Metallica’s James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett took to YouTube to wish ESP Guitars a very happy 50th Anniversary, the long-time endorsees checking in from their rehearsal room HQ, signature guitars in hand. But in the process they might just have something very intriguing indeed.
There’s an Easter egg in this video, and it looks like this could be a signature tube amp for Hetfield from Mesa/Boogie. Once you can see it you can’t unsee it. Behind Hammett, there’s a guitar amp head, sitting on a 4x12 guitar cabinet with a Metallica logo stencilled in white on the black grille cloth.
The amp is a variant of a Mesa/Boogie Mark Series that we’ve never seen before, with a decorative brushed metal plating on the grille (kind of like something you would see on a hot-rodded, supercharged automobile, which is very Hetfield), and on the top-left of the control panel we have what looks like Hetfield’s initials.
“It looks like a two channel amp with some really weird knobs in the middle,” writes one comment from Mesa Sean. “We’ve seen that [amp] in the studio for a couple years now. It would be really cool if they released something.”
If it is a Hetfield amp, it would have been a long time coming. As noted above, and in a 2017 thread on the Mesa/Boogie forum, this mystery Mesa has actually been in the Metallica HQ for years, also appearing in a video from 94.5 KATS with drummer Lars Ulrich and Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor goofing around.
The video resolution is not great, but you can see this same amp in the lower left-hand side of the frame.
This new video gives us a better look. It could be that the metal plate on the amp’s front has been updated. If it was a prototype for Hetfield, that time scale could check out.
Designing a Mark Series Boogie for one of metal guitar’s biggest stars is a serious project, and it would take some time. There would be revisions. Also, consider the upheaval at Mesa/Boogie, the takeover by Gibson, the departure of its founder Randall Smith. That could delay the project.
In July, Mesa/Boogie released the Mark IIC++ "Crunch Berries" head that Metallica used to give their tone its signature venom in the mid ‘80s.
The Mark IIC++ was initially a custom mod that only those in the know had. It was designed for Vivian Campbell, then playing in Dio, who wanted more added “gain and girth” to his electric guitar tone. Well, Metallica got wind of that. Hammett told MusicRadar that this Boogie, allied to EMG active humbuckers, was the secret sauce to their sound.
“They made very few of those Boogies and we happened to get a few. And those amps, along with EMG pickups were defining our sound,” he said. “They enabled us to get the sound that we needed to get across. If it wasn’t for those Mesa/Boogie amps and EMG pickups, I don’t know how much further we would have got with just Marshalls. With the Boogies it was something different.”
If Mesa/Boogie is going to release a Hetfield Mark Series in the not-so-distant future it would be A) Not unprecedented, after it released a signature model for Dream Theatre’s John Petrucci, and B) Foreshadowed somewhat by the “Crunch Berries” release, and its antecedent, the Mark IIC+, which was reissued last year.
Hammett has already collaborated on a couple of notable signature amps with Randall. There was the KH120RH, the RM100KH, which was a three-channel 100-watter. We can confirm that playing Creeping Death on a Gibson Flying V through this amp is a lot of fun.
But sometimes you need more fun, and Randall and Hammett had just the thing in the 120-watt KH103 head, designed with Mike Fortin, with three channels, three gain voicings per channel… The thing looked nuts. Fortin also made him the Meathead.
C’mon, Mesa/Boogie, let’s get Hetfield one, too. Or would someone at least let us know what that knob in the middle of the control panel does?
In the absence of any more details, we quite like some of the theories posted by Mesa forum user screamingdaisy: “Theory A: It’s a blend knob... channel 2/Recto, channel 3/Crunchberries, blend to taste. Theory B: it’s a chorus knob... they built the [Roland] JC-120 chorus into the amp. Theory C: it’s a scoop knob... they built James’ parametric EQ into the amp.”
And Theory D it’s a red herring just to mess with our heads. Mission accomplished. Where were we, anyways? Yeah, many happy returns, ESP.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
