Bump: The saga is over.
I shipped it to the Palm Desert, CA for $80. So, we know my bill is gonna be $160 worth of shipping. Mind you, I'm fixing an amp I've never really 'had'....or used...just making it more expensive at every turn
Whelp, here we are, 4.5 months later and I just picked up my amp from the local FedEx office. (of course, they put it on the counter upside down - the UP arrows pointing down
)
I got it home, unpacked everything, hooked it up to my ADA footswitch and created 7 patches about as quick as an MP-1...possibly quicker, because, knobs. Turn all the knobs where you like 'em, push the STORE button, push the number on your pedal. Done. So easy, so quick.
The cleans on this thing are amazing - as good as (or dare I say better than) the MP-2 cleans. It's nice. The gains are everything you want/need. It gets a great Brown sound on the 'classic' voicing with the gain a little less than half. Turn up the gain and it starts to snarl. The Crunch is BEEFY, the Ultra is...well, over the top. You can dial it back and get great downtune metal tones that don't flub out.
I must add; It has all new tubes and a new speaker. The repair guy said the power tubes I just bought were leaking, so he put some Svetlana tubes in it after trying several options he had at his shop. Good choice, that thing sounds great and is very low noise, even on the Ultra. I get some singing feedback that is really nice. The new speaker is a WGS G12c/s
Now, I need to figure out how to assign the effects via Midi CC numbers to use my Quad switch to toggle them on/off in each patch.