My Meazzi Echomatic with video

[MeBHank]

The only drawback with the Meazzi , is the maintainance and maybe reliability for gigging, but a wonderful bit of the past .

You've hit the nail on the head there Roger, that's my intention as they do not travel very well.

Hmm, that's not my experience, fellas. Of the Meazzis I've owned I've not had issues with transporting them. Keep it upright in transit, then once you arrive at your destination let the unit settle to room temperature prior to turning it - and the motor - on, and you'll be fine.

I've had very, very few reliability issues with my Meazzis. In Tilburg in 2010 I had one instance of losing echo very early in the set. That was my fault; after cleaning the heads I had attached the new tape too quickly before taking the echo to the stage. Rookie, pilot error. Another clean and another tape and it sprang back to life, good as new. The other time the echo signal died was at a band rehearsal, and that turned out to be a cracked valve (so probably an example of the aforementioned temperature-monitoring issue, and me being too hasty to turn it on after travelling). An old vari-speed motor also died on me once and had to be replaced. Otherwise, visits to the 'doctor's' were surprisingly infrequent, especially considering the level of use.

In terms of maintenance, clean the heads as thoroughly as you can, and keep the valve seats and pins clean as you would with a valve amp. Use it as much as you like, transporting it sensibly, and you likely won't have many issues.

I just can't wait to get my current two Meazzis back from the major work I'm having done.

Anyway, welcome to the club, Dave (or the 'rabbit hole'!). Have fun!

[dave robinson]

Thanks for that info Justin. The reason I said what I said was because it came up from Devon via UPS in freezing temperatures last weekend and when I fired it up it was a little groggy to say the least. However after being in my living room overnight I switched it on and played and it worked beautifully and I put that down to it settling down, which made me wary of gigging with it. It sounded solid and clean, where on the day it arrived it was a bit wobbly.
Apart from someone letting me borrow one for a couple of days a few years back, I haven't been able to have good play with a Meazzi and to be honest I didn't think much of the one I borrowed as it was troublesome. That's why I had the barriers up against going down that route as I knew about the problems that yourself, Phil and Indra had experienced and I didn't want to buy trouble, accepting that these are old machines and taking on board what happened with Hank's as well, it made sense at the time.
Anyway it's here now and I love it and it adds something that I like - that's it.

[David Martin]

Glad you're enjoying the Tonemaster tone!

[dave robinson]

The Fender Deluxe Reverb has been a favourite studio amp for many years amongst many top guitarists and session men and the Tone Master version carries on the great features of this stalwart into the future. With it's built in DI the player can guarantee his or her sound will be perfect when it comes through the PA, I know 'cos I've tried it and it's absolutely terrific, plus ultra light too.

[Garystrat]

Hi Dave,

I enjoyed the sound files and videos, really great to see your Meazzi in action!

This inspired me to see how close I could get using software, I’ve setup a rack in Ableton Live that processes two instances of Waves Factory Echo Cat in parallel, which means they are both getting fed with the same gain staging levels. It’s a little fiddly as many of the settings have to be duplicated from one plugin to the other, so I’m looking to find a balance of generic settings and make the core adjustments via head switching, input, sustain, mix and output, to do this I have both plugin windows open and set them manually side by side.

Whilst this may sound quite fudged in practice it’s not too difficult and I’m starting to experience some magic from the echoes that I haven’t been able to achieve before. what I’ve done is set heads 1-3 on echo one and 4-6 on echo two, saving them as individual presets, whilst using them in pairs. Ableton has some unique feature in the way it handles plugins and I may be able to combine controls using macros or simply save as numbered presets that work in named pairs.

Regards

Gary

[dave robinson]

Excellent, it's good to know that people are inspired to try things out as a result of my efforts, thanks for your kind words.

[Garystrat]

Hi Dave,

I may be getting older, but I still have the enthusiasm and interest to get a lot of pleasure from experimenting and sharing experiences with others, this was one of those things that I intended to try but was seeking the best to way get the plugins running perfectly in parallel with identical signals, then the penny dropped that I could do it with several plugins at a time with Ableton Live racks, which may open up quite a few other possibilities!

I’ve gone with a less is more approach on this one, I’m using Helix Native for the amp modelling with volume pedal, Deluxe Comp, Essex AC30 (no cab) to Celestion Vox V212 IR plugin HWX IR (Heritage Blue model) on path 1, this splits to path 2A and 2B giving a stereo output. Path 2A also has a vintage delay which if set provides a doubles tracking method which can be monitored in real time (this is set to off in this instance).

HN is first in the chain and goes to the Echo Cat plugin (I’ve found that with plugins better results are often achieved by not sticking with hardware conventions), when gain staged properly the Echo Cat does a pretty good job of emulating the Copycat saturation and mix characteristics, too much saturation will quickly drive it into warp mode. Things like volume levels, panning and EQ shelves can be set for each head, with plugin wide control over all the other settings one would expect. I found that I had to increase input into Echo Cat and tame the gain stage output level, which really seems to bring out the character, plus it also benefits from higher mix levels than I would normally use.

I’m looking forward to giving the new version of Ableton Live 11 a spin tonight, this is set for full release later today.

Best regards

Gary

[dave robinson]

As long as you enjoy what you're doing with the 'plug ins' that's cool, but doesn't interest me at all as they are not something that any live guitarist would consider using. I tried that Binson thing and in reality compared with the real thing it didn't come close.
This thread is about real equipment so I'll leave it at that.