Spongy mode is just an extra winding on the primary side of the power transformer that reduces the supply voltage and drops the secondary voltages down a bit. Bold is the full power mode, so you have the full operating voltage on the secondary. I can see that affecting the noises. The ticking noise? Never got a ticking noise but more like a slight whooshing sound but would not last for very long. MWDR and Roadster both do this. I can hear it with the Mark V90 as you can turn off the cooling fan. Not sure about the Royal Atlantic as you can turn off the cooling fan with that one too. Different transformer and plate voltage than the MWDR and Mark V90 (similar power transformers). The noise should dissipate and not continue after a short while. If it continues, there could be an issue. Wait and see what MESA says.
I do have two amps that make a slight popping sound once the amp is taken out of standby, Mark VII and JP2C do this. That only last for a few seconds.
When you hear back from Mesa, a good thing to have is a recording or short video of the amp at start up. They should know what would cause that once they hear a recording or video of the amp in question. Send it to them after they respond since that would be a dialogue channel to work with. Best to handle any issues by email than phoning in your concerns. Why talk to Gibson on the phone when the email will go to Mesa? That is my only peeve with Mesa customer service when calling in, it goes to Gibson in Tennessee.
There is one key characteristic that is common with the MWDR, and the Roadster is the initial condition of the amp's circuitry for channels. When you take the amp out of stand-by you may see that all of the channel LEDs are on. The clean channel may be the default, but the channel circuits are still undefined. Best to press each channel button, cycle from CH1 on up to the last channel, then for the loudest pop you may hear, hit the mute button. This is a way to reset all of the circuits used to change channels and such as there is a strobe mute circuit that gets triggered from channel changes. Switching between the channels sort of defines their initial state so the pops do not occur while you are playing and changing channels.
