The amp finally arrived a few hours ago. Amp needed some cleaning and while I was at it decided to pull the chassis out and inspect for what may or may not be mods. I did see something a bit odd. About in the center of the preamp, there is a J175 FET piggy-backing a resistor (soldered from Drain to Source) along with that, There is a Mesa labeled polyester capacitor connected between two relays and the one end of the piggy-back resistor is soldered to other components as well as the other side of the cap. The gate is connected via a grey wire which also runs to the board onto another component. Is this a stock fix for the Stage 1 or is it a mod? See picture below for reference. Amp was loaded with original preamp tubes and possibly Rectifier and power tubes. I can tell the amp has had some use, bottom of the back of the amp has a bit of damage (nothing severe). I did not bother to use the supplied tubes that came out of the amp (power and rectifier tubes were packed in a separate box). Loaded the preamp with current Mesa (JJ) tubes, new Rectifiers and a full set of Mesa EL34 to start off with. My first impression was not satisfying. After plugging away first the sample settings printed from the manual, I decided to tune by ear, swapped guitars, etc. CH1 cleans and tight cleans are great. Crunch is a bit much on the treble (when dialed or out seems to also change the gain structure too much). CH2 crunch does not mirror channel 1 crunch. What comes close with identical settings is the Fluid Drive. CH2 crunch sounds terrible, thin and lifeless, Tight gain was not all that bad. The amp got worse in character (thin and brighter than the Mark V very much like the edge of CH2) with the Rectifiers selected. This amp is almost as heavy as the RA100. The Roadster feels much lighter than the Stiletto. I have a few days to try it out and I can return it to GC if I do not like it.
Image of preamp board : is this a stock fix for Stage 1 or a mod?
Can you tell which tube was in V3?
Overall the amp is not in bad shape
Image of preamp board : is this a stock fix for Stage 1 or a mod?
![1e8319c3-0f9c-46f4-8358-d3734361cd24_zpshrwpphs1.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/f53/f53db4b79d6f3a79491f9df56c743b6a.jpg)
Can you tell which tube was in V3?
![PB160120_zps4t3m58rz.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/375/3757e6ebb2458f84bed9e916c6feb7a0.jpg)
Overall the amp is not in bad shape
![PB160129_zpsypseeww1.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/604/604821afbd759bfa118905493037cdb3.jpg)
![PB160130_zpsaxll5lje.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/27b/27b8e2047b91cab13d4777d64499d342.jpg)