Hey Nano, good review here! Now, how about comparing it against the F-30 u used to have? okay, I know its not apple-to-apple, whats the thing that the bivalve wont do, & whats the thing that the mesa wont do?
Thanks.
Well firstly the mesa f-30 is an el84 amp. One of the better ones. The F-30 has really good cleans, i enjoyed the clean channel alot by cranking the gain for a " close to breakup" tone and setting it to a moderate volume. Very pedal friendly, nice amp, good at low volumes. The distortion side of things made me lose interest after a while. Its good for chugging kinda music, its like a mini rectifier, but other then that, its not versatile and i ended up not using the gain channel at all. Quality tones, but better try before you buy, or else you would end up using only one channel and hating the other.
I thought the f-30 cleans was good, the bivalve clean was even better. I'm not a fender clean kind of person, i find them too thin and shimmery. I much prefer a fat semi-clean sound from a marshall plexi. The bivalve is a cross between a vox and a marshall clean. Fender cleans are also available if you do not high cut the sound. ( acts like a bright switch ). Despite being a one channel amp, it can do so much more. The combination of different tube voltages, diff inputs, full power or attenuated sounds, mix and matching of tubes, all those combos will give you alot of tweaking power and options.
I set the amp on a medium gain mode, roll down the volume for cleaner passages and saturate it with a fulldrive 2 for XTC like gain.
Both amps are great with pedals. The f-30 has really good cleans for a mesa but BiValve is superior in this department.
Distortion wise, f-30 is much heavier and more saturated, but only one kind of gain sound available. The BiValve is more versatile and the highest gain it can go is for old school 70's 80s kind of classic rock tones. A OD pedal will be needed to drive it to insane levels.
I am going to record a video of the thd bivalve today. It seems quite a few people are intereste. Will post it up once its done.