Funny story: fell back in love with my Mark III blue stripe

[EOengineer]

After a year of sitting in my closet, I recently decided to sell my loaded blue stripe simul class combo in the hopes that I'd raise enough funds to get a princeton or deluxe reverb. The past few years had me living in some noise restricted situations, and I could never use the Mesa in any meaningful way.

Well, my wife and I recently moved down to the gulf of Florida, and now that I'm in a house, I decided to put the thing through its paces to make sure everything worked prior to sending it off to the buyer that was waiting. Well, what transpired next was totally unexpected.

I'll be damned if the thing didn't sound amazing. All this time the amp was just waiting to be turned up a bit. Once I started to give it a little volume, everything became really fat and harmonic. The clean was spanky with a little glass, the crunch sounded amazing, and the lead channel was out of this world. I am so thankful I checked it out before letting it go. I can safely say this one is sticking around for the long haul. These are the most under rated amps out there right now.

 

[dlpasco]

That's wonderful

 

[EOengineer]

Thanks! I'm most surprised how subtle tweaks can completely change the tonal palette of the amp. I was playing smokey blues with my strat on the lead channel, and all I had to do to get there was to roll the volume 1 and treble back a bit, and pull the bass, it was liquid blues heaven.

Then I plug in my LP, and the same settings unleash the fattest, juiciest neck lead sounds you can imagine. The sustain and compression in these amps is what really brings it home. Everything just feels so alive.

As a final test, I dialed in some Black Album crunch from years gone by. Odd settings, but I found them in the lead channel with my les Paul. Volume on 7, Treble on 10, mids and lows zeroed out with bass pulled. Deep and bright also pulled. Lead drive at 2.5. I used the graphic to dip the mids a bit, and pushed the low mids/high mids a bit. The crunch was so clear and precise, I couldn't help but realize this is what I wished I had when I was playing a rectifier years ago.


I am certainly a mark III convert for life.