MusicRadar

Only six knobs? Are you sure it's a Boogie?

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• Review

With single-coils there's a bright, shimmering, latter day Hank Marvin-style sparkle in the lower ranges, which benefits hugely from that expansive, sweet sounding spring reverb. Winding up the volume control takes us more into classic Blackface Fender territory, while moving on with humbuckers brings a satisfying vintage-style overdrive past two o'clock, the whole thing darkening to tame the wiriness that the extra gain brings.

The elasticity and compression in the drive is accentuated when you push the master, lower the clean level pot on the back and run it at 45 watts: it's a dynamic, feel type of thing that will be every bit as important to you as the tone itself.

The vintage low mode ups the gain, and tightens the tone all over so that things stay well defined and together, even with a Les Paul. The overdrive range is wide – lighter classic rock rhythm sounds somewhere near AC/DC territory, through to fuller-gained lead sounds like a really well sorted master volume Marshall, albeit with more of Boogie's punching midrange and bottom-end clout courtesy of those 6L6s.

This is probably our favourite mode for all round appeal – during our tests we did a whole set in this channel alone, cranked, just using the volume and tone controls on a Strat and Les Paul to regulate a whole plethora of drives and textures.

The vintage hi mode brings to mind a more modded-Marshall vibe, albeit again with Mesa's more commanding grip of the mid-range focus and low-end. The highs are powerful to ensure definition and cut with all the extra gain and, as such, single-coils can sound wiry. In the lower ranges, this is a fat-sounding clean chording tone – fatter than vintage low – then as you add more gain you go through a classic old-school rock lead to a more squashy, rich, saturated distortion.

Despite the Brit inspiration, there's plenty of cutting high mid-range here to satisfy more modern-minded technicians, though on the end of a Les Paul, you can imagine it keeping the Doug Aldriches of the world happy: a fat but cutting lead tone packed with harmonics.

Overall, the single rear-mounted Mesa/Celestion MC90 speaker – in addition to the largely, though not completely, enclosed cabinet – ensures noticeably punchy projection, with makes-you-blink sound pressure levels for loud clean tones, and hits-you-in-the-chest crunch tones. You'll have absolutely no trouble being heard with this.

So has Mesa/Boogie gone retro? From the Electra Dyne's simple front panel and ease of use you might think so, but the way the amp works is anything but vintage. To this reviewer it feels not unlike a stripped-down Lone Star, in that it offers a wide range of classic American-voiced cleans, and Brit-inspired drives, that span the gamut of tones from surf to shred.

More useful, perhaps, is that it covers the ground in between comprehensively, making it a fine choice for that serious rock 'n' roll workhorse that's been eluding you all this time. It is expensive on the face of it, though significantly less so than many imported American high-end amps, so if you're earning from playing, it's a fair investment. More powerful than the Express 5:50, not as involved as the Lone Star and simpler than either: we like it a whole lot.