Mesa/Boogie Fillmore 25 18-/23-watt 1 x 12-inch 2-channel Tube Combo - Cocoa Reviews
The Mesa/Boogie Fillmore 25 packs the glorious vintage-inspired tone of the Fillmore 50 into a compact 6V6-loaded combo amp. Enjoy everything from legendary cleans to a purring grind, courtesy of a great-sounding 12-inch Celestion Custom 90 speaker and two independent, footswitchable channels. Each channel boasts Drive and Hi modes; a 3-band EQ; and Gain, Presence, Reverb, and Master controls. You also get 3-mode channel cloning that supplies even more tonal possibilities. The Fillmore 25's crown jewel, however, is its super-lush all-tube, long-tank spring reverb. Beyond that, a fully buffered, series tube effects loop makes connecting your pedals and other effects a breeze. Crank up the Fillmore 25, and you'll experience super-responsive, nuanced tones that run the full gamut between soft clip and saturated.
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Highest Rated Reviews
Great grab and go amp, here's some pros, cons and a few tips.
I've got a 50W fillmore head (6L6 tubes) I bought from sweetwater and this brown and tan 25W combo (6V6 tubes) I snagged used for an unbelievable deal. The original owner bought it from sweetwater. I like them both. If you're a classic rocker, country player, blues player, these are great. If you're a metal head, it's probably not the ideal amp for you. Get a rectifier, road king, or mark, or add a wampler triple wreck in front. My comments here all apply to both the 25 and the 50, other than maybe the comment about the 25 combo sounding a bit boxy with the C90. I have a 50w head so it's sound is dependant on the cabinet it's played through. Put that same C90 in a bigger open back cab, and it no longer sounds boxy.
Here's what I see as the pros and cons
PROs
- Based on the Fender tweed circuits, with some mesa mods. I really like tweed tones so this is nice.
- Master volumes and Gain controls mean you can get great overdriven tones at modest volumes (unlike tweeds and tweed clones)
- Two identical, switchable channels, each with 3 modes (clean, drive, high) The modes are roughly (fender, marshall, mesa)
- onboard spring reverb
- Has an effects loop
- In particular for the 25W combo, a nice small grab'n'go format.
CONS
- At the price of these amps, they don't include the reverb footswitch. That's almost unforgivable. Worse, it's hard to get them from Mesa right now too, and has been for a couple years. There are aftermarket alternatives but come on. When you pay over $2K for a combo amp it's annoying as hell to have to then go hunt for a reverb footswitch.
- The reverb controls are on the back of the amp. Mesa does this on a lot of models and it's stupid and annoying.
- The channel footswitch jack is on the front, and the reverb footswitch jack is on the back. A bit awkward.
- The effects loop is not switchable on/off (unless you do it with external switching like a one-control loop switch)
- As a standalone combo, sounds a bit boxy with the C90. A speaker swap might improve that. I haven't tried yet.
Tips
- Tweed lovers, this is a great tweed amp. Put it on clean and run the gain in the "past noon" area and you start getting tweed-like. Put it on gain mode and the "before noon" gain settings get gainy. A clean boost into the input on clean mode can get you into the tweed territory too, or get you a little more grit on the top setting. You can play it through a Jensen blackbird or other fun alnico speaker to get some great sounds too.
- This combo sits perfectly on top of a 1x12 Thiele cabinet. That cabinet, if loaded with an Electro Voice EVM 12L Classic speaker, sounds huge and great paired with the C90 in the 25W combo and puts the amp controls at a nice comfortable height for tweaking while standing. I highly recommend that pairing. Unfortunately, Mesa doesn't sell the EVM speakers anymore but you can still buy the the EVM 12L classic 8 ohm as an electro voice product, and yank the C90 out of the thiele cab. Be sure to plug both speakers into the 4 ohm jacks when running the pair, vs plugging the C90 into the 8 ohm jack when it's standalone.
- Footswitch options: Boss FS-6 can be configured to operate both the channel and reverb switching. That has it's own annoyances, primarily the lack of a 9vDC power input jack. Boss FS-5L will work for the reverb switch. Amp Footswitch Doctor makes a 2-button switch for the Fillmores, but a bit overpriced and awkward/hard to do business with. Saturnworks switches looks like they can build what you want, but you have to know what you want. There are other options on ebay, reverb, and elsewhere. The Mesa channel switch is latching with an LED that's powered off the amp. The Mesa reverb switch is a latching switch, tip to ground, with no led. Many of the aftermarket options provide an indicator LED for the reverb as well, some powered off batteries, some powered of a 9V dc power input jack.
Overall, I'm really impressed with this little 25w combo. I'd love to see it in brown but with the cane grille. I'm sure those are out there somewhere or can be ordered.
