While I may on occasion give the impression that all the good gear was made before 1965, my pet dodo and I concur that the Kemper, Helix, AxeFX etc are wondrous examples of man’s ingenuity. And as we slide inexorably towards global extinction, you’ll have a couple of hundred programmable guitar sounds to accompany it when we get there, all living inside a conveniently portable bag. Handy for that fateful moment when the last spaceship from Earth blasts off to Elvis Minor and you’ve exceeded your baggage allowance. However, while you wait impatiently for the last glacier to crumble and in the absence of a spare £1500-£2000 with which to purchase, say, your Kemper of choice may I draw your attention to the following? Plug your fretted favourite into a Fender Deluxe of any vintage, switch on, set the controls to midway, et voila. You are now producing a delightfully warm, valve based tone with no effort whatsoever. For everything else, refer to your effects board. Simple, super quick and at a fraction of the cost (if you ignore the amp price!). Sure, you’ll need to edit your sound on the fly, but there's a bewildering choice of stompboxes from which to choose at Gimmeyourcreditcard.com which will programme and store your fave sounds. Not forgetting the frankly offensive alternative that your producer seems to require from you on this morning’s bladder control commercial. In any case, how many sounds do you really need? I’ll tell you. For 95% of the time, three. I would suggest that ‘clean’, ‘’overdrive’, and ‘stadium rock/death metal’ pretty much covers it. And think how much time you’ve now saved. If all else fails, you could, er… do some practice. That should get you to that dream gig at The Dog And Plectrum quicker than a cartload of modellers. Which brings me to the Mesa Boogie Nomad 45. In authentic Noah mode, and like my hand-wired Fender Deluxe models, I own a pair of these EL84-based items. They cohabit harmoniously in my equipment store, but each December they emerge to be serviced prior to the ‘Strictly’ arena tour. Clearly, I need just one amp but ownership of a backup means that in time honoured tradition it will never fail. As has been the case for the last 15 years. Let’s rid ourselves of the bad news upfront: it weighs heavier than a tax return. It lives in its own bijou flight case and appears on stage at each venue for five weeks on the road. My mission is merely to turn it on. A cursory glance at the front panel of this 1 x12” hernia hazard reveals more controls than a government immigration bill.
Mitch's beloved Mesa Boogie Nomad with mic position tape marker included