MIDI Support for Mesa Boogie Amps

Our products are very popular with Mesa Boogie amp owners. More than half of our customers are using an Amp Gizmo, Mini Amp Gizmo, RG-16 or Rack Gizmo to add MIDI control to their Mesa amp.

However, there’s a fair amount of confusion regarding our support for these amps. We do support every amp they make (if we missed one let me know!), but there are many different amps, many different footswitch styles and sometimes our custom interface cables can work with more than one amp.

So, I’m going to try to summarize our support for their amps, breaking them up into categories:

Standard 1/4-inch jacks
Most of Mesa’s amps have simple 1/4-inch switching jacks. All of these amps can be controlled using our 1/4-inch adapter cable (AC-4QTRS-10). If you have an Amp Gizmo (not the Mini), you can connect to the amp using off-the-shelf 1/4″ cables.

Some popular amps in this category:

  • Mini Rectifier
  • Royal Atlantic
  • Transatlantic TA-15 and TA-30

Please note that some amps have 1/4-inch jacks and a custom multi-pin jack. In these cases, we recommend using the custom cable made specifically for the amp – the custom solution generally results in quieter switching than the 1/4-inch cable.

Standard 1/4-inch jacks in multiple locations
Some of Mesa’s amps have multiple 1/4-inch jacks in different locations: on the front panel, on the rear panel or on the underside of the chassis. Some amps have jacks in all three locations. Our standard 1/4-inch adapter cable will not reach all of the jacks at the same time, so we recommend using the original Amp Gizmo – you can run individual 1/4-inch cables from the Gizmo to the amp’s different footswitch jacks, which makes it easy to reach all of the jacks.

The amps that fall into this category are:

  • Mark II
  • Mark III
  • Lone Star and Lone Star Special

The RRN cable
This is the first of our Mesa-specific cables, which supports the following amps:

  • Dual Rectifier (3 channel version and Multi-Watt version)
  • Nomad Series
  • Roadster
  • Road King Series 1 (does not switch the Ext Trig function, which is no big loss!)
  • Road King Series 2 (does not switch the Tuner Mute)
  • Triple Rectifier (3 channel version and Multi-Watt version)

This cable will also safely control the Mark V, but will not control the EQ. For full control of the Mark V, we have a specific cable for the Mark V.

The RRF cable
This cable controls the following amps:

  • F seres
  • Recto-o-verb (series 1 and 2)
  • Rocket Series
  • Single Rectifier (5-pin footswitch jack version)

Express Series
We have a specific interface cable for the Express series of amps.

Mark IV
We have a specific interface cable for the Mark IV.

Mark V
We have a specific interface cable for the Mark V as well. You can use the RRN cable to control a Mark V with some limitations (see above), but you can not use a Mark V cable to control an RRN — not safely, at least!

Quad Preamp
There are two versions of the Quad Preamp, one with a 4-pin footswitch and one with a 6-pin footswitch. We have a special interface cable for each.

That pretty much sums it up – if you don’t see your amp listed here, or have other questions, please feel free to contact us!