Mesa Boogie Lonestar

I don't have any personal experience, but the only complaint I head was in regards to the Special model: not enough clean headroom.

I am always tempted to try these amps out at the store, but I don't have cash to spend on them, so why bother torturing yourself?

My brother-in-law left his at my house to play with over the week-end. I'm loving it. I love the warm smooth tone (creamy, if you will), and I like thet it is selectable from 5 to 15 to 30 watts. Makes it nice to be able to practice at home with lower voumes and still get good tone. It's priced a bit out of my budget, but it is definitely a great amp!

well i have been playing in this band now for several years we play christian rock (i say rock we were described just recently as a christian band with an Allman Bros SRV sound) Both the other guitarist and I always rock out some solos we both use hot rods, and we are both upgrading, he's goign matchless, or Dr Z. and I want Mesa or Dr. Z. I like a Texas style crunch in my tone, When I say I want clean tone, my clean is overdriven. we are both going to dive in and pay the price for one bad @#$%^ amp for several reasons. Where we live everyone plays Peavey or Fender hot rods' Nobody knows anything else, there are two guitarist who use a mesa mark IV. Thats it so we are stepping out and being unique and showing our local musicians that what they have is not as great as they are saying it is. (not putting down on fender as i own one) they make out like its the best there is.. We know and want to show them that simpler is better and that there are other amps out there that you will love. We are also becoming a bigger name we are getting more gigs, and playing bigger venues and we want more pro gear i guess you could say. and finally the big reason. GAS! yes bad GAS....

I play a lot of blues and I love the tone I get from it. My idea of good tone is warm, smooth and overdriven just to the point of starting to break up, but so I can still hear all of the notes in a slowly strummed chord. This amp can definitely do that and more.

My brother-in-laws brother plays in a local rock band and was recently using it... he liked the tone, but didn't feel it was loud enough to cut through the rest of his band. So he bought a Boogie Dual Rectifier (very, very nice amp!).

I love the tone, but I'm not sure if it's loud enough for performing live. Should be OK if you mic it, but for the price (~$1,600 here).

The one I'm using is the Special, and it only has 5, 15 or 30 watt settings. The regular Lonestar, I see, has 10, 50 or 100 watts! If the tone is anything like it's little brother, then you'll love it! I didn't reallize there was a bigger unit.

I used to sell those and the main issue with them is that they have a design flaw that causes them to get too hot; working players were having to get them repaired on a regular basis as a result. If you are a medium duty player it will probably do fine, if you like the Mesa sound.

I used to sell those and the main issue with them is that they have a design flaw that causes them to get too hot; working players were having to get them repaired on a regular basis as a result. If you are a medium duty player it will probably do fine, if you like the Mesa sound.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I use a much larger head cab for my amps than the chassis size would seem to allow. Tubes need plenty of room to breathe. I don't like cooling fans. I much prefer to design plenty of cabinet room and venting to allow natural convection current cooling, which means plenty of room on either side of the chassis as well as room above the chassis.

Cheers!

Strat

Thats the tone i'm looking for that warm, smooth, yet overdriven tone but still able to hear every single note. Then when i press the solo button I want it to sing out that SRV, Skynard, feel. I am also becoming a minimalist. I used to have tons of pedals now I want the amp to provide my tone, so bye tube screamer, I want the amp to have a solo channel that is good (fender lead channel gain structure sucks) so bye blues driver, I also want a seperate channel for clean and then the really overdriven hard distorted type, also with a solo. I'm trying to cut my pedals down to my Morley JD-10, DYNA Comp, Chorus, Delay, WAH, and when I need them Volume, and Qtron, of course a tuner that doesn' t count. Anyway I think after all this reading I found that this is my amp.

Well when you pick it up, don't forget to post some clips!

I've been reading Guitar Noise for quite a while, but this is my first forum post. I just wanted to chime in on the Boogie Lonestar since I love this amp.
I used to sell those and the main issue with them is that they have a design flaw that causes them to get too hot; working players were having to get them repaired on a regular basis as a result. If you are a medium duty player it will probably do fine, if you like the Mesa sound.

Do you know if these were the short heads that people were having problems with or was it the long heads and combos as well? The short heads have been discontinued and I wondered if this might be the reason why.
I love the tone, but I'm not sure if it's loud enough for performing live. Should be OK if you mic it, but for the price (~$1,600 here).

The LSS is loud enough for almost any practical situation at 30W and the LSC is 100W!! How much more could you need. Volume has never been an issue for me, there is a lot less clean headroom in the 10W setting but the breakup sounds so organic and amazing. Having all the modes sparkling clean isn't neccessary since the other two power settings will do it better or as good as any other amp.

I have an LSC with the 10/50/100 power options. It is an absolutely amazing amp. If you have the chance to play one jump on it and your tone loving ears will thank you later.

Very likely the short heads. I haven't looked into it for a while so that is likely.

As to volume, if you aren't playing a stadium 30 watts is more than enough, 50 watts starts to be too much. As a tech on tours, it never ceased to amaze me that a Vox AC15 was enough fo large clubs, indeed sometimes the sound guys would get annoyed at the high volume. If your drummer is too loud to hear it, FIRE HIM. It's one of the skills needed for the job, and it isn't that hard to ratchet it down.

yea if you play a stadium i'm sure it be mic'd. I played a LSC the other day at a local store and I was in love. I put CH1 on 50W and added enough gain to get that minimal break up to an SRV sound. So when I pick a note it chimes out but when I strum you hear the drive.

CH2 On the other hand being in the store could not set it quite right because other people where in there playing and I didn't want to sit infront of the amp for 2 hrs dialing in the perfect amount. But what I got I liked. Now my only delima is i went to a store the other day that carries Dr.Z I played a MAZ 38 and a Prescription ES. I can get these for the same price as the mesa. But, the tone difference is bothering me. I play more leaning towards the MESA tone, But I fell in love with that Prescription ES, Maz was good too but to twangy. But that Dr.Z is not really the tone I use. but its a Z.

MESA OR Z MESA OR Z DR Z OR MESA. THE DELIMA

1849 VS 1900? MESA VS DR.Z

AND NOW THE THINKING BEGINS.

One cool thing about having the 100W option on the LSC is that it gives you the ability to set up your channel one for a pristine clean by utilizing all the headroom that 4 6L6's provide. I works out pretty well by using the Master volume pot to control the overall volume and make it reasonable. The only problem is that when you have the two channels setup for different tube configurations there is a slight pop when switching that is very noticeable at bedroom levels but not at stage levels. I guess that is the price you have to pay for being able to footswitch between 100W A/B push pull and 10W Class A single ended. This pop happens most noticeably when channel 1 is at 100W and channel 2 is at 10W. When they both are set the same there is no pop when switching and when between 50W and 100W it is almost non existent.

As for the channel 2, Mesa describes it as a slightly higher gain clone of channel 1. It would be more accurately described as a slightly higher gain cousin of channel one. There is more compression and a loss of the extreme high and low ends that make channel one the greatest sounding circuit I've ever played. There is a guy on another forum who has swapped the gain and master pots of channel two and claims that the results are stunning and that channel two is now indeed a clone of channel one. I don't think anyone else on the board is trying it out yet because of the warranty. I would love to hear what the amp would sound with the drive circuit engaged on an actual clone of channel one.

This might be good stuff to know when shopping for a Lonestar. If anything ever happened to mine I would do just about anything necessary to replace it. No matter what other amps I might accumulate, the LSC is the lynch pin of my sound and I will always have one around.

The only thing I remember about this amp is that I really wanted one.... couldn't afford it, so I went with a Fender Blues Deluxe, which was very good for me.

Pointless comment, but that's what happens after a few beers.

my friend has one, he said "The Lonestar is the only amp I've ever plugged into where I fired it up on the clean channel and played for a solid half hour before it even occured to me to check out the lead channel. The thing is evidently loosely inspired by a Dumble, and has one of the greatest spongy, chewy, organic clean sounds I've ever had the good fortune to play.
" -blackdiamond13 @ Jemsite