Mod Question

[Marcs316]

I spoke with a tech over at Mesa and was talking with him about a tune up for my Mark III (purple) and ended up asking him about a few mods. He said if I wanted to do a stripe/dot mod that I could go as high as a blue stripe. Here's my question, finally:

I play mostly metal music, so I'm real keen on high gain, thick distortion, etc and as it is now, I have to really crank my amp to get it smokin to be somewhat close to what I want. I was reading about the stripe history and it says that the blue stripe has a very aggressive rhythm and more gain than my purple stripe. Do you guys think I'd be happy with the blue stripe, or should I ask for something else? I'm still sending it in for a tune-up so I figured it'd be easier/cheaper to get it all done now since I've been thinking of a stripe mod for a long time, now.

Also, over at the Mesa/Boogie files site where it lists all the changes in the Mark series, were all the changes just added on to the previous model? For example, the Red stripe's lead was tweaked to sound like the IIC+, does the Blue stripe have the same lead channel in addition to the R1 change?

Thanks! ^_^

 

[axwielding1]

I have a blue stripe, and I will say it is smokin'. Very aggressive lead, very aggressive R2, and a clean R1 that will slightly purr. The red stripe has a very aggressive lead tone as well, and has a grainier R1, but the R@ has less gain....
That said, why not find out about a IIC+ mod?
ax. :twisted:

 

[Marcs316]

Not sure if a IIC+ would be available since he said the highest I could go was a Blue, but maybe he just meant that as high as I could go in the MKIII series. But again, I'm not sure if my amp could do a C+ because it's only a 65watt amp, but I suppose I could ask. Would it be that much better than a blue stripe, since the blue's overall tone was tweaked to be more like C+ anyway? I think they might charge a bit more if I went C+ instead of blue, but I'll still look into it.

Also, since you've brought it up, how does the IIC+ compare to the blue as far as tone is concerned? I'm going for a certain overall tone and it's really hard to describe without condradicting myself. Sort of like bass heavy, smooth, a crunchy kind of purr sound, if that makes a lick of sense...

 

[Kgry]

I think you will be happy with the blue stripe mod, no need to get a IIC+. I have a blue stripe and it's definately got some balls to it. I had a Triple Rectifier before and the Mark III is so much more tighter sounding.