Old Mesa Boogie @ the studio right now!

[Ronnie_Rocker]

A friend of mine come to visit me at the studio with his old Mesa Boogie amp today. Its the classic Mark III Coliseum Series 300 without the EQ. Just wanted to share some pictures.
Serial number is K135

 

[screamingdaisy]

Dear Mesa,

Please build a Colosseum Mark V.

Thank you,

SD



P.S. That is a nice amp pictured above.

 

[JOEY B.]

That's a Mark IIB Coliseum, not a Mark III.

 

[dearlpitts]

wooo-how does one ever use all that power-i cant even use all of half my 100 watter-but looks cool

 

[shytfayse]

Dear Mesa,

Please build a Colosseum Mark V.

Thank you,

SD

You and others would be sonically castrated, so, they will not for safety reasons.

 

[Ronnie_Rocker]

That's a Mark IIB Coliseum, not a Mark III.

Yeah! Thanks.

 

[chipaudette]

Dear Mesa,

Please build a Colosseum Mark V.

Thank you,

SD

You and others would be sonically castrated, so, they will not for safety reasons.

They do/did make the Triple Rectifier, which is a 6-tube 150W monster much like the Colosseum. So, it's not completely impossible that they could resurrect the Colosseum. They clearly haven't abandoned the super-high-power class of amps. But I do find it highly unlikely that they would bring this back to the Mark series.

The Rectifier series is/was a MASSIVE seller, so they had reason to believe that there would be a market for variants such as the Triple. It's my impression that the Mark V doesn't have nearly the sales of the Rectifiers. Therefore, I bet they see no business case for a Colosseum Mark V.

Maybe someone could work with Mesa and try to do a Kickstarter or something for the Colosseum. Maybe some of the old-timers at Mesa could be convinced to participate just for the jollies. With a $100K of kickstarter money (that would be 40 pre-orders, assuming a $2500 price) maybe they'd be able to get a little bit of traction within the company to make it happen...though it would probably cost them $500K to get any new product out the door. So, I'm still voting that there's almost no chance of this happening.

For context, back in the day (late 90s? Early 2000s?), Slash was talking with Marshall about re-making a few of his beloved JCM800 Jubilee heads so that Slash could take them on tour without worrying about trashing his originals. Marshall told him that it could be done, but that it really only made sense business-wise if he made at least 1000 units. If the same scaling holds for Mesa, they'd need to sell at least 1000 of our hypothetical Mark V Colosseums to make it work. Do you think that there's that kind of market? Without a major mainstream artist acting as the sales icon (like Slash for the Jubilee) I'm thinking "no".

Fun to dream about though!

Chip

 

[screamingdaisy]

Do you think that there's that kind of market? Without a major mainstream artist acting as the sales icon (like Slash for the Jubilee) I'm thinking "no".

James Hetfield.

 

[chipaudette]

Is Hetfield playing Mark V's these days? Or is he only playing Rectifiers and his old IIC+'s?

Also, (this is not intended as a flame) does anyone care what Hetfield does anymore? Would he move amplifiers?

Chip

 

[screamingdaisy]

Is Hetfield playing Mark V's these days? Or is he only playing Rectifiers and his old IIC+'s?

Also, (this is not intended as a flame) does anyone care what Hetfield does anymore? Would he move amplifiers?

Chip

I'll leave this up for you to decide.

 

[JOEY B.]

Is Hetfield playing Mark V's these days? Or is he only playing Rectifiers and his old IIC+'s?

Also, (this is not intended as a flame) does anyone care what Hetfield does anymore? Would he move amplifiers?

Chip

I'll leave this up for you to decide.

How many of those fans have $2500-3000 to fork out for a guitar amp? Not many, I'll bet. :wink:

 

[SonVolt]

I bought my Mark V primarily to obtain James Herfields tone... Im 33 and payed $2099 if that gives you any demographic info. Would I want a higher wattage version? Hell no, what on earth for?

 

[screamingdaisy]

How many of those fans have $2500-3000 to fork out for a guitar amp? Not many, I'll bet. :wink:

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It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2 together. I mean, the answer should be obvious considering that every one of Mesa's most successful amps has sounded like a Metallica album. Metallica = Money. :lol: :wink:

 

[chipaudette]

That's a cool from-the-stage concept pic. I like it. The listing of concert dates also looks impressive, but it does span 4 years. It works out to be about 50 shows a year. Pretty respectable, especially given the size of some of the venues. Still, he'd have to be convinced to become Mark spokesman again.

Perhaps another important argument against the likelihood of a return of the Coliseum is their sales record when they were out the first time. Over the 10-15 years that they were made, how many did they move? Based on the serial numbers out there, isn't it on the order of 500-600 units? Maybe 1000? Anyone got good info?

If true, that's not a particularly spectacular track-record. Over the same time period, they probably moved 5,000-10,000 Mark amps (later Mark II's and early-to-mid Mark III's...Mark IV aren't relevant for a discussion of the Coli), so we're looking at the Coli being 10% of units sold. How many Mark V's have they moved so far? Take 10% and maybe (maybe) that's how many Coli's they'd move now.

Of course, they do know how to move more product now (well, since the Rectifier) so maybe they'd know how to amp it up a bit (Ha! Punny!) to really move a beastly Coli. From what I see, though, high-power is not really where the market is now. Note all the low-power lunchbox amps out there. Even Mesa has a couple on offer!

Chip

 

[Trey Blue]

FULL PWR - check

 

[Ronnie_Rocker]

I could record some clips with the Coliseum today if you like to hear how it sounds.