Mark III combo without EQ - opinions?

[MrSocko]

Sorry if this has been asked before but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the Mark III combos that don't have the five-band graphic EQ. I was in my local guitar store this morning and they had one of these for £500, which seemed like a pretty good deal since a brand new Mark IV combo costs around £2000. I'm gonna go back later in the week to try it out and determine which stripe it is, but I'm just curious if the lack of the graphic EQ is going to be a problem in the long run. I'm a big Faith No More fan and what really got me thinking about this amp is the fact that Jim Martin used a Mark III head on Angel Dust.

So, do you guys think it's a good buy or should I hold out for something else?

 

[Schmoog]

you can always put an EQ in the loop, or have MB add the eq if you don't like it without it.

 

[Johnson]

I would bring your guitar and try the amp out in the store...and like Schmoog said, you could always add an equalizer pedal pretty inexpensively. However, I think it will cost you ALOT of money to get mesa to put in a G-EQ...Somewhere in the ballpark of $400-500 plus shipping bothways (and it sounds like your coming from overseas).

 

[Restless Rocks]

My favorite III has no EQ and I don't miss it at all. With the right tubes, Speaker and settings I'm in tone heaven. 8)

 

[Johnson]

+1 ^ and for what its worth I just bought a Mark II w/o EQ and it sounds great.

 

[edward]

I say, it depends. If you want a truly usable channel-switching amp, you absolutely need the graphic, IMHO. It is your only way to shape the Lead channel's tone ...w/o it, your lead-channel tone is at the complete mercy of your clean channel's settings (not good). Assign the graphic eq to the lead chan only and you now have two almost completely separate tone stacks to work with.

But if you don't use it as a channel switcher, then just shape whatever channel you're using with the tone stack ...easy and very nice. Still, that 750K slider on the GEQ really is very useful. and I certainly don't want yet another thing to plug in if you choose the fx-loop method. All IMHO anyway

Edward