I felt exactly the same way. When I was literally ready to pull the trigger on one of these when they first came out, I went to look at them. My guy at GC LOVES the TA amps. Uses one himself in his band. When I saw that it had no mids control I was way less interested. Listened to the reviews, got interested again and went in to look again. Then realized, no loop. I stopped looking at them, and then when the Mini Rec came out and had full B/M/T/P on each channel, plus a loop, I was sold. But I kept reading about guys who owned bigger Mesa's (Mark V's, Dual Rec's etc.) who bought this just for the Vox and Tweed voices, then the next guy would say he bought it just for the Vox and Marshall voice, and the next one would say how great the Tweed and Marshall voices were. I went back to GC AFTER they were sold out and no longer carried Mesa and asked my salesman there what he liked about them. 30 minutes later I was completely sold and he said all that knowing he couldn't sell me one. He had the same concerns I did initially. No Mids control and no loop. He said that the only thing he ever considered was moving up to the 30 to get the loop, boost and more power.
All I can say is, I initially thought I'd never buy an amp without mids control because that is such an important range, yet I haven't missed it at all so far. And I have an EQ I can use if I do.
Many, many great amps don't have mid controls. With the small, funky, low-wattage amps we tend to accumulate in our studio, the norm is either no tone control, a single tone control, or bass and treble. Magnatones are a good example--those are glorious, amazing sounding amps, and they have only a single tone control. And realistically it's unusable, you turn the tone control all the way up anyway, anywhere else it just sounds dark and muddy.
Yup. ^^^ Dr. Z Ghia is another one sporting a single tone knob and sounds amazing!
I've always wanted one of those, especially if I ever saw one for the price you paid for the one you had. :o
Ironically, Dr. Z started out doing the same thing we do--buying Hammond chassis out of old organs, and converting them to guitar amps. The Carmen Ghia is one of those amps. His are worth a lot more than ours... although personally I think two of ours are priceless...
Last night for the fist time, I took my "loop pedals" and re-routed my pedalboard so that they were at the end of the "before amp" pedals, instead of in the loop. So I now had the TC Dreamscape, Flashback, Arena and MXR 10 band EQ all of which or normally in the loop of whatever amp I'm using, and put them in front of the TA15.
The chorus and stuff in the Dreamscape sounded great with almost no changes made to settings. The delay and verb both worked great up front for clean to crunch tones. Once I got on the Marshall and Mesa settings, I needed to turn them down some, but they worked great that way.
The EQ.... what fun that was! Take an already great Marshall setting and with gain between 9:00 to 3:00 and the EQ I could do anything from light crunch, low mids kick old school Marshall, to crunchy gained out upper mids boosted hot rod JCM 800 tones. EASILY! With the 3 power stages I had them at anything from bedroom volume to stage volume.
The Mesa voice- Well, with the EQ I get EVEN MORE Mark-ish than before. Smooth singing sustain, and I could tighten up the big bottom end the amp has in that setting.
The Mesa setting with either the Barber Gain Changer (boosting mids) or the EQ boosting mids for solos, is great. If it's not REAL "Mark" tone, it's close enough for me. And close enough to fool people!
Best of all, I've used the amp dry since I got it. It sounds even better with a little verb or delay and/or chorus, and the EQ opens up worlds...
I'm telling you: Everyone should have one of these amps. I can't imagine anyone not LOVING this amp, no matter what your favorite tones are.
Still amazed the the tonal wonders of this little amp. It does have one advantage. MOST (not all, but the majority) of my time playing it has been with my new PRS Custom 24. That guitar is the best sounding guitar I've ever heard. The 59/09 pickups are the best I've ever heard or used. I have the 57/08's in the other newer PRS but it's hard to compare them since that is a semi-hollow body. Hands down, the two best sounding sets I've heard.
Still, this amp is amazing and a flat out STEAL for the price you can find them for used. I never thought an amp with no effects loop, and even more importantly (or so I thought) NO MIDS controls, could blow me away like this thing does. I can't say enough good things about this amp. Considering how little hype there is around them, I think this is the most under-rated amp ever. I think I need a TA 30 combo! ( ;) @ Boogiezilla)