Traditional Blues Setting

[Tyrant]

out of the MarkIVA manual. Channel one setup as shown in the manual with the gain at 10 and the channel volume at 8 and master ouput I believe at 3. At 3 it's pretty loud so I was playing with master out at 1.5 and noticed it sounds like the speaker is flapping. Is this what is known as flub or speaker distortion. I have yet to hear this out of any of my Mesa's. I was curious if anyone else has noticed this or is possibly as symptom of something internal on the amp. New tubes all the way around and V1 switched out 2x to verify. I believe they named the channel- Vintage Clip.

 

[sbalderrama]

I don't like to dime the gain controls on any of the channels because they all seem to get loose on the low end when you do that, especially with humbuckers. I think it overdrives the preamp tubes too much. Gain controls on my M4a are all 8 or less.

 

[Tyrant]

Thanks for the input sbalderrama,

So, too much gain on the preamp tubes then. That's pretty much what I figured but thought I'd post what I was experiencing anyways. The IV is brand new to me and I'm probably overthinking it. Something along the lines of, "Is this 14 year old amp up to snuff?" Just curious, what signs would the amp exhibit if it needed a cap job?

I did notice that with the same settings and the master at 5 the issue is all but gone or using single coils which leads to obvious point of too much gain. Too bad it’s not a useable volume though, I mean it sounds fantastic but I’m not at the US Festival. (need to build that room inside a room, stat) It’s as if the preamp gain had nowhere to go at lower master output levels. The vintage clip(R1/Traditional Blues) is my new favorite setting. Would anyone care to share some of their favorite vintage tones that they’ve coaxed out of this amp?

I can say that the amp is anything but puny in tone and much more versatile than I imagined. A true behemoth of tone.

 

[dodger916]

The vintage clip(R1/Traditional Blues) is my new favorite setting. Would anyone care to share some of their favorite vintage tones that they’ve coaxed out of this amp?

Here's the library:

http://www.grailtone.com/tone-settings/tone-settings.html

The knob settings are on the far right. Enjoy!