I've been playing around endlessly with the Mk1 Boost channel since I started trying to find that elusive but famous Mk1 "Liquid Lead" violin tone. (The Express 5:50 Plus in Class A 20W mode gets it rather easily, BTW)
What I found along the way was a great set of country 'chicken pickin' rhythm and lead settings!
First, it needs to be said that the Mk1 is a fender deluxe style circuit with an extra gain stage. If you treat it thusly, the country-genre potential of the MK1 circuit is pretty easy to understand - in spite of its reputation as the origins of the 80's metal tones.
Technically, the tone stack is near the front of the signal and gain path compared to marshalls which have the tone shaping near the back end. Thus, the tone stack in a Fender circuit has a really pronounced effect on the CHARACTER of the distortion tone...the nature of the harmonics in the attack in particular, which is where country like snap and sizzle can be dialed in. I guess my point is that Mesa's are known for heavy metal, but in truth, the mid-gain levels of Mk1 with the Trim setting are much more like Fender country tones.
Fender tones that are gained out a bit, at MOST tonestack settings, have a kind of (irritating) disharmonic clash going on particularly in the upper frequencies. Many call this tone "GRAINY". The presence control very effectively dials out that grainyness. (Whew! otherwise it'd be a useless POS channel).
I think it also needs to be said that there are good reasons why Fender guitar's are single coil based, and their amps have anode driven gain circuitry and tone stacks near the front end of the preamp...eg. .they sound "Great" together. The SC tone is likewise GRAINY, and so are this style amps, so you take ultra-grainy fundamental tone, then control the grainyness with the presence, and you get tones that fall in the nature of Crispy, Chimey, Sizzling, Snap. Kind of like the Rice Krispies of the gear world. Haha.
I've found the sweet spots to be rather limited, as the tones are dominated hugely by the presence/treble interaction which is why I think a lot of Fender settings I've read about on-line seem to converge into fairly similar ranges.
To find the sweet spot for country tones, I start with the treble on 2:00 and the presence on 100% and dial the presence back until the grainyness disappears, and then adjust the treble knob to get articulate snap, sizzle and chime (eg. depending on guitar volume knob setting) without being ear-splittingly overbearing in brightness. If I have to choose, I err to the side of snap, chime and sizzle, and I live with the brightness. A few iterations of adjusting the treble then starting over with presence at 100% and dialing it back and readjusting the treble eventually helps you find the sweet spot. Invariably my treble knob gets a lot higher than what I'd call "normal". The final setting is around 2:00 plus or minus 0:15 (with my rig configuration). The sweet spot is in a very small zone, and you need to make micro adjustments to the treble knob, or have a bit of good luck.
Further, having the mids set too high turns the country snap into a more mushy and inarticulate attack which I don't care for at all. There's still plenty of mids even with the mids rolled back to 9:00 or so.
(If you come at the Love channel from a Marshall toneknob viewpoint, it will take you forever to dial it in...you need to have country tones in your head, not hard rock crunch tones.)
To get the fender country rhythm and lead tones in spades, here are my settings, and this will vary a bit with the specific guitar, tubes and speaker configuration of each individual's "rig":
Mk1 Boost/Hi Gain
Trim/Fat on Trim,
Gain about 10:45 to 1:00 (depends on the guitar I'm using)
Treble about 2:00 (This is a finicky setting as the sweet spot is in a very very small zone between not enough sizzle, and too bright)
Mids 9:30
Bass: 10:30
I like bold far better than curvaceous on this amp, just way punchier and more articulate, and more defined clarity overall.
With bridge pickups, I prefer rectifier tube, and silicon diode better with neck pickup. If I had to choose between them, I'd pick the diode. The neck pickup tones seem to mud up too much for me with the tube rectifier, probably because the rectifier I'm using sags too much to energize the bass frequencies. There's probably a world of difference between rectifier tubes. The previous rectifier tube I used was a GZ34 or something, and there was very little difference between it and the diode.
Roll back volume of guitar to half to get an wicked spanky single coil tone for country rhythm pickiing and put it up to close to full volume for more modern country lead tones. If this isn't working for ya, its because you're guitar isn't wired for proper control of your gain and/or tone through the amp...eg. capacitor sizing, locations, etc. See a tech. (I did, and he did wonders for my guitar wiring, I don't need pedals anymore, just the volume knob! The volume knob acts like an on board gain control that makes the guitar actually get slightly brighter as I dial the volume down).
To compare to the original deluxe circuit tones, just switch the Love Channel to Low Gain mode, and dime the gain. Leave all the tone settings the same, except for maybe minor readjustment of the treble control. You will likewise get awesome country tones with your guitar volume knob in a higher range (I actually slightly prefer them to the Mk1 Boost tones for picking rhythms but not for leads) but you would probably have to boost your leads with a pedal on the low gain channel....but why bother when the Mk1 channel already has that extra gain boost build in, and your guitar volume controls how much drive there is - no pedals needed!)
What I found along the way was a great set of country 'chicken pickin' rhythm and lead settings!
First, it needs to be said that the Mk1 is a fender deluxe style circuit with an extra gain stage. If you treat it thusly, the country-genre potential of the MK1 circuit is pretty easy to understand - in spite of its reputation as the origins of the 80's metal tones.
Technically, the tone stack is near the front of the signal and gain path compared to marshalls which have the tone shaping near the back end. Thus, the tone stack in a Fender circuit has a really pronounced effect on the CHARACTER of the distortion tone...the nature of the harmonics in the attack in particular, which is where country like snap and sizzle can be dialed in. I guess my point is that Mesa's are known for heavy metal, but in truth, the mid-gain levels of Mk1 with the Trim setting are much more like Fender country tones.
Fender tones that are gained out a bit, at MOST tonestack settings, have a kind of (irritating) disharmonic clash going on particularly in the upper frequencies. Many call this tone "GRAINY". The presence control very effectively dials out that grainyness. (Whew! otherwise it'd be a useless POS channel).
I think it also needs to be said that there are good reasons why Fender guitar's are single coil based, and their amps have anode driven gain circuitry and tone stacks near the front end of the preamp...eg. .they sound "Great" together. The SC tone is likewise GRAINY, and so are this style amps, so you take ultra-grainy fundamental tone, then control the grainyness with the presence, and you get tones that fall in the nature of Crispy, Chimey, Sizzling, Snap. Kind of like the Rice Krispies of the gear world. Haha.
I've found the sweet spots to be rather limited, as the tones are dominated hugely by the presence/treble interaction which is why I think a lot of Fender settings I've read about on-line seem to converge into fairly similar ranges.
To find the sweet spot for country tones, I start with the treble on 2:00 and the presence on 100% and dial the presence back until the grainyness disappears, and then adjust the treble knob to get articulate snap, sizzle and chime (eg. depending on guitar volume knob setting) without being ear-splittingly overbearing in brightness. If I have to choose, I err to the side of snap, chime and sizzle, and I live with the brightness. A few iterations of adjusting the treble then starting over with presence at 100% and dialing it back and readjusting the treble eventually helps you find the sweet spot. Invariably my treble knob gets a lot higher than what I'd call "normal". The final setting is around 2:00 plus or minus 0:15 (with my rig configuration). The sweet spot is in a very small zone, and you need to make micro adjustments to the treble knob, or have a bit of good luck.
Further, having the mids set too high turns the country snap into a more mushy and inarticulate attack which I don't care for at all. There's still plenty of mids even with the mids rolled back to 9:00 or so.
(If you come at the Love channel from a Marshall toneknob viewpoint, it will take you forever to dial it in...you need to have country tones in your head, not hard rock crunch tones.)
To get the fender country rhythm and lead tones in spades, here are my settings, and this will vary a bit with the specific guitar, tubes and speaker configuration of each individual's "rig":
Mk1 Boost/Hi Gain
Trim/Fat on Trim,
Gain about 10:45 to 1:00 (depends on the guitar I'm using)
Treble about 2:00 (This is a finicky setting as the sweet spot is in a very very small zone between not enough sizzle, and too bright)
Mids 9:30
Bass: 10:30
I like bold far better than curvaceous on this amp, just way punchier and more articulate, and more defined clarity overall.
With bridge pickups, I prefer rectifier tube, and silicon diode better with neck pickup. If I had to choose between them, I'd pick the diode. The neck pickup tones seem to mud up too much for me with the tube rectifier, probably because the rectifier I'm using sags too much to energize the bass frequencies. There's probably a world of difference between rectifier tubes. The previous rectifier tube I used was a GZ34 or something, and there was very little difference between it and the diode.
Roll back volume of guitar to half to get an wicked spanky single coil tone for country rhythm pickiing and put it up to close to full volume for more modern country lead tones. If this isn't working for ya, its because you're guitar isn't wired for proper control of your gain and/or tone through the amp...eg. capacitor sizing, locations, etc. See a tech. (I did, and he did wonders for my guitar wiring, I don't need pedals anymore, just the volume knob! The volume knob acts like an on board gain control that makes the guitar actually get slightly brighter as I dial the volume down).
To compare to the original deluxe circuit tones, just switch the Love Channel to Low Gain mode, and dime the gain. Leave all the tone settings the same, except for maybe minor readjustment of the treble control. You will likewise get awesome country tones with your guitar volume knob in a higher range (I actually slightly prefer them to the Mk1 Boost tones for picking rhythms but not for leads) but you would probably have to boost your leads with a pedal on the low gain channel....but why bother when the Mk1 channel already has that extra gain boost build in, and your guitar volume controls how much drive there is - no pedals needed!)
