A Studio or Quad.. Running through a MarkIII head

[Neptical]

What's up clan.

I have an opportunity to pick up a Studio Pre or a Quad for a decent price to throw in my rack gig case. I would be looking to run one as a preamp to my Mark III head, while still being able to use the Mark III preamp section as well. I'm thinking more along the lines the Quad as it'll be a bit more versatile. Before I make the decision, what do I need to switch between both preamp sections? I'm also going to be running a little bit of effects through the loops as well. Thanks in advance for your help. It is much appreciated.

 

[crane]

According to the schematic, the MkIII has a non-cutting return jack, so you should be able to plug the Quad into the return, and then with an A/B-box switch your input between the Quad and the MkIII.
Be sure to test that first by pluging a simple jack (with nothing on the other side) into the return and see if your MkIII is still playable through his own preamp section.

On the other side the poweramp section will cumulate hiss/noise/hum from both units...

 

[Whoopysnorp]

I have a setup just like this: Studio Pre and a Mark III in a 6-space rack, with the output of the Studio Pre and the effects send of the Mark III going into a passive switching box and from there back out to the effects return of the Mark III. It works fine; the only thing is that the tone suffers a little bit due to the long cable run out from the amp to the floor next to my footswitches and back again. A way to get around this problem would be to use something like a Voodoo Lab GCX switcher that kept the signal paths shorter.

Personally I think the Quad is overkill, unless you really think you need to have two different Mark III preamp settings available on the fly. In fact, I recently decided to change my setup to just a Mark III head and bring the Studio Pre home to use in my apartment, as I got tired of the complexity of all the cables I had to plug in every time I set up the rig. The Mark III's preamp doesn't sound quite as good to me as the Studio Pre, but it gets close.

 

[Neptical]

Thanks for your replies fellas, it's much appreciated.

I was thinking the Quad so I could actually use one side of the Quad in clean, and maybe the other side as a lead; not that I have a problem whatsoever using the III right now, but it just gives me that much more versatility.

Is there any one single unit that will let me switch between the channels of my Mark III, the Quad...and my effects??? I want to keep it as simple as possible. Thanks again for your time.

 

[Whoopysnorp]

Take a look at the RJM Amp Gizmo.

 

[Neptical]

Take a look at the RJM Amp Gizmo.

Thanks for that link! I was thinking about one of those actually. Now to figure out how to go about it. Email afoot!

 

[dbone]

The amp gizmo as noted already is one way to go (havent used it but heard good things).
I use the voodoo labs GCX switcher and voodoo labs ground control which gave me midi control of my Gforce and the ability to assign presets to the foot controller and assign functions through the switching jacks on the quad with the GCX.
So the GCX is a one space rackmount loop switcher with 8 loops which can also trigger switching functions on boogie gear or be used as a loop fx pedal switcher as well. The ground control floor board can organize and trigger the functions into presets which is handy.
I used it with the Quad and dual recto rackmount and it worked well. I actually used two of the GCX to make all work.
http://forum.grailtone.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=51767

 

[Blaklynx]

Similar to the RJM are Rocktron's units
Rack http://www.rocktron.com/products/controllers/patchmateloop8/
Floor http://www.rocktron.com/products/controllers/patchmateloop8floor/

 

[Neptical]

The great debate going on...

I still have a chance to pick up a Mesa Quad - BUT..wondering if it will end up being alot of work to get it to run with my Mark III.. :?:

I just don't want to have a million cords everywhere. I'd rather just keep it a nice simple and clean rig.

In my road case I'll have....Mark III head,Furman Power Conditioner,Korg rack tuner, Mesa Quad, and a small pedal tray ( delay,chorus,flange,tremolo). And then of course the pedal board out front to control the switching of the amps and effects.

That's more than enough for me. I'm looking for the easiest way to do this. Any other help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[markwayne]

The great debate going on...

I still have a chance to pick up a Mesa Quad - BUT..wondering if it will end up being alot of work to get it to run with my Mark III.. :?:

I just don't want to have a million cords everywhere. I'd rather just keep it a nice simple and clean rig.

In my road case I'll have....Mark III head,Furman Power Conditioner,Korg rack tuner, Mesa Quad, and a small pedal tray ( delay,chorus,flange,tremolo). And then of course the pedal board out front to control the switching of the amps and effects.

That's more than enough for me. I'm looking for the easiest way to do this. Any other help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I used to do this in the eighties with my obligatory refrigerator-sized rack by splitting my guitar signal and feeding the inputs of three amps and three pre-amps and then taking all of six outs and loop sends and feeding a midi-mixer which fed my effects and then a midi-switcher that let me feed that signal back to any (or all) of the power amps. It would be easiest to just use an A/B box to send your guitar to one or the other input and then sum the quad out and the send of your Mark III to feed the return of your Mark III. If you want to run both at the same time, be aware that you may need to reverse the phase on one.

 

[Neptical]

Wayne...thanks much for your input my friend. It's truly appreciated.

I think I'm just really over thinking a solution and really I think your right...just throwing an A/B box down is probably the safest and easiest bet.

If I like the Quad alot, it'll be a keeper. If not I'll probably go full force with an Axe FX to throw in the rack.