Working with a Mesa MkV. Rambly thread of tweaking a bullshit (albeit great) amp

[Daevasmodeus]

I think you should consider that the problem here is you don’t have the Mark IV. No amount of tweaking can alter the miniscule transformers and lack of gain staging in the V.

 

[Drew]

I've never found Mesas that hard to dial in, but then again I've played them for 20 years, so I'm just used to them.

I'm going after a VERY different sound than you though so I'm probably not much help here.

 

[H13]

I think you should consider that the problem here is you don’t have the Mark IV. No amount of tweaking can alter the miniscule transformers and lack of gain staging in the V.

Possibly

But I also refuse to jump on the "buying every version of every Mark amp" roundabout. I'm in Australia and these amps are hideously expensive over here. I like the 5, I'm running it in MkIV mode and I'm gonna stick with it

I've never found Mesas that hard to dial in, but then again I've played them for 20 years, so I'm just used to them.

I'm going after a VERY different sound than you though so I'm probably not much help here.

Hey! Any feedback is welcome!

I don't have a specific "thing" that I'm going for. Basically I tweak, hear how it sounds and think: "COOL, how could it be betterer?" So in the first clip as I said, it was a bit ice-picky and a bit dead in the mids.

Now with the 808, it's a bit sloppy and a bit too much gain.

But at the same time, if there's an overall "issue" that you are hearing with the recordings that I'm not noticing, I would definitely accept the idea that I'm developing tunnel vision and focusing on trees rather than seeing the whole forest.

When I had the Axe-FX, I would sometimes end up creating a tone that had ONE REALLY COOL THING about it, because I would hyperfocus on "fixing" a thing. But in the process of fixing that thing, I had ended up creating an absolutely hideous guitar sound that had precisely one redeeming feature about it

 

[Marked Man]

 

[H13]

Dude, we only up to page 2.

I'm expecting more pages.

I am only a little bit sorry.

 

[Crungy]

I don't have a Mesa of any kind, never dialed one in (aside from Rectos on an AxeFx) and may never own one but I'm here for the posts @H13, I'm L'ing my fucking A off.

Also, if you meant jokes that were shitting on trump I'm all for that

 

[Jon Pearson]

The room mic clip sounds pretty damn good man

 

[H13]

The room mic clip sounds pretty damn good man

I'm PRETTY HAPPY with it.

As I said, I think that the 808 is a bit strong, and I wish I could dial back the mid hump a bit. Also there's a BIT too much gain on some of it, so balancing the gain will be tricky.

WE GETTIN THERE.

I think.

 

[MatrixClaw]

Mids sound haunting to me. I can almost visualize the crystal lattices. Thick bounce. Nice chew.

 

[H13]

Mids sound haunting to me. I can almost visualize the crystal lattices. Thick bounce. Nice chew.

It's like it's simultaneously Dumble-ish, while also being like...Marshally, while also...like...Fender? But it's a Mesa so it's still got that Mesa sorta quality. There's HEAPS of mids but it's scoopy and not fizzy and SUPER articulate. It's not compressed and it's super Plexi but also kinda Blackface-ish?

(The fun part: Figure out how serious I am with the above statement )

I think I need to bring out the crystal lattice more though in order to make the Grumbo a different shape. If I adjust the Chumble, that might make the Dingle Bop.

 

[H13]

TONIGHT'S FUCKERY:



and with the Room Mic (Sort of)



So the 808 kinda enlightened me to the idea that I was after a mid-boosty overdrive.

WHAT A SHOCK. BOOSTING A MESA WITH A TUBESCREAMER? Who'dathunk it?

However as I said, while I think the 808 was close, it kinda blew things out a little bit. Little bit too much mid, hard to gain stage correctly, was a bit smeary up top...Things were pointed in the right direction but not quite spot on.

So I grabbed the Keeley Red Dirt overdrive. As far as I can tell, that's an 808 with the Keeley Mod. That's basically an 808 without the bass cut, a little bit more neutral in the mids (still honky though), cleaner, but with more gain if you go for it.

I also tried a Barber Gain Changer. THAT WAS COOL, and it's kinda funky but wasn't...QUITE it. I needed more mids. That pedal would probably be amazing in something more Marshally...

I also put the LDC Room Mic against the speaker. Better individual sound, but I think a proper "room" sound is what I'm after.

WE MAY ACTUALLY HAVE THIS SORTED. I THINK? MAYBE?

 

[TedEH]

I honestly think people shoot themselves in the foot all the time with their dialing philosophy on Marks. You don't HAVE to go to extremes with every control - and because of how they interact, picking extremes for one control nukes the other controls down the line making it feel like you have to go extreme with those two, so when you back off from any of the extremes the other extremes make things sound bad. You CAN have mid + bass above zero if you're using the treble really high - it just feeeeels like you can't if you started from "neutral" and dialed the bass first.

I think it's also a bit of a shot in the foot to try to make a Mark sound like another amp. Versatility means you can do a lot of things, but it doesn't mean you can sound like other amps. A Mark will never sound like a Marshall or a Recto or whatever else. It will always sound like a Mark. If you're trying to dial away the thing that makes it sound like a Mark, then you probably just don't like the core Mark sound and should use a different amp.

 

[fps]

10/10 post no notes

 

[H13]

I honestly think people shoot themselves in the foot all the time with their dialing philosophy on Marks. You don't HAVE to go to extremes with every control - and because of how they interact, picking extremes for one control nukes the other controls down the line making it feel like you have to go extreme with those two, so when you back off from any of the extremes the other extremes make things sound bad. You CAN have mid + bass above zero if you're using the treble really high - it just feeeeels like you can't if you started from "neutral" and dialed the bass first.

I think it's also a bit of a shot in the foot to try to make a Mark sound like another amp. Versatility means you can do a lot of things, but it doesn't mean you can sound like other amps. A Mark will never sound like a Marshall or a Recto or whatever else. It will always sound like a Mark. If you're trying to dial away the thing that makes it sound like a Mark, then you probably just don't like the core Mark sound and should use a different amp.

I kinda disagree with this...

I tried not doing extreme settings and I found myself in a big hole.

There's some extremes which are definitely necessary.

- Bass as low as you can get away with. As I said, the higher it is, the more it sucks up your midrange and just turns things into a muddy mess. Anything above 9:00 on the bass is trouble.

- Treble as high as possible. The amp is SUUUPER compressed. If you don't crank the treble, your tone is going to be pretty goddamn lifeless. I wouldn't even argue from an aesthetic standpoint of bright vs. dark tones, I'm talking about dynamics and bounce and making things sound lively and fun.

- 80hz and 6k sliders you want to run as high as you can get away with. On the MkV that means you do want to keep the 6k slider as close to the middle as possible (but bumping it up a little is probably required). In order to get the "Mark sound" as you're describing, you have to have all the other slides set below the 80 and 6k sliders. So mechanically speaking, in order to give you as much flexibility as possible and enough room, you do kinda want those two sliders to be as far as possible.

As I said earlier, you CAN get a Mark to sound Marshally by setting the 2k slider above the 6k slider. However doing so kinda completely stuffs up the gain staging of the amp and you're gonna have other issues. Not necessarily bad issues, but things you have to take into account. For example, I found using gain pedals when the MkV was set up like this didn't REALLY work because the compression of the amp just fought against any extra gain you added.

Basically the thing that makes working with a MkV (And I assume other Mark amps) so unintuitive is that the amp compresses everything, but every control kinda functions as a gain control. Adding gain to compression in a specific area will have unpredictable results, and it will have a knock-on effect to everything else around it. It's also why you kinda need to use fairly big moves with EQ in order to defeat that compression.

On top of that, the extreme moves you do end up creating "room" for other bits. It properly opens the amp up. You force the amp to compress the amp in certain areas so that it doesn't compress other areas.

I agree that a Mark amp sounds like a Mark amp and it does its job best as a Mark amp (even though it can do a good job of pretending to be other amps), but yeah. To get it to do the Mark thing, you need that V, you need very little bass, you need a huge amount of treble and you want to push the Highs\Lows as far as possible on the V.

 

[TedEH]

You don't need to "do something" to get the Mark sound, it's inherent to the amp. Every sound the Marks make has the "Mark sound", and it sounds to me like you're trying to dial that out. It kinda just sounds to me like you don't like the inherent character of the amp. You're fighting the things it does naturally. It's very mid-forward and you're fighting that. It's very compressed, so you're fighting that. It has a unique character to the low end, and you're dialing it right out. The choices you're making are only "necessary" for you, but I have different tone goals. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[H13]

I'm not trying to dial it out as much as I'm trying to get it to do the thing my brain can hear it could do.

I've got the mids on the front panel set to about 2:00. The 750hz slider is set on top of the bottom line just like everybody does with the V shape for the GEQ? I've got the 80hz slider set about 3\4s of the way up so I'm definitely not dialing out any bottom end?

I'd be keen to hear how you get your MkV to sound and to know what settings you use?

 

[TedEH]

The 750hz slider is set on top of the bottom line just like everybody does with the V shape for the GEQ?

I'd be keen to hear how you get your MkV to sound and to know what settings you use?

I've got a IV and a V:25, which is more like the regular V. I use a V-shaped geq, but not as extreme as everyone else does it. I find it makes everything too thin and fuzzy that way. The deep V is the "Metallica sound" in my head, but I don't want to sound like Metallica. I do the high and low bands pretty high up like most do - sitting just below the top lines - but the 750, for me, sits a little below the mid line, closer to the mid line than the bottom line. I used to run it higher, but it's creeped down a bit since then. On the V:25, because it's naturally brighter than the bigger head, I also creep the highest band back down to suit the room and cab. Otherwise I do:

On the IV:
(they're numbered 0-10) Gain=7.5 Drive=7.5 T=7.5 M=6 B=3 Presence=5, harmonics/pentode/pull-fat/non-pulled presence shift.

On the V:25:
(clock directions since they're not numbered) xtreme mode, Gain=noon T=noon M=10:30 B=9:00, presence=noon

 

[H13]

Cool cool

Throw a 57 in front of it and let's hear how it sounds Might give me some new ideas

 

[H13]

TONIGHT'S FUCKERY:



I grabbed my favourite Clean Boost pedal. The Blackstar Tube Clean Boost. That pedal can be a BIT harsh up top so I kinda matched the top end with the TS808. I then added a tiny bit of extra treble for good measure.

Feels clearer and bigger. I also love how that pedal feels to play so......I think I prefer it.



Here it is with the Room Mic back as a Room Mic. Room Mic + MkV = Good.



Here it is double-tracked. LP with JBs on the left, Explorer with EMGs on the right. Might need to add some top end to the EMGs.

I think I like that more...

But I say that each time.

But I do think I'm making progress?

Will check it out again tomorrow with fresh ears

 

[Jon Pearson]

Now it is sounding more like Lamb of God, which is never a bad thing. I think you have stumbled into a modern classic Mark sound through your experiments so well done.

I'll admit, I was not sure how this thread was going to turn out but I'm thoroughly entertained. Bravo.