Why have Mesa Boogie lost so much second hand value?

Deijavoo

Been watching this and frankly it seems like a total steal!

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=231030917201

Si_

That is a steal..

I think it's just down to supply and demand, there seem to have been a lot of Rectifiers up for sale recently, and not a lot of buyers, so prices are low (it's the same for all high end amps at the moment) . I also think these days the appeal of a double or triple rectifier isn't there anymore, at 100/150W there overkill when there are so many sub 30w alternatives available these days.

randomhandclaps

The price of a lot of second hand mainstream manufacturers has fallen a fair bit over the last few years.  You see a lot of Marshall's more common modern heads go for around £300 when a few years ago they were going for well over £500.

I think the Triple Rec particularly used to be the 'go to' heavy amp.  It now has a lot of competition from Engl, Diezel, Bogner etc, so I do see a few go relatively cheap.  Most other Mesas still demand relatively large second hand values.

Add to that the low wattage tube amp popularity.

Deijavoo

I sold my Dual Rec two years ago for £1200 flightcased and I felt like I was getting a bad deal.....

Ha ha 

I was so tempted to buy that listing today. The whisky was kept at distance to avoid any more "Oops'!"

stickyfiddle

randomhandclaps said:

I think the Triple Rec particularly used to be the 'go to' heavy amp.  It now has a lot of competition from Engl, Diezel, Bogner etc, so I do see a few go relatively cheap.  Most other Mesas still demand relatively large second hand values.

Add to that the low wattage tube amp popularity.

This. Their smaller combos still maintain value pretty well. I can imagine 100W 90's-metal-oriented head is not the easy sell it was 5 years ago.

ICBM

It wouldn't surprise me if a Triple is actually worth less than a Dual secondhand.

Trem-o-verbs are ridiculously cheap too. You can pick one up (if you can pick it up, which is part of the reason!) for as little as £600, which is nuts for a 100W 2x12" channel-switcher that retailed for close to two grand a bit over ten years ago.

Part of it is that the super-powerful/heavy amps don't hold their value as well as the lower-powered ones, and partly that Mesas are extremely overpriced new relative to similar amps in terms of power/features etc.

A friend of mine just bought a Lone Star Special for £850 as well.

ZenOvertone

I picked up a DC5 for £360 - there was a Mark 4 on the old forum for around 600 too.  Mesa's are great one box amps if you invest the time dialling them in.

ThePrettyDamned

I think it's partly because they were originally overpriced in the UK market - it's taken a while, but it's now taken it's toll and regardless of how good they are, they were extremely expensive when compared to USA prices.  

It's also partly because they're not 'in' right now.  People like boutique, hand made clones of Deluxes and such.  If you're after amps that are gainy, there are a lot of other options out there now.  

dindude

When I was younger it was my dream to one day own a Mesa Boogie. Now I can afford one I have absolutely no interest in them, good as they undoubtably are. The competition for amps in his range now is fierce.

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

and partly that Mesas are extremely overpriced new relative to similar amps in terms of power/features etc.

That's what I was going to say- looking at it the other way round, how do they gain so much value when they're sold new in shops? )

ThePrettyDamned said:

I think it's partly because they were originally overpriced in the UK market - it's taken a while, but it's now taken it's toll and regardless of how good they are, they were extremely expensive when compared to USA prices.  

It's also partly because they're not 'in' right now.  People like boutique, hand made clones of Deluxes and such.  If you're after amps that are gainy, there are a lot of other options out there now.  

dindude said:

When I was younger it was my dream to one day own a Mesa Boogie. Now I can afford one I have absolutely no interest in them, good as they undoubtably are. The competition for amps in his range now is fierce.

Agreed (to both posts). I can't say I have that much sympathy. While I've liked the Mesas I've tried, the pricing is ridiculous. You're playing with fire if you market your amps as super-expensive boutique options (when they arguably aren't) and if someone else comes along with similar stuff at a better price, you only really have yourself to blame...

kelv_w

I was super excited when TA15 was announced and the price point at $999 seems quite reasonable. Then the UK price was announced at £999? Thanks but not thanks for the inflated price tag. 

Evilmags

I suspect the emergence of decent, non line6, modellers like the Kempler and AxeFX, which don't require the massive wattage to deal with 7&8 strings and downtuning has changed the way that high gain players look at amps. That and the fact that touring bands realise that lugging 200 watts of valve stereo rig and 2 4x12 cabs makes a lot of gigs financially infeasable means they no longer bother with them. Dave Wiener has a PRS endorsement and a great job gigging with Vai. As long as the audience is fine with his AxeFX he'd be insane lugging 90kgs of amps with him. At 5 gigs a week your talking 400 quid a flight. Or 2000 quid a week. Or sticking an AxeFX in the hold and spending it on Coke and hookers.....

limpymcginty

There is so much competition in the price range that they sell for here in the uk from boutique makers and the trend at the top end seems to be for more compact lower wattage lighter amps without the gazzilion features the boogies often offer. They are good value used particularly the 212s if you can live with the weight. I don't think the uk distributor helps a great deal with the way they're priced over here.

guitarfishbay

In all seriousness, the seller put a delivery quote on at £80.  That will have scared off a lot of potential bidders, even if it is correct for insuring and properly packaging such an amp.

The 2 channel Triples are old now, and have parallel as opposed to series FX loops making them a bit of a pain for some people.  Unless you truly believe 3 channel Rectos sound rubbish I wouldn't pay top dollar for a 2 channel anymore.  As noted above there are many amps with better specs these days.

The newest Rectos still seem to do ok resale wise, I've seen the 2010 revision going for £1300+ in the past year.  Still a big hit, but if you're buying guitars and amps based on resale value you shouldn't be buying new in the first place.

Roaster

I thought I had bought the holy grail when I finally treated myself to a roadster combo but was massively disappointed TBH and lost a packet when I moved it on. Great cleans which I don't use a lot, massive gain channels but I couldn't get a good crunch sound of it for love nor money. , me? Possibly but that's the experience I had

[Deleted User]

Prices on some models are hugely variable.

I've seen Express 5:25s go for between <£600-£1000 second-hand.

5:50s go for ,<£700 to >£1000.

A nice DC3 went for £400 on eBay this evening. That's silly cheap for that amp.

I haven't paid much attention to the big 100W channel switchers because they don't interest me.

If I could get a 5:25 112 for around £500 I'd be sorted.

Deijavoo

I loved my Dual Rec but got bored.

In an ideal world we wouldn't have to sell to fund future purchases or make space I suppose.

guitarfishbay

Roaster;15364" said:

I thought I had bought the holy grail when I finally treated myself to a roadster combo but was massively disappointed TBH and lost a packet when I moved it on. Great cleans which I don't use a lot, massive gain channels but I couldn't get a good crunch sound of it for love nor money. , me? Possibly but that's the experience I had

The 'crunch' channel is the tweed IMO. Brit is a tiny bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the amp but tweed can crunch pretty well. The raw/vintage/modern modes go from warm to huge and roar more than crunch. I have the head and I love it for what I do but I guess there are other expensive amps that specialise in crunchy sounds.

[Deleted User]

Roaster;15364" said:

I finally treated myself to a roadster combo

Was this because it was the closet amp on the market to your user name?

ICBM

guitarfishbay said:

Roaster;15364" said:

I thought I had bought the holy grail when I finally treated myself to a roadster combo but was massively disappointed TBH and lost a packet when I moved it on. Great cleans which I don't use a lot, massive gain channels but I couldn't get a good crunch sound of it for love nor money. , me? Possibly but that's the experience I had

The 'crunch' channel is the tweed IMO. Brit is a tiny bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the amp but tweed can crunch pretty well. The raw/vintage/modern modes go from warm to huge and roar more than crunch. I have the head and I love it for what I do but I guess there are other expensive amps that specialise in crunchy sounds.

I seem to remember that on these, 'Brit' is a variant of the clean channel not the high-gain channels, which is totally backwards - the channel layout is completely wrong to simulate anything British. (Whereas actually the high-gain channels follow the Bassman-Marshall-SLO-Rectifier lineage.) It's following in the tradition of the MkIII and IV in that respect, where they claimed you could get a 'Marshall' sound on Rhythm 2... no you can't!

You can get a great British crunch on the Dual Rectifiers though, I wouldn't own a Trem-o-verb otherwise. I've A/B'd mine with several Marshalls - through the same speakers - and you can set them so you can't tell the difference, if you want. The 2-channel Dual is maybe even closer than the 3 (which also has the non-Marshall-like clean channel), but they're both good.

Roaster

Richard, haha, probably, it's. long story, but basically my names Keith, then at work it became Roast Beef, Roaster...yada yada and it sort of stuck lol