound is Blackface Fender.
 
As i wrote before i gave up looking for Fender amps and purchased the Lone Star. By the way it was a good deal in terms of money. I'm sure i can approach Fender style sound by proper set up of all knobs and switches and right choice of a cabinet. 
 
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