Quote Originally Posted by jads57
The Clean on the newer and some older Mesa’s are top notch! The 1x12” small cans don’t help get a non midrange tone either.
Remember Mesa Boogie was intended for an Overdrive/Distortion audience not the older Fender Scooped Twin Reverb tones .

That said, the older Nomad and F series combos with wide cabs are great bargains, and make great back line Clean Tone in the Fender Camp.
With some tweaking, the basic clean channel on the Express 5:50 Plus was on par with my Gries 35. After a few days of learning how all of the controls interact with each other, the four amp voicings, the differences in sound and feel of the 5/25/50 watt settings, and so on, I was able to cop good jazz tones from just about every era and style of jazz. The pre- and post- EQs are extremely powerful and if you have a good ear and some patience, I think you could do just about anything with the Express 5:50 Plus.

Notice I'm using the past tense though...two nights ago the clean channel started having issues—it ended being just the V1 preamp tube, but I wasn't ready for the troubleshooting rabbit hole on a used amp with a 45 day return window.

It also happened to be around the time that a 1971 Twin Reverb rebuilt in a head cab with blackface circuitry and original transformers went on sale locally for the same price. Back to the store went the Mesa and home with me came the Twin.