Mark III, only one channel has lots of gain?

[Sir Punk]

I am so confused because I thought the M III would have two channels with a lot of gain. Or was I just incapable of dialing it the right way?
It was a red stripe combo with an EV speaker (the guitar center guy told me "these come with Vintage 30", I wanted to insult and laugh in his face...but that's another story). so after about 20 minutes of figuring out how to switch channel without footswitch, I find that only one channel is high gain, the other way was very clean and it gets dirtier as the volume goes up. is it this way? I thought the clean/overdrive channel was fantastic, but the R channel wasn't nowhere near my Tremoverb. I can get pretty close to that sound with my ToV.

opinions? comments? help?

I wanna give this amp another shot because I read everywhere that the distortion is supposed to be much different from the recto. It also seemed that you can get more sounds from a dual recto.

 

[4406cuda]

My Mark III has a great clean channel, a crunch channel, and a lead channel with tons of gain. If you use a overdrive in front of it (OCD, Tube Screamer, SD 1, etc), you can get a pseudo 4th channel.

 

[jjblacksheep]

Not sure what you mean by "lots" of gain. I am running a BBE Green Screamer in front of my Mark III as a boost and I can get a great gain channel on R2 and a screaming rage gain on the Lead Channel. Even without the pedal I can get gobs of gain, the pedal just opens things up a bit. Are the tubes old? What kind of tubes are in the preamp? You should not have problems getting a solid amount of gain out of it.

 

[MrMarkIII]

I am so confused because I thought the M III would have two channels with a lot of gain. Or was I just incapable of dialing it the right way?
It was a red stripe combo with an EV speaker (the guitar center guy told me "these come with Vintage 30", I wanted to insult and laugh in his face...but that's another story). so after about 20 minutes of figuring out how to switch channel without footswitch, I find that only one channel is high gain, the other way was very clean and it gets dirtier as the volume goes up. is it this way? I thought the clean/overdrive channel was fantastic, but the R channel wasn't nowhere near my Tremoverb. I can get pretty close to that sound with my ToV.

opinions? comments? help?

I wanna give this amp another shot because I read everywhere that the distortion is supposed to be much different from the recto. It also seemed that you can get more sounds from a dual recto.

The Mark III has one clean channel (R1), one "high gain" channel (Lead), and one in-between channel (R2), sometimes referred to as the "crunch" channel. This channel is higher gain than the R1, but lower gain than the Lead channel. It Is accessed by the R2 foot switch, or alternately, by pulling out the Middle knob. The R2 gain is increased or decreased by twiddling the Volume knob, the first knob on the left. That's right, the knob labeled "Volume" is actually the gain knob for the Rhythm 1 (Clean) and Rhythm 2 (Crunch) channels.
Manuals, which explain all in more detail, are available at the Mesa website.
Hope this helps

 

[silentrage]

I have the same thing here with my blue stripe.
I was expecting R2 to be a cranked marshall sound, but it's really pretty clean, not much dirtier than R1, even with the volume cranked.
But I find putting a OD in front with the volume maxed and gain on 0 turns R2 into an amazingly chunky, tight and dynamic channel with just the right amount of distortion that still lets your guitar and pickup's tonal characteristics come through. This is with volume on about 7.

The lead drive needs to be kept down to about 3-4 with the boost or it gets too saturated and compressed.

 

[kmanick]

the R2 on the Red Stripe III I just sold didn't have very much gain either (the R2 on my IV has lots more)
I had the R2 mod on mine however and found by cranking the R2 volume up I could get more punch out of it without diming the R1 volume
control. But even then I needed a clean boost in front of it to really be "usable" to me.
In the end I didn't really use it much as balancing volume levels between the 3 channels at low to moderate volume was difficult.
With the amp wide open all 3 channels sound great.
I'm finding the IV to be a much more "home friendly" amp than the III was.
Still that lead channel voicing on the Red stripes.................................. :shock: it's damn good.

 

[Sir Punk]

ok so now looking back I understand better. The controls are not intuitive at all. I liked the lead a lot for power chords but for palm muting I thought my JMP and my recto are much better. The R channel is great as I said. I don't really like to use OD pedals with amps that already have a gain knob. It seems a bit like defeating the purpose of buying a particular amp. It adds flexibility for sure.

 

[jjblacksheep]

Don't get hung up on using a OD or clean boost on ANY amp. You'll see Mesa, Bogner, Engl, Diezel amps............all with fantastic players using a pedal even though they ooze gain. That's not the point. A good pedal just opens up the sound and makes the tone more pleasing and a bit more easy to shape. This topic comes up a lot on various boards and it's not a gain issue, it's a tone issue. And by the way, I used to think the exact same way....."why would you spend $3000 on an amp and still need a pedal?" Because it makes them sound better. Just my 2 cents.

 

[silentrage]

If you havn't tried using a maxed out clean boost on your mark iii R2, I highly recommend you try it, to me that rhythm tone just fcking kills for anything heavy.
So tight yet chunky at the same time, and not very harsh once you find a good setting.

Here are my settings:
http://www.chain-metal.nl/mark3/?bg=1&d1=70&d2=70&p2=1&d3=20&p3=1&d4=100&p4=1&d5=15&p5=1&d6=40&d7=30&p=0&g1=50&g2=35&g3=25&g4=30&g5=20&t=Metal+TiteNDry%2C+Like+a+good+virgin%2C+Clean+Boost+w%2F+TS7