Price Paid:  $1500.00 from used @audiogon.com

Summary:
The Baron sounds like real music. It has the Boogie factor (no pun intended)! I really rocks. It's also great with jazz. Good with classical. But you can tell its guitar amp lineage. Rock music is its forte. The "Air Guitar" factor is sky high. Mine is equipped with Sovtek EL 34s. The fun has returned to music listening. That's what it is all about, no? So who cares if piano may sound suspect, especially the higher registers! The bass is fantastic, warm, rhythmic, "real". Big soundstage, too. Stuff sounds alive. Especially live music, whether it's FM broadcasts or live recordings. "You are there." So on one hand, it's more like real music. On the other hand, some timbre issues in the mids (at least in my system). Perfect for music lovers. Audiophiles may quibble.

Associated equipment:

Graaf WFB Two preamp
Fanfare FT-1A tuner
Luxman D-600 S CD player
Rega Planar 25 turntable w/Clearaudio Aurum Beta cartridge
Monitor Audio MAG 903 speakers
MA-1 subwoofer
Wireworld and Audioquest cables

Value rating is at the price I paid.

Strengths:
Great fun!

Weaknesses:
May not be "High Fidelity"

Similar Products Used:
B&K ST-1400 Series II

Price Paid:  $4000.00 from Audiomax ltd.

Summary:
I have been listening to this amp for about a year now and must say I am very happy with it. The dealer I bought it from had it in is stock for over a year and when we first fired it up the right channel would not bias correctly. A call to Tien at mesa boogie and the amp was hand delevered by my dealer to mesa boogie Hollywood where the amp was fixed. Also we changed the Gold Arrow tubes that came with the amp and replaced them with J/J E34L purchased from Bob Pletka at www.eurotubes.com for $24.oo a match set and Tien sold me a new set of 4 12AX7 for $22.00 not bad considering my old amp cost $550.00 to retube.
This amp has that classic EL34 sound with killer bass,it is very smooth in the midrange and the highs are sweet and non fatiguing and the bass is tight for a tube amp. My system sounds wonderful on jazz recordings and also on classical I have heard better amps for rock&roll but the baron will do rock&roll just fine in the 2/3pentode mode in my system with just a little bit of feed back. The Baron is the only amp I have owned where you can change the sound of the amp by flipping a couple of toggle swithces to fit the music and mood your in well done Mesa.
Once again I am very well pleased with my sytem at this point with the Baron my last system had more detail but was not as musically envolving as it is now.
My system consist of the Mesa Baron,Oracle Mk5,Blue Circle BC3 preamp BCG31 power supply,Sony XA7ES cd player,tagmclaren tuner,merlin vsmse speakers,Cables are JPS Super2 and cardas Golden Cross. Cheers Michael!

Strengths:
Costumer Support,resonable tube replacement,easy biasing,non fatiguing sound

Weaknesses:
none

Similar Products Used:
Audio Research VT100 MKII