Mark III - Keep the bass down or lose your mind like I did!

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el34sg

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At a recording session with my Mark III & 212 cab in the iso room....
I take my glasses off when recording & playing live & thought I turned the Treble up, but
instead I turned up the Bass. We spent over an hour wondering where the hell the incredible
tone went from the night before.. It was a flabby sounding mess.
I changed guitars, cables, cabinets and then noticed I'm a dumb *** & turned the Bass back to
its rightful place at 1, with my SG's.

The guy that sold me my first Mark III said, "Dude, keep the Bass down".
I didn't listen and sold it 6 months later.

With a Tele or Strat you can boost the bass a bit. Humbuckers seem to like it low.
I've owned a Mark I & 3 Mark III's. Still have 2 Mark III's.
Mark III's are a sonic masterpiece. Takes a lil' time to dial them in..
 
Yep, definitely gotta keep the bass knob down. I have mine set on 2-3 usually and just use the low end slider to dial in the required amount of thump.
 
LMAO! Yea we all learn about that one. I play a 58VOS Les Paul through mine and I rarely get the bass above 2 and usually around 1-1.5..

The louder you play the less bass you will want as well.

Enjoy !
 
I keep the bass knob at 0 to 2, depending on the guitar, and have a stout shallow V shape for the graphic, with the center slider being neutral to preserve more mids. I guess I should call it U shape.

Another absolutely critical item for the MkIII is the treble knob. Sounds great for high gain when set at 8+ (which increases gain), but then you have to back the mega-powerful Presence down to ~3-4, and the clean channel suffers. I reduce my treble knob to 6-7 and have the Presence at 5 and R1 volume at 7.5 and use more Lead Drive to make up for decreasing the treble knob. Even with my EMG 81/85 equipped metal guitars, I can get a full range of good cleans (guitar volume knob reduced) or all-out blistering metal. With passive pickups, the clean sound is truly excellent and of course high gain rules also.

It is a fine art to tune your MkIII to your actual rig, but once it's done, it's a thing of absolute beauty. 8)
 
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