Designing the Sound of the Next Rock Revolution!

Legendary Mesa Founder & Designer, Randall Smith, takes time for a chat with Guitar Buyer magazine’s Mick Taylor on creating Mesa’s most awarded & critically acclaimed new amplifiers – The Stiletto Deuce & Stiletto Trident.

Guitar Buyer: How did the concept for the Stiletto come about?

Randall Smith: We were interested in making a sonically compatible "partner" for the Rectifier, especially for bands with two guitars. We wanted to enable each player to carve out and OWN a niche in the spectrum such that the individual sounds were distinctive, identifiable and ultimately compatible.

Using EL-34 power tubes put us on the path toward tones that are distinctive from, yet complimentary to the 6L6s used in the Rectifiers. Both the dynamic and harmonic characteristics of these two tubes are quite different. Where the 6L6’s have massive, airy low end that seems to emanate from the center of the earth, the EL-34’s, by cutting off that "sub-sonic" octave, are more tightly focused and punchy. Their frequency response goes to the bottom of the musical spectrum and stops there. But the 6L6’s just keep going, almost gathering momentum as they drop below the lowest musical frequencies - Kind of suggesting the movement of tectonic plates far beneath the earth's surface. And moving this kind of heft makes them slower and less urgent than the EL-34’s.

The high-end distortion characteristics are also way different. The EL’s have a fine crystalline granularity that pokes out above the Presence region where the 6L6’s are smoother and less peaky. They actually go higher even though that harmonic peak of the EL makes them seem brighter. The job was to develop circuitry that accentuated these different characteristics and took them further out, while paying homage to the classic ancestry of British amplification.

GB: Who is the Stiletto aimed at, primarily? 

RS: Aficionados of both classic Brit tones and of modern high-gain performance, especially when both can be offered in one amplifier - And, of course, those bands with two guitars.

GB: Were you concerned about cannibalizing the market for the Dual Rectifier series? 

RS: No, not really.  For some players, the Rectifier is just right; for others, it isn't.  We wanted to offer something for those other guys.   One of the hippest things about what we get to do is that "different amplifiers create different musical styles".  You can play a lot of different musical styles on a piano, and yet the instrument always sounds the same.  But you can take one guitar and, depending on the amp you use and how you set it, totally different musical styles are suggested and become possible.  It's the AMP that's setting the style and in many cases DEFINING the style.  With the Stiletto we're just offering another sonic palette to play with. 

GB: How different is the Stiletto to a Dual Rec in terms of the circuit? 

RS: Well... there are probably more differences than similarities.  Or maybe it's more accurate to say that there are lots of similarities, but when you look close, everything is different, often substantially different.   For example, we amassed a PILE of prototype transformers, both power and output, before we were satisfied.  They may look like Recto transformers, but everything inside is different - Same thing with the circuitry.  You can see familiar bits here and there but on a closer look, everything is different.  Remember, most everything can be traced back to the original source, which for both amps is the four-ten Bassman.  And that's pretty much like tracing all hot-rods, race cars (and most modern cars) back to the '32 Ford with a flat-head V-8 - The fabled "Deuce Coupe".  I like to give credit to the original source, because NONE of us would be doing amps otherwise.  And yet...everything is different.

GB: There is a huge amount of potential in each channel's modes. Are there technical barriers to making the modes footswitchable, or is there another reason they're non-switchable options?

RS: Making the modes footswitchable would put us on the slippery-slope toward compromised performance. You would need to re-set the controls in order to dial-in the optimum tone for each sound.  So if we had made them footswitchable you would then want to have a separate Gain control, then you would need another Master, and at least a Treble but better a whole 'nother tone stack.  And actually, the Presence is kind of crucial to getting it just right...  See what I mean? 

GB: Can you tell us how much the Bold/Spongy switch cuts power by?  

RS: About 20 percent. 

GB: Humbuckers and single coils - has one kind of pickup been favored for the Stiletto's development? (Not a loaded question - I've played it with Strats and my PRS Custom 22 - not to mention my Gibson 135 on a funk gig! Impressive results all round.) 

RS: We're not prejudiced!  We mainly use a couple of Doug's (that's Doug West) Tom Anderson guitars for development, one with pretty stock Fender-ish pickups and the other with some hot single-coils plus a humbucker because we're so accustomed to how they sound.  They're a good reference and easy for us to hear and dissect the amp tone.  But of course we also use a couple of Les Pauls and PRS guitars for verification. 

GB: Anything else you'd like to add?

RS: Yes.  Thanks... not just for your interest in the Stiletto but for the bigger opportunity we're given by guitarists to do something we love.  I'm speaking not just for myself but for Doug, Jim, Steve, Tien and most of the Mesa/Boogie crew.   There's like a circular reinforcement, not just amongst ourselves but with the whole world of guitar players out there.  We often talk about how fortunate we are to be doing something we love and the positive feedback we keep getting just pushes us to go for it even more.  Just like hitting a great groove on the bandstand and getting that audience feedback.  So, thanks, thanks again! 

See complete details on the Stiletto product page