THE LINEUP
Our pick of the month’s most delectable and wallet-bothering new gear
LOOKING BACK
Where’s Boogie Been?
We asked Gibson about Mesa/Boogie’s absence, and the answer is more straightforward than you might think: one of Mesa/ Boogie’s parts suppliers closed its doors and approval in the European market is strict. So, with “supply chain issues and due diligence with a new supplier” now complete, we’re now once again free to get our Boogie on.
Mesa/Boogie! Haven’t seen one of them in a guitar shop for a while.
Nope. In fact, a lot has changed since 2021 when the company was acquired by Gibson. Following some supply chain issues (see ‘Looking Back’ box, left), Boogie is now well and truly back, and it’s brought a brand-new amp design with it: the Mark VII.
Brand-new? Or just new to the UK?
Okay, so out of sight may not always mean out of mind, and if you’ve been paying attention then you might have seen the launch of the Mesa/Boogie Mark VII last summer, when it was rolled out in territories excluding Europe. But it’s new to us and will be available in the UK for the first time by the time you read this.
Enough backstory, tell us about the amp!
The Mark VII (the folk at Boogie decided to miss the VI, which remains in unreleased prototype form for now) is described by Boogie as Randall Smith’s “Magnum Opus” of tone. That’s because it crams a massive nine preamp modes into one 90-watt amp, shared between three channels. Each of those three channels is stocked with a three-band EQ (plus presence), as well as gain and channel volume controls, and each channel can also be selected to run at individually assignable output powers. More on that in a moment.
What circuits are they?
You have three channels: Channel 1 has preamp options for Clean, Fat and Crunch; Channel 2 offers Fat, Crunch and the new MKVII high-gain voice; and Channel 3 delivers a bit of Mesa/Boogie nostalgia courtesy of the MKIIB, MKIIC+ and MKIV preamps.
That’s a lot of toggles to press –and that’s not even all of them?
There are plenty of options, for sure.
