TriAxis

The TriAxis preamp from Mesa Boogie remains one of the most useful pieces of equipment you could buy. If you tie it up to a 2:90 from Mesa then you will be in amp heaven.

As you can see from the picture above, this preamp includes a full compliment of 5 x 12ax7's and a whole pile of silicon chips - someone said this does not work, well hey buddy, that's why Metallica, Petrucci and many of the top musicians in the world have used these at one time or another.

This amp was developed to offer the guitarist a GREAT preamp with everything you could want and completely digitally controlled without affecting the sound in any way. The TriAxis remains completely analogue where it matters - in the signal path.

TriAxis can deliver many of the Mesa sounds including the Mark I, the Mark IIc+, the Mark IV (one of my own favourites) and the Mesa Rectifier. The TriAxis took in fact over three years of development to get to the finished product and that's one of the reasons why it costs a small fortune (at least here in the UK where the distributor screws the mesa customers - but hey, that's just my view).

The thing about this preamp, with the right outboard, is that it is completely flexible, you can even control the gain, treble, mids, bass, and drive of the amp with a midi foot controller, imagine pressing on the pedal and upping the gain in real time. Worse still, imagine the thing being linked to a PC with midi control, and the PC changing the gain in real time! It's all possible with this unique preamp, which remains one of the top products in the world today - and it's not a Marshall....

I have used one of these for years with a 9200 Marshall power amp. It would have been nice to get a 2:90 from mesa, but like I said, the UK distributor sets prices way too high for me and probably anyone else in the UK. My sound is good - strike that out - it's great...

Read how and what and why's of this preamp from the menu's on the left - but be prepared to spend some money - you WILL want one.