Mark V bashing / hate

[NorCal-Mesa]

Metal/thrash amp the answer is a big fat YES. Its clear and verty articulate and with crazy gain and head room. Most high gain amps cant get this clear. My personal opionion but that my most metal players want to get lost in the unarticulate distortion. This amp will make you play better becasue you cant hide behind the distrotion on this one. METALLICA + MESA thats pretty metal.

I see a lot of MKV bashing on other boards. Mainly the complaint is that it is not adequate for live use, lack of headroom, etc .... Nothing more than an expensive bedroom amp. Ouch that hurt. Pertucci ditched his MKV for a Triaxxis, etc... and all sorts of other bashing.

My band has only one guitarist, me, and I use it for the heavier tunes, which is more hard rock based and I use it for metal at home.

I haven't had a lot of tube amps, so I don't really know what the amp is lacking. Sometimes I think it does not have enough gain, but I am finding out that the presence knob and the treble knob on channel 3 have a lot to do with the gain. I know this info is in the book and I read it front to back a few times, but not recently. There's a lot of sh!t to retain in that book.

The basic question I have, is this. Is this an adequate metal / thrash amp? Sometimes I'm doubting it.

 

[Mungo Zen]

Just for fun, two thoughts on the OP:

1 - Not a lot of people actually get to play with enough different amps to have a truly diverse opinion about what a good or bad amp is and what it is or isn't good at.

2 - Most music I hear these days has really terrible production for the guitars. Flat tones, muted in the mix, far from what a good amp tone might actually sound like. It is partially the engineering and production of recordings (perfect is better than expressive) and the listening media we have (predominantly MP3 or mid to low quality streams).

Bonus - a lot of amp buyers today grew up listening to stuff like Metal Zones, digital effects and solid state practice amps. All relatively lifeless devices (although they all have solid applications as well), but cheap to make and easy for kids to buy. Things like the Metal Zone from Boss shaped the way we hear guitar tones in metal. To the point that over time a tube gain based amp just doesn't sound as metal to a lot of people. Then ENGL shows up and everyone says 'if it isn't that, it isn't metal'.

and finally:

https://lethalhalo.bandcamp.com/album/animanaut

This is a recording from late last year from my band Lethal Halo. I am running a Mark V on the right speaker, while there is a Triple Rec on the left, both through Recto slant cabs. You will likely call the music not metal before the tones.

As the sig says, I am using EL34's in the power section, hence the more Marshall type tone. The recto is running 6L6. I actually have notes on how this was all recorded if you would like to know more of how these tones were built.

If you go back and listen to Process of Progress you can hear what it sounds like for a producer to squash your tones. Same rig setup generally, dialed a bit differently.

https://lethalhalo.bandcamp.com/album/process-of-progress

 

[screamingdaisy]

If you go back and listen to Process of Progress you can hear what it sounds like for a producer to squash your tones. Same rig setup generally, dialed a bit differently.

https://lethalhalo.bandcamp.com/album/process-of-progress

Ouch!

First one was sweet. The second... Not so much.

Makes me wonder if painfully brickwalled production is why rock/metal has been dying...?

Also makes me wonder why music that's unlikely to ever be played on the radio is ever brickwalled in the first place?

 

[Mungo Zen]

With Process the producer went in with the mentality that he could 'edit anything that isn't right'. Well, he destroyed the guitar and bass tones (that's a SVT4 tube with 6x10 fridge w/ 4 mics). He hand cut a lot of phrases with the bulk of the work on the drums but a lot of work on the guitars. While the songs are still the songs, he took our performance out of it.

With Animanaut, our engineer went in with the approach that 'I won't fix anything, so make sure it is right first'. Hence a much better tonal mix. In one of the tracks, the left guitar is one full take for the whole song, no edits. Vastly different and it forced us to be better too.

With my other project, a stoner rock band called 88 Mile Trip, we are trying to go a step further and record live off the floor. We have a new album about to drop that I will share when the time is right, but in February we go into a studio/house combo for 2-3 weeks to record the next album, to really take it down as live as we can. Being able to spend a few days dialing in tones as a band in a place where everything will stay put is pretty exciting.

 

[screamingdaisy]

I've tried fixing a bass track before. It wasn't pretty... Totally killed the groove. I wouldn't do it again.

Most of my favourite albums were recorded live in the studio with minimal overdubs.

 

[Hypnotoad696]

Music is produced these days to sound good through ear buds, ie super compressed, narrow sonic range. Death Magnetic makes me cringe. Watch the making of Death Magnetic on YouTube, it sounds amazing. **** even the guitar hero version sounds better. The loudness wars are destroying articulate metal sounds too. Its terrible...