YAY! I am finally the Owner of a Mark III

[kmanick]

My red stripe was finally delivered today. (has R2 mod too )
Thank god it came in one piece, and thankfully the seller knew how to package and amp (took out the tubes and wrapped them individually etc)
I just ordered a tube set from Dougs tubes (the usual set he recommends) (it's got all Mesa tubes in it right now yuck)
and a pair of Winged C 6L6s (I have fresh JJ EL34's that are going right in today)
Pic from the Sellers auction (Ill post some up later)

first impressions are pretty good, I orderd a pair of pedals from Mesa during the week so those should be here on Thursday.
I need to print out the manual as I'm not totally clear as to what adds gain, what adds volume etc. It's a loud Mofo , I'm running it thru my hotplate and it's still loud as well.
Do any of you guys use a boost in front of the Lead channel?
is it just as gainy in class A mode as it is in Simul Class?
I'm giddy like a 5 year old on X-mas morning, I've been trying to score one of these for months.

[jgcable]

congratz! Its a great amp. It will take a while to sort it out. Balancing channels is the hardest part. I was only ever able to get 2 good channels.
Its a fantastic amp bro. Yippeee!!!

[Shawn Lutz]

nice scroe Nick...congratulaions.

Manual...you dont need no stinkin manual....just use your ears... not your eyes to tweak it to what your ears wanna hear

[Norton]

That's the old technology now. You were supposed to buy a Mark V. That probably won't do well with faster playing of modern day and need more memory for fluid playing.

[Firebird V]

1 of the greats. Congrats. Happy noodling!

[DonP]

nice scroe Nick...congratulaions.

Manual...you dont need no stinkin manual....just use your ears... not your eyes to tweak it to what your ears wanna hear

LOL! I had lot's of trouble with Mesa's if I didn't follow some suggestive settings. It's easy to get a nasty tone and hard to find your way out.

Pedals? You buy an amp like that and then need to stick a pedal in front of it? Get a Boss Metal Zone

[themisfit138]

I love the Red stripes.
I really hope the pedal in front of a Mark III was a joke, is you want to turn a great tone to shit use a pedel in front. There is plenty of gain on the Lead channel, R2 might be ok with one. But the Red stripe I played didn't have the R2 mod.
Congrats on a great amp!

[kmanick]

No joke, (I haven't tried it yet) but I know plenty of people that throw a clean boost in front of their 5150's,Rectos etc. I was just wondering if it was common practice with the Marks as well?
I guess not

[mr426]

I have used one for about 15 years.These blow the Rectos waaay out of the water. Great amps. I think mine is a blue or purple stripe. I never use boost in front. I do however use another amp live for clean tones. Not that it won't do it, but you can get a great clean and dirty at the same time, so I used a Fender or Roland JC too...

[kmanick]

Fooled around with this a bit tonight.
got some nice options here now

also did try a clean boost in front while turning the gain on the amp down to around 5. sounded pretty cool, I think the tubes in this thing are shot though, because unless I dime the gain on the lead channel , I'm not getting much fluid singing sustain (maybe my JSX has spoiled me) I found this to be the same with my Rectoverb, so with that amp I run the gain at around 1:30 -2:00 oclock and use a clean boost in front and it sounds great. I expected a lot more gain out of this thing than I'm getting though , so I'm guessing my tubes are probably pretty dead (I've got new ones on the way).
tonally I don't find it all that different from my Rectoverb , except that there's no fizz (at all) and it's a sharper sounding amp. It's still a lower mid voiced amp like the recto which is cool.
I can imagine cranked up this thing will sound killer.
so far so good.

[jgcable]

What you will find is no fizz, it has a very natural heavy distortion. Its not a super high gain amp but I gotta tell you.. nothing I have ever owned sounded better live than when I was in a 2 guitar band and I had a Mark III purple stripe and my bandmate was using a single rectifier. Our sound was just incredible.

[themisfit138]

I just ordered a tube set from Dougs tubes (the usual set he recommends) (it's got all Mesa tubes in it right now yuck)
and a pair of Winged C 6L6s (I have fresh JJ EL34's that are going right in today)

I like the tube choice. The one I played I liked best with all Winged C 6L6, which are much better than Mesa 6L6 tubes. We also tryed it with EH EL34, and JJ KT77, All sounded great though.

[Endrik]

Nick, are you going with the 2 6L6 and 2 EL34 combination? that helps it to make it more Marshall-like but I prefer all 6L6s.

btw. this is a cool tool for the settings http://www.chain-metal.nl/mark3/

here's some Metallica settings http://www.chain-metal.nl/mark3/metallica.html

this is the setting I use currently... I wouldn't use that much Hi's (with EQ) with other Marks but 300 series are also bass amps so they have ridiculous amounts of lows and mids.

[bibz]

Man what a killer setup you've got there! This is the type of mesa I'd get along with very well imo

[kmanick]

Endrick,
the manual says with the simul class red stripe I have to use El34's on the outside and 6L6's on the inside, so that's what I'going to go with.
Are there any sights with petruccis IIC+ settings laid out like this?