Thanks gts. I guess I should have mentioned that I'm playing through an old Marshall 800 series 4X12 with G70's. What made me wonder about getting a good sound out of the amp without the GEQ was a thread on tgp where a fellow talked about how the non-GEQ C+ amps were voiced brighter so I turned all the knobs down to 0, pushed in, and started from scratch intentionally not using the GEQ. It left me wondering what frequencies I'm turning up when I turn the treble, middle and bass knobs up because if they're all at 0 there's no sound no matter how high any volume knob is turned to. Do they boost only? Or, at five do they boost and below five do they cut? Doesn't matter, but I still wonder. I had a set of Mark ll foot switches laying around, one of the stereo ones, so I can turn the reverb and GEQ on and off. What a strange spot in between the tubes to put a foot switch plug, at least it's stereo! My settings are - Volume 1 pulled set at 9, treble pulled 8, bass 3.5, mid 8, master 1.5 pulled (not quite loud enough for band practice, but loud) LD 5.5, LM 7 pulled. The GEQ is set to a slight M with 750 a shade below center. Obviously the GEQ is only slightly louder when kicked in and provides a nice cutting tone, and with the slight mid cut it doesn't poke you in the eye when switching in the GEQ on the clean channel. I think the key is keeping the bass shift pushed in, that keeps the tone bright. I also go back and forth with volume 1 at 10, treble at 10, LD at 3, it sounds similar on the lead channel and fuller on the clean, but that is so yesterday. Presence at 10 doesn't hurt, anything lower is pillow-over-the-speaker for my taste. It's been that way with every amp, all my life. I'd rather dial back the treble than the presence. I also hate gain pedals.
I did some Metallica and Pantera tone chasing the first few days just to see how it stacked up and frankly, I can get pretty much any tone with the amp that I could want when I mess with the GEQ. I'm not currently in an active band, my bass player died and the thought of joining a cover band doesn't appeal to me at the moment, but I have a couple of offers to sit in at couple of festivals and such and will be able to shine like a very bright star with that amp. I'm writing new songs like crazy with a twist, I'm writing just one song at a time from beginning to end in one night. I am doing this with a whole bunch of musicians until I get enough songs and then I'll bring them all back to re-record the songs polished up. Last Thursday I hooked up with some H.S. classmates and explained what I'm up to and they were way into it. I'm writing a song tonight with a client that I just wallpapered a couple of rooms for.
Mesa Boogie amps changed my life by getting me back into tone, I had grown very weary of Fender and Marshall amps and all the boutique stuff sounded stifled to my ears. Nothing was sounding like I wanted and was thinking maybe modelers were the way to go. It started when I walked into a pawn shop - Mark IV/$650/December 2012 - everything changed, I play an amp now, not just a guitar.
From the gear page;
Just a couple of random points:
The big (sonic) difference between IIc+ and the earlier II's is the lead channel. The IIc+ has the legendary liquid lead tone, the earlier II's are more classic rock oriented.
Not all IIc+s were created equal. Different components were used in different units, resulting in different sounding units (and then of course you also had optional features). Most notoriously, the GEQ-equipped models tended to use bigger coupling caps, resulting in deeper and fatter sound, while the units without the GEQ used smaller coupling caps, which yielded brighter and tighter sound. There is no single 'historically correct' IIc+ sound to reproduce/reissue, all individual units sounded slightly different.
Consequently, the mode on the Mark V represents the sound of a IIc+, one particular bright and tight unit (small coupling cap) that Doug West liked. It does a decent job. I have a V and I also have a IIc+. My IIc+ has the GEQ and sounds significantly fatter and deeper than the IIc+ mode on the V, and its feel is much more organic and looser than anything you can get from the V.
The reason the IIc+ and the V sound fairly similar (but not quite) on the Petrucci video has to do with how he EQs them. The IIc+ can also give you lots of other sounds that are harder to emulate on the V, especially if you have the GEQ on your IIc+. The video tells you absolute nothing about the difference in amp feel/behavior.
