Mesa/Boogie DC-5 Head

This amp is very versatile. It is a 50 watt, all tube (2 6L6's and 6 12AX7's) head. It has two discreet channels, but there is 5 band graphic eq that can be switched on and off for BOTH clean and gain channels. Plus the clean channel can get you some very dirty blues rock tones. It also has a headphone jack, speaker mute and silent recording jack. An effects loop with mix control knob, and a "slave out" which allows you to use just the pre-amp section to run a larger power amp. I play metal and this amp suits the style very well. It covers other tones well, also.

I use 2 main guitars with it. One is a Jackson King V standard (check out my review of it) with a Duncan "Full Shred" humbucker in the bridge. The other is a Ibanez RG470 with a Dimarzio "Tone Zone" at the bridge. The V is very dark sounding as it is, so right now the Ibanez sounds a little better through this amp. But with time I'll get the Jackson going on it. This brings me to the amp itself. The amp basically has 4 foot- switchable sounds, throught the use of the eq. believe it or not it, sounds really good at "neighbor friendly volumes." However, it gets better when you set the master anywhere between 2 and 8. Thats the cool thing about Boogies: they sound better BEFORE they hit 10. I think thats why I don't like Marshall. They only just begin to sound "good enough" at maximum volume. This amp is great for metal. You have to tweak though. The controls are very sensitive. Use the eq mode in conjunction with the tone controls. The distortion is brutal. Go to channel 1 and you get sweet clean tones to a heavy crunch, via the push-pull gain knob. It should satisfy all styles of music. The cool thing is that Mesa sends you some examples of settings to start with in the instruction manual.

I would never gig without a backup. But this does seem to be a sturdy amp. The wood that the chassis is made of is very thick and put together very well.

I have dealt with the company and they seemed to be more than happy to answer my questions, no matter how stupid. The cool thing with Mesa is that they encourage you to do some of the repairs/maintenance yourself, i.e., changing tubes. Most companies tell you they want a "qualified technician" to do something simple like change tubes or replace a screw or you'll void the warranty. Mesa lets you do it yourself so long as you use Mesa tubes. This is fine by me, since their tubes are inexpensive anyway. I did run into a problem with the sales rep, though. He seemed to blow off the dealer I was purchasing the amp from, a few times. That irritated me.

I have been playing on and off for about 5 years. Aside from the guitars that I mentioned earlier, I play the amp trough a Kustom 4-12 cabinet and when I play loud I use a Boss NF-1 noise gate pedal. Occasionally I'll hook up my BBE 462 sonic maximizer. I would buy this amp again. I think it's a great amp for a great price. You get the best of both worlds: the gain from the Dual Rectifier and the clean tone from the Mark series. I don't really know why I wasted time on anything else. Although my Crate Blue Voodoo was a good investment.

DC-5 head played thru boogie 2X12 half-back cab...price for head $1150 This combination doesn't sound very versatile to me, the clean channel is weak and the over-drive channel is mushy. I also don't like the sound I get when I pull the knob out in the clean channel. At high volumes, it doesn't matter whether your'e playing a strat, tele, prs or hondo...it all sounds the same. I previously owned a DC-5 combo and the sound was a bit darker, richer and fuller...obviously the cabinet is making a difference here...I came home from viet-nam half deaf in one ear so that may be the reason I can't dial in the tone I would wish to play with every night. As it stands right now, I fiddle with the controls every day, and I've yet to be satisfied.

Playing a Japanese strat which has been customized further by a very knowlegable luthier...SRV pickups, complete shielding in the cavity, etc...everyone loves my guitar, still doesn't sound good to me through this setup..playing everything from retro rock to blues, to originals. Parties, weddings, occasional club gigs...not much variety in this rig I think....the best sounds Iv'e been able to coax out of it have been thru the clean channel, using the 4 position toggle of the strat for jazzy sounds. It would be great to get some feed-back on dial settings for a fender-ish type sound in the clean channel, and a Clapton w/ Cream in the gain channel (even though I'm playing a strat).

I'll give a 10 here...the whole package is built like a tank, never had a problem ever.

Extremely helpful and reliable service from people that really care about what you think of their equipment, they've never failed to contact me, and as I live on the west coast, they always seem to call about 6-6:30 p.m. figuring I will be home from work...cool. Even sent me replacment tubes hoping that would improve my situation.

I've been playing since 1969. Blues, rock, some jazz, some alternative rock. Don't own any other gear now. Bought boogie cause I heard great things about sound quality and realibility, should have explored more selections in the boogie category or even different brands, my loss. I wouldn't buy this particular setup again unless my ONLY concern was that I could depend on the gear holding up under stress.

I love the independent controls on the channels, effect loop works wonderfully, very, very loud for a 50 watt amp.

The clean channel is typical Mesa, nice, but not as exciting as my Vox tube amp. The lead channel is better than my old Mark III that I sold to buy this amp. My favorite sound however, is the pull out switch on the clean channel. It screams. I play this amp through a Boogie 1-12 Black Shadow cab, or a Marshall 4-10 cab. depending on the room.

It's a Boogie, 'nuff said.

Again, it's a Boogie. Their support has always been fantastic. They even call you back, which is rare these days.

I would buy it again, it's everything that my Mark III lacked, which is basically total control over the sound, and better overdrive sounds.

Others have listed the features. It has many modern features like line out, parallel effects loop, assignable eq, etc. I do wish the pull boost on the rhythm channel were footswitch selectable.

I play in a blues, blues-rock to jazzy vein with an appreciation for crunchy overdriven sounds as well. This amp has a decent clean sound-Fenderish without quite the warmth of a Fender, but more well defined than my blackface Fender Pro Reverb(sounded great run through the Pro's 2-12 speakers-much better than the Celestion for clean). I like the overdriven sound of the rhythm channel boost, but you can't switch it in and out without massive alteration of volume levels. For me that makes it impractical to play clean and then call up a slightly more overdriven sound.(The rhythm crunch will not clean up sufficiently if guitar volume is lessened). The lead channel is that boogie thing. Massive cascaded overdrive. It sounds like hell to me at lower volumes, but at loud volumes it has that boogies fat sustain. It's not a versatile overdrive to me. All the character is in the pregain range between about 1.5-2. Any more than that and it hardly matters whether you're playing a Strat or a PRS. That's my general complaint about the overdrive channel-it genericizes the sound and doesn't allow enough of the nuances of playing to come through. This amp is loud, loud, loud for 50 watts. I played next to a Matchless Chieftan 2-12 at a show the other day. The Matchless was scorching-sounded great(beautifully overdriven and dynamically responsive and my Mesa was barely had it's tubes warm at the same volume. To some this is a blessing, but for me a tube amp sounds best when the tubes are working hard. This thing gets really loud before it achieves it's best sound and I'm rarely in a situation where I can play as loud as it needs to get. Overall I wouldn't buy this amp again.(I wish I'd saved for the Matchless) It has lots of features, but I think I'm a one channel amp guy who will use pedals(Tube Screamer and Rat) to get more distortion if I need it....

It's well built. The knobs lean out from the front of the amp and I invision one being knocked off very easily. I had a Studio .22 with similar configuration and did break a knob off the front. My guess is that this amp is as reliable as other boogies and that means very reliable...

No problesm with it, but I haven't used it too much due to it's volume.

I wouldn't buy it again. That's as much as measure of my finding out what I like as anything else. If they could take the sound of a Mesa Maverick's first channel and put it in place of the overdrive channel of this amp I'd be happy with it. I tried a Maverick and liked the first channel a lot except for the fact that it has absolutely no low end. You'll think the low e string fell off your guitar on that amp, but it's got a beautiful chimey crunch to it that I like a lot.

50W All tube head with 2 channels (clean/dirty), independent tone controls, reverb, graphic EQ, parallel efx loop. Cab is 2X12 closed back with Celestion Vintage 30's. Looks like a small half stack.

I play original music which varies from clean & jangly to heavier Jane's Addiction type crunch. This amp covers all bases. The clean channel is very "Fenderish" warm and complex. The dirty channel sounds like a Marshall. Lot's of gain, very smooth and sustained tones. I got this amp to replace a '59 Bassman re-issue and a Marshall JCM900 combo I used to use together.

I've gigged with it around 8 times a month playing 2-3 hr sets for 7 months without a problem.

I spoke with someone about switching from the stock 6L6's to 5881's and they were very patient. It seems they understand how demented guitar players can get about tone and gear. I ended up liking the stock 6L6's better.

This is the only amp I've ever found that has a great Fender AND Marshall sound in one amp. It's 50W, but I've never had it above 3. The matching 2X12 cab get's great half stack sounds without the size and weight. Plus the casters roll like you wouldn't believe. IMO it's the best gig amp I've played.