How many of you Mark-ers use the 60 watt setting?

I was jamming during my daily "roommates aren't home so master volume goes to 2 :twisted: " session and I decided to do a little experimenting. Call me narrow-minded, but I have never really fooled around with my III on the 60 watt setting. I always assumed it would take away a lot from the sound and that the bass especially would suffer.

Well...

I was WRONG. Dead wrong. All of the time I have owned this amp I have been fighting a whale-arse of a low end. Had to dump the sliders on my outboard eq below 120 hz (since that's the last slider i have before what I refer to as the "sub-lows" 60 hz and 30 hz), in an effort to achieve some sort of a low end cut. Well lately I have been experimenting with just leaving those flat rather than cutting them and just dealing with it. And it hasn't been bad. Actually, I had been enjoying it as long as I remained at lower volumes. But when turning it up to neighbor-bothering volumes, the overwhelming low end made any kind of technical palm muting on the low strings an effort akin to swimming in not-quite-dry concrete. Or maybe trying to swim in DRY concrete lol.

So, I suddenly had the idea to switch down to 60 watts as opposed to 100 watts, as I had read a good long while ago on this board (thanks y'all ) that there would be a loss in the "massiveness" of the low end frequencies when running a lower wattage. But ****. This practically transformed my way of thinking about this amp. Now I can Iced Earth my way around the house at will! Palm muted tremolo picking/gallops/triplets while maintaining perfect definition WITH AN OPEN BACK COMBO at neighbor-enraging volumes? Check. 8) And I believe the mids and high-end have changed a bit too, although I'm in like sensory overload mode here so you'll have to bear with my while I wrap my head around quantifying even the change in low end never mind everything else.

As every day goes on I discover more about this amp, and this is going on two years that I've owned her. Just when I start to think "NOW I've got this thing dialed in," some new discovery comes around leading to even greater sonic awesomeness. So yeah, I'm sure it's brutally obvious...I do love this amp like it's family. :lol:

It's always cool to explore all the options on an amp, never know what you might find. I keep my stage volume pretty low, so I run my IIC+ in 60W mode mostly, just because it lets me crack open the master a little more and the amp just seems to breathe a little better when it's working a little harder.

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My Mark IV has never come out of "class A" while i owned it. Today was the first time i actually put it on "full power", no real difference, sounded a little firmer and less mushy, i like it. great amps!

When you have it set to 100 watts, you're giving the amp more headroom. It can go louder, but it's harder for the amp to produce the type of distortion that a lot of us (myself included) like. I actually tried this with a Mark V combo at a store recently. I had it set to the 95 watt mode and was going back and forth between the Mark IV and IIC+ modes. I had the gain all the way up and both modes just didn't sound gainy enough at all. I commented on it and one of the guys who works at the store (it's where I teach, actually) told me to try putting it on the 15 watt mode. Well I did and....

First of all, it was the LOUDEST 15 watts I've EVER heard! LOL! And, secondly, the gain was AMAZING. It DID lose some bass, but I'm positive that if I had turned it up more, the tone would have filled out. Basically, you just go by your needs. If you're only playing with a drummer and a bass player, then you might not "NEED" 100 watts of power, so when you put it on 60 watts, you'll be pushing those SIXTY WATTS more than having ONE HUNDRED watts not working as hard.

I use to run my Mark IIB at 100 watts and, although it was bassier and louder, when I have it on 60 watts, it is definitely tighter and has more bite. The only way I'll ever turn it on 100 watts is if I have to compete with a space shuttle .... or a train.... or a nuclear bomb going off. You know, something that would REQUIRE the extra wattage. LOL