Mesa Boogie Triaxis

Anybody got any experience with this hardware? I'm still adding to my studio and have about a grand left in my budget. I have heard great things about the Triaxis but have yet to hear any recordings made with it. From what I can make out, it contains the circuitry from different Boogie amps and offers the full spectrum of mesa tone, digitally, BUT forced through 6 onboard tubes. The sales pitch on the mesa site says that John Petrucci and James Hettfield (among others) have been using Triaxis for years in their live/recording setups. Forget the hype, anyone actually used one of these?

I've never played one myself, but I've heard some recording done with one, and they sounded great. I might would suggest adding something like a Palmer speaker simulator / load box >link here<. This would also come in handy if you wanted to record other amps without worrying about micing them, or messing up the OT since it has a built in load box. Also, Native Instruments Guitar Rig >link here< has some awsome cabinet simulations. Good luck with your studio!

Cool links, thanks for the info! The Palmer unit looks very promising, I prefer hardware to software too;-) How does the Guitar Rig match up to say the POD series? I only ask becuse I don't like the POD:-) How do you find it for post production and for non-destructive tinkering of wav files (as opposed to live application)?

I've only used the demo version of GR, but the cab sims were much better and WAY more versatile than the PODxt. I didn't like any of the amp models though. The best way I found to use it was to run your preamp into your soundcard and then set it up so the signal goes through GR and then to your recording software. How you set your preamp will depend on the cab/cabs/mic/placement you use, so it's best to set you base tone (with cab sims) up before recording. If you set up your preamp and record it dry with no sims, and then add the sims afterwards, you're stuck with that one tone to work with. You might like the characteristics of a certain cab, but it might sound like crap with the settings you recorded with. That's why I treat it like a real live rig first, and then record.

I've never used the Palmer, but have heard some really great things about it. It's best feature is it's ability to let you run your tube amps into it with no cabinet, so you can have fully cranked tube tone through headphones if you wanted.

I'll probably leave the Guitar Rig so, I like to keep things as simple as possible. I reckon I should be able to get the tones I want from a combination of the Triaxis, Rectifier Recording Preamp and/or my Marshall DFX100. The Palmer would be very useful though as I could get the most out of the tubes without blowing the house down. I suppose I would have to look for a second hand Plamer unit as I don't want to go too much with the Triaxis... I've already forked out the GDP of a small country over the past few weeks and the prse strings are starting to get tighter. Let me know if you see one cheap.

Metallica (usually all the leads) began using a mesa triaxis since the black album. listen to that album in particular for the triaxis at work.