Looking for a tone not sure how to describe

Chrose1201 · Aug 8, 2018

So I got myself a MarkV 35 and a new to me Les Paul. What an amazing combination. When I play things like lets say a Journey song that has a lot of grit I put it on the Mk IV setting Gain at about 2:00 Mid and Bass at around 11:00 and Treble at about 1-2:00. It sounds killer, but I am trying to figure out how to add that smoothness that rounds it out and helps draw the notes together if you will. Perhaps a slight rollback of the tone?
I used to use pedals to help but I find with this amp and guitar combo I don't really need anything! Though I would like a touch of delay, but that's another post for another forum.
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

barryswanson · Aug 9, 2018

Sounds like you have the wrong amp for what you want. Mark series amps are unforgiving with there immediacy and accuracy in pick attack. That’s if I’m understanding what you mean correctly ? Normally I’d say to raise the gain and boost it but thats not what you want either. That helps notes mosh together for lack of a better term. If you had a 90 watt version I’d say Mark 1 mode is where you wanna be. I know this doesn’t help but it is what it is, an unforgiving beast.

mace · Aug 10, 2018

It sounds like you are looking for a liquidy lead tone? Smooth, effortless, lots of saturation so you don‘t have to pick hard to keep the sustain and flow? Besides having a compressor to help out (i never used one, but I imagine it helps with this?) the thing I‘d try is to go to IIc+ mode and have the gain at 3 or 4 o‘clock, treble maybe between 12 and 2 o‘clock, keep the bass and mid dials somewhat lowish 9 to 11 o’clock-ish, somewhat of a “v shape” on the 5 band EQ. Give it a little more juice with the gain and treble and maybe knock down the presence and high band on the EQ to prevent too much grit. Try the IV mode, try Extreme and always use your ears and ignore where you think the dial settings “should” be.

Chrose1201 · Aug 12, 2018

Thanks for the replies so far. I had an audition the same night and it was really the first time I had a chance to give this baby a workout. For the last 10 years I have been playing in showbands where the mantra was “turn it down” and I am not a loud player! However these guys kept telling me to turn up! So when I did though it sounded amazing and I was only using the 1-12 cab and I could still hang with them! However I see now that Barry is right and it is unforgiving. What you play is what you get. Yet I hear demos all the time on YouTube of the amp and it sounds amazing. So I see what I really need to do is to crank it to that volume and study and learn the amp. The behavior is totally different than what I have been used to. So I guess I need to find the sweet spot and learn it from there. I will say though that I wish the footpedal didnt just switch between clean and drive but would also switch between the cleans and drive channels too.

Eevil · Aug 12, 2018

These thoughts are coming from V:90 user so not everything is 1:1...

I got this amp couple of months ago and was struggling a lot with the tone controls on channels 2 & 3 (aaand also cab was not what I wanted...)

Lately I’ve been settling down with ch 3 and extreme mode. The two other modes have too compressed feel for my tastes and the harmonic content feels to be a bit wider in the extreme mode.
Settings: G: 14:00, T: 14:00, M: 12:30, B: 12:00, P:15:00 and geq can be used or not for different feel. Mind you that I’m using low output strat with the amp.... and if the volumes would rise the gain would go down a lot

kc_ksom · Aug 13, 2018

I would set to extreme mode as well and bring your gain down to the playing volume you want while your master volume is at 60% plus - get the tubes to work a little more, set your bass up and mids up a little to compensate

casey