I originally posted in 2018 about differences between Mark 2bs. There seemed to be little interest in the subject and after a while I stopped checking in. I've just returned to this post by accident and seen some great replies added a year or so later, so thank you. Its good to confirm that the...
I have a late model 1983 Mark llB. I bought it because my favourite Boogie sounds came from the clean-ish channel of an early Mark llB with a few pedals in front. This amp had a gorgeous slightly overdriven and compressed sound on the clean channel with a nice, fat 'singing' upper mid range. My...
Did you find anything out? I have a Mk llB with the RP-9C preamp board. I started looking at it to see if there was an easy way to get the treble shift function to work on the clean channel. That was because I could never seem to get the sound I like that I have heard other (earlier) llBs from...
I use a MKIIb in a similar way - rhythm channel set up so its just starting to break up at full vol on the guitar then pedals for different flavours of drive & other effects. I have found that sounds better to my ears than the drive channel and it makes the amp easier to use. The MKIIb has a...
I like my my Mark series Boogies very much, but I sort of see the point in that as great as the Mark V is it doesn't imho get the sound/feel of my IIb or IVa (just like the IV cant do all the sounds that the II does). That's fine I don't own a V and the ones I have tried sound great in their own...
Hi, thank you for your reply. Yes that's the board. Mine has the same 2 capacitors on the left. The other components look a little different from memory, but its basically the same size board in the same place so I guess it is doing a similar job. I will have to pull the chassis out again and...
Hello all. I recently bought a 1983 late model Mark IIb HRGX. I have been after one of these for ages and am very happy with it. I took the chassis out recently to change some tubes and saw a separate small board about 5x2 inches on the side of the chassis. That got me thinking whether this...
Well you have the right pedals except that the Boss CS3 is not a great compressor in my opinion, DG uses the older CS2 or dynacomps which I think are both much better. Whatever compressor you use go easy on the amount of compression that you dial in especially when used with drive pedals.
The...
I had always thought that the Mark II was the first channel switching Boogie and with the Mark I you had to swap the guitar lead to a different input to change 'channels'. I know that some people use an A/B box to switch between inputs 1 & 2, needing two cables from the switch to the amp, but...
If one tube is redplating and you have tried the obvious things like proper Mesa range tubes and all good connections at the sockets, as it seems that you have then I would suspect a problem with the bias supply on that tube. If you know what you are doing re safety precautions (there are...
If one tube is redplating and you have tried the obvious things like proper Mesa range tubes and all good connections at the sockets, as it seems that you have then I would suspect a problem with the bias supply on that tube. If you know what you are doing re safety precautions (there are...
I do think that Mesa have diluted their tone over the years - deliberately. Whether you think that's a good or a bad thing probably depends on what sort of guitar tones you want from an amp and whether you put versatility above finding one exact 'sound in your head' or not. The earlier Mark...
In my experience the IV is quite a lot smoother and less aggressive than the III, I have had both and much prefer the IV for the vocal lead sound, but for heavier rock/metal I can see that the III may be preferred. But try turning the bass down. There is a lot of bass available on these and the...
When you refer to MK11b & MKIV I think depends if you are meaning the tone or just the amount of gain. Years ago I used to see a great local guitarist who played a MKIIb on the Rhythm channel cranked up very loud. He boosted that with compressor/drives from an old Korg A5 pedal. The tone was...