Mesa Boogie Strategy 400

I never heard this amp but a previous version got a rave review in the Audio Critic magazine a few years back. The Strategy 400 was the amp that was marketed to audiophiles. The Mesa Baron amp is a fancied up version.

I do believe that the only two amps that Mesa marketed in the audiophile arena were the Baron of which I owned one and it was a great sounding amp, and the Tigress which was actually an integrated amp.

In general, the desirable characteristics of a guitar amp are different than those of an an amp for music listening at home or in the recording studio. The sought after features of a guitar amp have to do with what distortion it can produce. A clean channel is certainly desirable for certain genres, such as the blues, but while Mesa Boogies have a good clean channel it is their own brand of dirt that separates them from other amps. Generally one looks to Fender for a good clean sound; Marshall for that metal distortion, and Mesas for the rectifier effect -think Santana - who made Mesa well known. People generally want an amplifier with low levels of distortion over a the entire audio bandwidth for listening to music in the home, or for that matter, in the recording studio. And this is just a starting point for why it may not make a lot of sense to use a guitar amp to listen to CDs or LPs. Remember the whole point of tubes in guitar amps is the distortion - and generally a lot of, not just the "warm" sound of a tube amp designed for CD or LP listening.

I thought a power amp was a power amp. I have used several power amps, like AB International and Crown (not the Ref. Macro they were selling us back in the 1990s) in a home setup and thought they could be used for music PA too. They work, but do sound "PAish" - kind of high noise level and not allot of detail like we are used to. I think the biggest difference is the speakers that are used for guitar -vs- recorded music.

Carvin does make a power amp (rack mount type) that they claim can be used for guitar or high end audiophile use.

FWIW, many head units do include a "line in", so i guess that is intended to hook a cd or tape deck to the amp?

I agree with Musicnoise 100%,,,