New User and just got a Mark III

[mott555]

Hello all, I just registered since I finally own a Boogie. I'm a Marshall guy at heart but there are some things my old JMP 2204 just doesn't do well, so when a Mark III red stripe showed up on Craigslist for $850 I pounced on it. Excellent clean channel, and of course it nails the Master of Puppets tone which is great because I know a ton of old-school Metallica riffs and the JMP just didn't do them justice. I now feel I own the two best amps in the world.

Overall it's in great shape. It has a quad of 5881 power tubes, one of them was bad so I have it running in Class A until I can get new tubes. There's a pair of STR 447 EL34's in the mail somewhere, those will go in the outer sockets and I'll move the good pair of 5881's into the inner sockets so I can run full power. Eventually I'll get a proper pair of STR 440 6L6's for the inner sockets. It was also cool to see the notes hand-written with a Sharpie on the chassis. It was made in September of 1987.

It also has a minor modification that was supposedly done at the factory. The DI was removed and the DI level changed into a volume for the Rhythm 2 channel.

I'm using it with a pair of Marshall Haze 112 cabinets and it's a good match. They're the same width, almost like it was meant to be...

 

[themisfit138]

Congrats man! Welcome to the Mark III club. I love my Blue stripe, they are great amps. That mod you have is the Rythem 2 volume mod, the black dot I use to own had that. As far as tubes go I actually prefer the 6L6, EL34 combo. I have winged c for both.

 

[mott555]

So I read elsewhere that the 5881 is only a 23-watt tube, while the 6L6GC is 30-watts (that one I knew because I used to have a 6505+). Now I surmise that's why the middle tubes were red-plating, not necessarily a bad tube, just some idiot retubed it with underpowered tubes!

 

[V-Type]

Welcome too the Mark III club.
Once you dial her in its pure Magic.
My Purple stripe coombo reallly is a religious type of experience iwhen I get the Master cooking.
Cleans, crunch, omg gains, etc its all there and some.
More folks are catching on too how Great the Mark III really is and there are less of them sitting on th lists.
Just played a gig with my MarkIII into a 4x12 and Wowza.
My buds XXX head and cab coould barely keep up.

 

[Rob227]

I had a red stripe simulclass. I got some of the best lead tones out of that I have ever heard. The only drawback was that I could only really dial in one channel to how I wanted it at a time. If I had the lead set to my liking the clean channel ended up being a bit of a dirty clean. Nice sounding but not ideal if you want a clean clean. Anyway enjoy your amp! And get the right tubes in it before something burns out.

 

[mott555]

I haven't had any problems getting the clean channel and lead channels dialed in but I tend towards a Metallica MoP/AJFA amount of gain, nothing crazy. First volume is around 3 - 4 and lead gain is all the way up. Cleans are clean and the leads are pretty hot. I'm coming from a JMP 2204 background where you can do one or the other, but not both.

I expect my Mesa EL34's to arrive today and I'm going to keep it in Class A on the EL34's until I get around to ordering 6L6GC's. That will keep those center 5881's off and out of trouble.

 

[themisfit138]

I haven't had any problems getting the clean channel and lead channels dialed in but I tend towards a Metallica MoP/AJFA amount of gain, nothing crazy. First volume is around 3 - 4 and lead gain is all the way up. Cleans are clean and the leads are pretty hot. I'm coming from a JMP 2204 background where you can do one or the other, but not both.

That is good settings if you want to use both channels, but you don't get quite the Justice tone like you do when the vol1 is at 8-9 it is just a different feel. I don't have much use for the clean so I have vol1 at 9 and lead gain at 7.5 it is awesome for Justice tone.

 

[Rob227]

When I listen to MOP/AJFA it never seemed to be that high in the gain so depending on how you have your rig set up maybe you can balance it out between the channels. You definitely want the clean clean with chorus to do some of the clean parts.

I had the gain in between 7-8 but on the geq the higher frequencies were boosted more which also adds more gain which would account for the dirty clean I was getting. I was nailing the tone from Black Sabbath on Born again or The Eternal Idol. I remember seeing an old video of Tony Iommi and his rig and he was using either a Mark 2 or 3 of some kind and you could actually see his geq settings in the video. It had the V shape but the first two were closer to the mid mark, the center one was scooped and the last two were nearing the high range. This is a bit different than the Metallica V where the first two are boosted near the top ranges like the last two and the center was scooped.