NAD - Awesome Mark IV score! (NPD too!)

[UglyBunny]

WARNING: Walls of text!!!

So... here's the story.

A local music store, Dan's Guitars, has had this beautiful boutique wood Mark IV combo for the last several months - maybe longer. Every time I go in there I lust after it, but the one time I tested it out (the day I got my Majesty), I was overwhelmed by all the knobs and had no idea how to dial in a sound since I didn't have my Mark IV combo yet - so within two minutes I moved on...

..but I always lusted after it when I'd go in there and think about it when I wasn't there. I kept telling myself I don't need another amp, especially one that I already have. Recently it has been off to the side in Dan's "fix-it" section. Supposedly there was something wrong with it and he said it needed to be sent back to Mesa.

Fast forward to yesterday.

I walk in there to buy a small powered pedalboard for my new setup, and I saw the amp again, STILL buried in the fix-it pile. I pulled Dan aside and said, "Dude... make me a deal on that amp as-is," figuring I would just send it back to Mesa myself. The sticker price was $1250. He said he needed to check to see what they 'had into it' and when he came back he said, "I can do $900." I said, "Sold." He says it needs to be biased or something and there's something wrong that they can't fix. Well, first of all, Boogies are fixed bias, so...

So I got my pedals and pedalboard and the shop assistant started to put it all together with Evidence Monorail Cables. He rings me up and I go home. Given that I already have an amazing Mark IV combo, I figured I'd just transplant my amp into the boutique cab while I send the amp off to get fixed. I plug in the amp and sure enough the volumes are all wonky or nonexistent or farty bursts of loud sound with hard playing... I tapped on the tubes for microphonics, replaced the power tubes with my good ones just to test - no luck. I was hoping it'd work, but hey; I knew that it was "broken" so I couldn't be that disappointed, right? Whatever. On to plan "B:" The transplant.

This was a relatively easy procedure as everything is easy to connect and disconnect - I was a little worried as my original Mark IV is the 215th one made, and therefore an "A" model, and the new one is a "B" model, but luckily everything fit. Once I got the busted amp out and my good amp in and reconnected, I screwed the nameplate from my black cab onto the grill of the wicker cab. It looks absolutely stunning.

The chatoyancy is wonderful, especially in bright lighting:

So here's the punchline. While I had the new amp stripped out sitting on my bed I began to write Mesa/Boogie for instructions on sending the amp in for repair. As I was typing the exact symptoms, I got a wild hair and decided to plug everything back in with the amp outside the cab and upside down so I could see and access ALL of the tubes- since the trouble seemed to happen when I would play hard, that MUST be a preamp tube, right?. Well, long story short, I swapped out the preamp tubes one-by-one and still no luck. For some reason I happened to bump one of the 12AX7s that I had already tested* and heard a 'clunk.' I swapped this tube out (again) with my good Mesa-brand 12AX7 and BAM: amp works fine!

Can you believe it? $900 for a boutique-cab Mark IV(B) combo with casters! All it took was a simple tube swap. All I can assume is that the store didn't have time to open it up completely and diagnose it.

ONTO THE PEDAL/PEDALBOARD:

So I decided I wanted just a small setup. My pedalboard a few months ago looked like this:

I needed something smaller, more manageable, less hectic and cluttered. I kinda shied away from the 4CM/MFX setup. So I figured I needed a tuner, a couple dirt pedals, a clean boost pedal (since my JP13 & Maj have made me dependent on that clean boost that my Albert Lee doesn't have), and then in the loop a compressor (weird, I know) my JP Dreamscape chorus, and my Zoom MS-70CDR. Easy peezy. Here's my board:

The pedalboard is the SKB PS8. It was about $150 and comes with some velcro for the bottom of your pedals and enough juice & power cables to power 8 pedals. It also comes with a gig bag that has a nice big pocket on the front. It feels nice, looks clean, but only time will tell how durable it is. It does, however, come with a lifetime guarantee so if something goes wonky they will replace it free of charge. I'm happy with it. Anyway, here's the rundown: Pedals marked with a "*" are new as of yesterday - thus the 'NPD' in the thread title

Guitar
>
*Boss TU-3 Tuner: Everyone needs a tuner. It was between this or the Korg Polytune, but the store didn't have any Polytunes left in stock and I'm too lazy to drive/call around to find one so that made my decision easy. I used to carry my Peterson Stroboplus HD with me everywhere but it got cumbersome to unplug the guitar from the amp, plug it into the tuner, tune, then plug back into the amp. Not a very quick process.
>
Chellee "Odie" OD pedal: An amazing OD - like a TS on steroids. Hand made in the US, true bypass, and only $100!!
>
*EH Deluxe Big Muff Pi: The classic Big Muff Pi fuzz but with a noise gate (a godsend for this pedal), a mids parametric EQ, a bass-boost mode, and an "attack" knob that mixes in the original pick attack so notes don't lose their separation when the sustain is cranked. It adds a bit of extra "grrrrrr!!!" to the sound too. Probably one of the best/most versatile fuzz boxes out there.
>
*TC Electronic Spark Boost: I saw a demo where Rob Chapman used this pedal and it made his tube amp sing. Well, it does just that. Three modes, 26db clean boost on tap, gain knob for extra drive, and a highly musical 2-band EQ (bass & treble knobs). It immediately has become one of my favorite pedal. And I bought it without even trying it out first. The great thing about this pedal is that you can use it by itself or after an OD/disortion. Plus, my Big Muff Pi sounds awesome with the Odie on, so these 3 pedals all play well together!
>Mark IV input (amp stays on Rhythm Channel 2)
>Loop Send>
Wampler Ego Compressor: So here's the deal with this guy in the loop. Since I leave my amp on channel 2 all the time with a fair amount of gain when the guitar's volume is wide open, I like to also use this channel for my clean tone; but when I turn the guitar down to 3 or 4, the volume drops significantly too. In steps the Ego. It brings my "quiet" clean sound up to snuff and keeps the wide-open, balls to the wall gain sound tamable; But it works subtly enough that I'm not squashing the dynamics. And, given how finicky the master volume knob on my Mark IV is, I can actually use the volume knob on the comp to control my overall volume, though it's generally set up so that between 9 and 10 o'clock is unity.
>
TC Electronic JP Dreamscape: Easily my favorite chorus out there. I even did a 32-minute demo/review of it.
>
Zoom MS-70CDR: An amazing value and great sounding chorus/delay/reverb pedal. I mainly use it for the HD reverb setting, as well as a nice clean ambient delay that's unobtrusive. I wrote a small review for it here.
>
Mark IV power amp.

I got a chance to use my "new" rig today at church and it is absolutely wonderful. There wasn't a single time where I was dissatisfied with my sound or wondering why it didn't sound as good as it did at home. The guitar sat in the mix perfectly and the tone was to die for. I don't know about you, but THAT'S my idea of church

So that's it! Thanks for letting me tell my story! I don't think I'll have the heart to tell Dan what was wrong with the amp :lol:

PS: If anyone knows what kind of wood that cab is, please let me know! I'm thinking it's stained maple, but I can't tell. The amp weighs a thousand pounds, if that helps narrow it down lol.

*In truth, this was the first tube I tested - I only realized after the second tube tested that I had forgotten to plug in the speaker!!!! EEK! So I'm the idiot

 

[eatsleeprock]

Dude, that is a heck of a deal on a beautiful looking amp. I just picked up a mark iv a combo, but its regular tolex. Not gonna lie, slightly jealous. AWESOME find.


Pedalboard looks pretty tight too.

 

[UglyBunny]

Yea dude. Now that I think back, I bought my black tolex Mark IV combo JUST before getting my Majesty and seeing this in the store. I got my first one for $1000 on Craigslist; it was a good deal; came with extra tubes and it had been recently serviced by Mesa. The extra tubes came in handy a little while ago when I went to cart it on the dolly, tipped the dolly too far up and the amp literally rolled off and landed on its head!

Anyway, when I saw this in the store, I got that sinking feeling in my gut because I just blew my wad on a plain ol' black tolex version and here was this beauty for ALMOST the same price. Even when I found out that it was "broken" it didn't stop me from wanting it - if for no other reason than to transplant my other amp into it.

It turned out well and I'm gonna experiment with a stereo setup - the Dreamscape and the Zoom are both stereo pedals, so I could send the L & R outputs into the respective FX returns. The Dreamscape sounds GODLY in stereo - especially if you've use a piezo/clean mix and you've got a little delay and verb going on.