dlpasco said:
...how you think your Mark III compares to the Mark V for cleans...
Well... That'd take a book if done properly. First answer would be "i don't want to compare these at all". ;D But few obeservations.
And please remember, that everything in here is purely opinion based. Also my red stripe sounds different than other versions. Even different than some other reds. So this will be not at all a list of facts, but thoughts and opinions of my personal gear.
Which i do believe i've added in my signature down there...
- In V it is easier and faster for a new Mesa user to make your preferred clean tones. After all everything is half done in ch 1 already.
- You can make 9 versions of clean tone with V. Every preamp does it's own version. Even extreme (althou that is not what it does best).
- With V it is also possible to make cleans sound better in low volumes. Bedroom levels even. Mark III practically dies, if you try to do the same with it (I keep telling this all the time and here we go again: get a power attenuator).
- V has better sounding (and behaving) reverb, which walks hand in hand with cleans.
- V has also more options to adjust power amp's action in many ways
After that one could think that the V is a clear winner. However if we aim to get just one sound from each, the game is still on. In that the limitations of shared tonestack - in form of a must-to-do compromise - are not involved. The range you can adjust your mark III in, is huge. If you bother to tweak, you can imitate almost any amp type with it. Start from dark, soft jazz and go to distorted, almost heavy sound used in hard rock. And this is just the clean (R1) channel. In the middle you can play rockabilly, surf or modernish glassy clean tones. Simul class is also (opinion based on taste of course) gives mark III possibility to win in some sounds. However when we go to area where no distortion at all is accepted, mark V's clean does the trick a bit better. Can be my tubes, version or both, but when i drop Vol1 too low in meaning of clean it completely (to go to "transistor clean"), the amp loses some breath.
In cleans speakers do a lot and i should really compare those with just one speaker. In my III the speaker is almost 30 years old and the V's are way newer. Some of mark III's warmth compared to V's must come for age of the speaker (original Black Shadow of course).
Playing with your volume knobs is a must in mk III's cleans. V makes it easier (or not? Depends how good you've read the manual) with it's channel master and master volume. When i search sounds to my III these days, i use power attenuator. That way i can keep the volume peaks tamed. The cleaner you go with mark III, the more you open its master volume. In some point you can blow your speaker away, if you change to lead and it has volume settings from your earlier death metal experiences.
But this is getting longer than the Bible. Please ask for details, since i'm not sure what info i should put in here and what is obvious to everyone. My english also - using the word learned from movies - sucks, so i rather be economical in my writing.
Both amps are great. Both have their ups and downs. V (i have two for reasons) is a swiss army knife i use a lot when i need to use different sounds in one set. But in some areas, especially when we go closer to bluesy stuff, i like to use III more.
