Mark IIB voicing...bassy?

[woodbutcher65]

I've got too many amps. It's taken me this long to get around to comparing my straight 60 watt Mark IIB to my other Mark amps. And found, that with the same EQ settings (via EQ in the loop) and with the same cabinet, that this amp, while it has PLENTY of gain, has a very bassy tone overall. Easily the darkest toned Mesa I've owned yet. It has enough treble, in fact it can get pretty piercing, with the treble turned up and the brights engaged and the presence turned up. But its bass is bloated. I have to EQ some bass out of it and, if it had its own EQ, I'd never want to turn up the bass sliders.

Is this typical, or common, for IIBs? I've never had a IIB before. I've had a Mark IIA and multiple Mark IIIs, and an IV and a V. None are bassy like this amp is.

 

[electric mayhem]

In case you are not familiar the bass is oppositely proportional to the volume. It can not be used as a set and forget tone stack and then just adjust volume.

Dialing it down is as normal as keeping the presence well backed off.

 

[VisaL]

This is more or less my experience as well. Mine was fully loaded -83 with hardwood headshell. I never was able to make the lead channel work for me. It did not have ’presence’. You could make it painfully bright, but it did have attack, sound was mushy and overly compressed. No amount of tube rolling solved the issue. I could not find speaker that would work properly. Clean was one of the best though. From the mark lineage of amps my needs are better served with studio.22 and mark3 which i have +modded. This is why I think was interesting choise to add the IIb mode on the new mark7.

 

[sloanthebone]

Below is how I am running mine.I can’t believe how much gain this thing has. Also have no idea how anyone can run this thing without an attenuator.

Volume 1 pulled, Treble pulled, Master 1 pulled, Lead Drive pulled. 60 watt mode. Even with an attenuator, I am scared to death of 100w mode.

 

[Wyzard]

Got to love Steve Kimock's thoughts on the subject with the C+, this being a continuation of DW's pushing for ever-higher gain, all the way back to the transition from IIA to IIB:

"Ok, if I had shown my hand up front on this one I would have guessed set-neck, dual humbucking, and stop-tailpiece/fixed bridge as opposed to vibrato tailpiece.
Y'know, more of a Les Paul type thing than not. A guitar. . .

The guitars used for the majority of the development for that amp were Doug West's. They were Strat type guitars with the highly figured maple bodies and necks, huge frets, locking nut, two point dive bomb style tremolo, 3 Duncan 1/4 lb'er single coils, and 009's at the heaviest.
Those amps were denied low end right from the input, never mind the rest of the signal path.

All I could think while I watched that go down was, "jeez you guys are gonna have some trouble getting that low end to translate if anybody plugs a real instrument into one of those amps."

And so it was. . .

If you have a guitar with any resonance, or a set neck, or humbuckers, or god forbid, a bridge that has a contact area with the body larger than a pencil point, or strings visible to the naked eye, you'll never see that bass control above 1 or 2.

The flip side is if you do have one of those impossibly thin sounding 2-point "80's Rock Lead Guitar" things, you'll have a pretty flexible screamer.
With the guitars you were using, I would say your approach to that amp was pretty optimal.

So yeah agreed. In addition to your account of the nature of the low end as it relates to the amp's overdrive, those amps were developed using very bright, bass deficient instruments. Still a great amp, but the EQ was pretty much a negative space version of that style axe.
Corrective? For the low end? In my opinion, yes.
Potentially an issue for guys with more traditional instruments? I guess so. .

'Round it goes!:rotflmao"

 

[sloanthebone]

Also, putting a Mesa Flux-Drive pedal in front and turning the bass to almost off has helped a lot too.

 

[Joey1970]

The "Post FX Level" mod fixes the fat bottom girl issue with the IIB amps.

 

[Joey1970]

Got to love Steve Kimock's thoughts on the subject with the C+, this being a continuation of DW's pushing for ever-higher gain, all the way back to the transition from IIA to IIB:

"Ok, if I had shown my hand up front on this one I would have guessed set-neck, dual humbucking, and stop-tailpiece/fixed bridge as opposed to vibrato tailpiece.
Y'know, more of a Les Paul type thing than not. A guitar. . .

The guitars used for the majority of the development for that amp were Doug West's. They were Strat type guitars with the highly figured maple bodies and necks, huge frets, locking nut, two point dive bomb style tremolo, 3 Duncan 1/4 lb'er single coils, and 009's at the heaviest.
Those amps were denied low end right from the input, never mind the rest of the signal path.

All I could think while I watched that go down was, "jeez you guys are gonna have some trouble getting that low end to translate if anybody plugs a real instrument into one of those amps."

And so it was. . .

If you have a guitar with any resonance, or a set neck, or humbuckers, or god forbid, a bridge that has a contact area with the body larger than a pencil point, or strings visible to the naked eye, you'll never see that bass control above 1 or 2.

The flip side is if you do have one of those impossibly thin sounding 2-point "80's Rock Lead Guitar" things, you'll have a pretty flexible screamer.
With the guitars you were using, I would say your approach to that amp was pretty optimal.

So yeah agreed. In addition to your account of the nature of the low end as it relates to the amp's overdrive, those amps were developed using very bright, bass deficient instruments. Still a great amp, but the EQ was pretty much a negative space version of that style axe.
Corrective? For the low end? In my opinion, yes.
Potentially an issue for guys with more traditional instruments? I guess so. .

'Round it goes!:rotflmao"

I installed the brass block, EMG Lukather set, and EMG SPC pot to fatten up my 1998 Jackson SL-1 to try and get close to the thickness of my 1973 goldtop LP. As about as close as I could get to the passive pickup Gibson.