NAD Mesa Boogie mark IVa

[kmanick]

I love my Mark III but a friend of mine offered this to me at a great price, and it's an "A" version which sounds closer to the III than the "B" verison
does.
what a kick as little amp this is.
I may turn it into a head shell (still undecided)
it sounds amazing thru my Recto 2X12 cab.
I've been chasing one of these for about 2 years and until now, could never 'score" one. It's in almost mint condition, sounds liek a monstor with my clean boost in front and either of my 7's but this ampr eally shines with my Jackson SL2H soloist. For some reaon that guitar and this amp sound great together, so i've been playing the crap out of my soloist
my III is now up on Eb*y if anyone is looking for one, it's in excellent condition.


the III and IV in stereo

[Axewielder]

All this talk of nads...
Clever twist - or gay omen?
Horns will arrive soon.

[Hellbat]

Wow, that is a lot of switches and dials.

[toxikdeth]

A possible full review to come?

[Grandturk]

Schwing!!!

[kmanick]

Can't give a full review yet as I've only been able to play it a lower volumes for any extended periods
BUT..........
My mark III is already gone (on it's way to Cally to it's new owner).
A lot of people get put off by all of the knobs and switches on this thing, but I found it really easy to figure out and dial it in.
Maybe becasue I'm coming from a Rectoverb and then a mark III, I have the way mesa works their tone stack figured out? :think:
Once you set the actual tone knobs on the 3 channels to your liking the rest of the switched (outside of the Grphic EQ) are basically power switching options.
Each switch cuts or boosts a certain segment of the
power system, and it effects the sound, the gain and the volume.
currently I'm running it in Tweed/Class A/ Mid Gain/triode.
All this means is that the amp is choked down to it's lowest power settings available. this lets you get a lot more gain at low volumes. This amp
actually sounds great set like this at very low volumes.
since I developed tinnitus in my right ear about a year and 1/2 ago, this was a big selling point to me. Also the amp sounds like crap thru the Combo speaker. thru the Recto 2X12 it sounds like a completely different amp.
Channel by Channel
R1 the clean channel
Because it has a seperate volume and gain control(unlike the III) it's a lot
more user friendly. With all of the power setting set down like this you can
set it to either be chimey clean or to break up a littl bit like a marshall
clean channel. Pull the fat swsith and open up the power setting and you
can get a nice jazz tone out of it. very Nice.

R2 Rhythm Channel
A lot of people dog this channel because it doesn't have the amount of
gain the lead channel does, but with a clean boost in front I can get a lot
of really cool tones out of it. this is my "80's hair metal channel".

I leave the GEQ "off" when I set it like this and pull the presense switch
(which cuts the lower mids and shifts the EQ curve to more upper mids).

Great for the XYZ, Dokken, Ratt type of stuff. I also have an MXR 10 band
EQ in the loop and I can turn it on and set this channel for some great
fusion tones. without the boost in front you're talking more of AC/DC
Led Zep type of break up.

Lead Channel
this is the reason eveyone buys this amp.
I actually use my clean boost in front of this channel all the time and keep the drive and the gain down a little lower.
I don't need to but I get tighter crisper more "singing" tone out of it when I do it this way. It also helps to
make it a bit more saturated and Modern sounding.
Here is the Petrucci tone that all of his fanboys trip over each other to
get.
With the boost on and the 10 band EQ on in the loop I can get this to
almost sound like a Recto so getting a Nevemore/SYL/Dream Theater type
of sound out of it (especially with my J-Custom with the EMG 707's in it)
it's pretty easy. Close enough Just keep the bass down at about 2 and control it with the GEQ otherwise it can get flubby or mushy.
The lead tone on this channel is infamous, it sings it sustains is liquidy
smooth etc, etc,, (paste every cliched tone analogy you can here).
I can get grat feedback at low volumes out of this channel and it's
really easy to control it.
With the boost off and the GEQ off I can get a good Shrapnel type of 80's shred fest tone out of it, good for the Vinnie Moore Greg Howe stuff that I love to play.

Mine is an "A" version which is a little more "raw" sounding a open sounding
than the "b" versions. this is why I bought it, it's very close to what my III
sounded like , but with better channel switching options.
Now where this amp gets a little annoying is when you swith any of the
power options, the amps tone changes (in some cases quite a bit),
so you just need to know how each switch affects the tone.
So you do need to re-EQ the amp a little bit when you start flipping
switches, but just read the Manual, it clearly describes what each switch
does tonally and power wise.
Once you understand what each switch does , the amp is actually pretty
easy to figure out. You just have a lot of combinations that you can try
that will give you a lot of different tones.
A Tweakers paradise, a non Tweakers hell.