Dave Grohl’s Mesa/Boogie Road King Amp

This seems to be the amp that replaced most of Dave’s amps around the early 2000s and remains his main stage amp up until the 2010s.

In the earlier years, it sounds like Dave would use a Vox AC30 for clean sound, and a separate amp for dirty sound – usually a Mesa Boogie of some sort. At some point, his guitar tech decided to simplify things and replaced the whole setup with a couple of Mesa Boogie Road Kings. So, now they are used for both the clean and dirty sounds – at least when playing live.

I got rid of the extra amps. Before, when he [Grohl] wanted a cleaner sound, the A/B box would get a signal from the Vox AC30, which sounded great. When he wanted a dirty sound, he would go to the Mesa Boogie, and there was a Marshall that was in the mix every once in a while.

I got rid of that and I bought a three-channel amp at the time, and now we use four-channel amps, so I can get a wide range of tones and sounds. I like the Mesa Boogie Road Kings because 1) they sound good, and 2) they’re bullet-proof.

Joe Beebe: Dave Grohl’s Guitar Tech (link offline)