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Hi guys, I have a mesa boogie royal atlantic 100 watt head. It has EL34 tubes (not sure if that matters, but I figured I'd let you guys know anyway). I love the amp, and I get awesome tones out of it, but it will not take any kind of fuzzes on the 2 dirty channels. I keep spending money on fuzzes that I have to sell because they sound awful on my rig. Is there anything you guys think will work on my rig? They work ok on my clean channel, but I really want to get that huge wall of sound type of fuzz for stoner/doom. I've already tried the pharaoh, hoof, tone reaper, hoof reaper, EQD crimson drive (germanium OD), swollen pickle, big muff w/ tone wicker. Nothing seems to work. If you guys have any experience with this amp and know of a fuzz that works, please let me know. Thank you.

I'm no Doom expert but my guess is ya might be doing it wrong.

Usually you slam a distortion or a fuzz into a high headroom clean channel or you just use the distortion channel of your amp, not both together as that'll only give you more saturation and compression which is the exact opposite of what you want to sound heavy and have a huge wall of sound.

Besides, Mesa amps, especially the newer ones, are compressed sounding by themselves and they lack a bit of upper mid eq anyway so you don't want to make things worse by running a distortion or fuzz pedal through the gain channel.

It could be that your cab isn't optimal for what you're trying to achieve as well, I'm curious what kinda cab you're using the amp with?

Another thing you could try is run a Tubescreamer (with mid bump) on low gain through your gain channel to tighten it up and make it sound heavier.

I saw Neurosis play with a few of these amps and their live sound was pretty weak as well (they usually play older Marshall amps I think and they're known for having an awesome live sound) so you're not the only one struggling with it apparently.

EDIT:
Sorry, the last line might come across harsh which I didn't mean that way (a bit groggy from the flu still so my head isn't completely clear).
I meant, don't feel too bad or stressed about it, Mesa's aren't exactly easy amps so it might take time to find the sound you're looking for.
Try the eq in different settings than usual (especially the mids my guess!) and yeah, try the clean channel first and foremost, stacking drive and fuzz pedals into that maybe.

Ok, so, first question: Which huge wall of sound are you going for? There's a bunch of different flavors out there. What records are you listening to that make you go "oh fuck yeah I want to sound like that"?

Tristan's right, though, in that you typically don't want to boost the gain channel with anything as gnarly as a fuzz pedal, because too much saturation just sounds shitty (and not in a good way).

Curious how much gain you have on the dirt channel to begin with.
If I was going to push it with fuzz, I would keep it on the edge of breakup.
I don't run dirty amps but I keep my monarch almost breaking up and slam it with a blunderbuss and it sounds flipping huge.

Just a matter of balancing things out.

Less gain is usually heavier in a live situation.
high gain is cool to noodle and hide your slop

Kinda need the whole signal chain to understand all the issues though.

I have a mesa regular sized cab with v30s. My crunch channel that I've tried running my fuzz through even when it's barely distorted wont take any fuzz. I'm looking to get a wolfmother type of fuzz tone. from 1:04-1:30 of this video especially.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRrQ1ddgI4U

Couple of points to try:

1) Don't use the dirty channels with dirt pedals.

2) Try to turn your amp up more on the clean channel with fuzzes. You might be surprised with the results.

Pretty much all the fuzzes you mentioned are of the "sound better going into a clean preamp" variety.

GardenoftheDead wrote:Pretty much all the fuzzes you mentioned are of the "sound better going into a clean preamp" variety.

word!!!

I have been running my fixd side of a twosome into slightly dirtier amps with great success lately.

Hmm, well I have a very special twosome on its way, so hopefully that'll be the ticket. I traded my hoof reaper for it.

Johnloozer wrote:Hmm, well I have a very special twosome on its way, so hopefully that'll be the ticket. I traded my hoof reaper for it.

Good deal,
I think it will work well,

Nice thing on the fixd side is that you can get anywhere from clean boost to full on crazy.
so you should be able to find a perfect dirt mix with it.