[noodles]

Why has no one mentioned the ONLY way to dial in a Mark: crank the mids, scoop the GEQ. :lol:

Marks love to have the midrange opened up, which is what gives you that thick crunch, and the EQ is where you add the aggression. Plus, the GEQ in makes the signal a lot hotter. In Mark IV mode, don't be afraid to crank the fuck out of the gain knob. In IIc+ mode, you have to boost it. Don't forget that they're dark amps, so be more liberal with the treble and presence knobs. And seriously, put the midrange on at least eight, then several glorious weeks finding how the GEQ needs to be set for you.

 

[noodles]

My experience differs from Dave and Vince's - I never felt the need to pump the mids in the preamp of my Mark IV. I always got my gain from the treble. Go ahead and just dime the treble and gain, just to see how much she'll scream. Then try different combinations of gain/treble to get the right attack and clarity you need. If it's too bright, apply the GEQ. Take it easy on presence. It does add more gain, but it's very high in frequency and gets ugly when you crank the amp.

I didn't mean that you use it to generate gain, since that is what the treble knob does. It's just that the midrange being cranked makes the preamp response awesome. The tone thickens up without farting out, and it keeps the body of your sound intact when you V scoop the GEQ. Marks aren't Marshalls, so they won't honk. They just bark, and they are pretty much designed to have the mids cranked. Those tone circuits were originally designed back before the amp had a GEQ option, so you can quite readily scoop the mids with the knobs alone, but I feel the amp disappears into the mix when you do it. Instead, crank it like Santana, and then scoop it like Hetfield.

 

[noodles]

First rule of Mesa cleans: set the master at least three-quarters of the way up. You really, really gotta crank them, since you are compensating for the loss of gain (which means volume, too) that happens in the clean mode. That channel has a crunch mode that adds a gain stage, so the gain and volume knobs need to cover the full range of all three modes. You're running on the first mode, where there is only one gain stage, so just crank the channel master and keep turning the gain up until it starts to break up, then back it off.

After you do this, you can set the other channels to match. Keep in mind that matching means the channel masters will probably be somewhere around 10:00. You're not playing a modeler, which means the cleans are going to be much quieter than the gain channels, since the amp uses tube gain stages, and not compression, to create saturation. Don't compare it to Engl or Fryette, either, since those amps work completely differently from every tube amp I have ever played.