New Mark V owner Questions

BrownieD2W said:

What guitars, and more specifically, what pickups are you using? I'm not nearly as experienced as many of the members here, so I am not sure what the consensus is at this point on the question of passives vs. actives with the Mark V. I imagine most of the members here will say something to the effect that it's all in the ear of the beholder, and I would totally agree with that. In my experience the Mark V really excels at making the differences between guitars glaringly obvious. When I first bought my Mark V my main guitar at the time had EMG's in it and I loved how it sounded on Channels 1 & 3, but not so much on Channel 2.

I saved up for awhile and bought a '96 1976 Reissue Gibson Explorer from a local guitar/piano shop, and whoever sold the guitar to the shop owner included all the original hardware for the guitar. The Explorer had EMG's in it when I bought it, but I didn't particularly like the sound as much when I got it home. For a change I put the original Gibson pickups and hardware back in the guitar, and **** if that thing didn't come back to life. Turned out to be a great decision, because that guitar is a joy to play, especially through the Mark V. That guitar sounds amazing on every Channel, but I really have to say it opened up Channel 2 for me in a big way.

After my experiences with my own guitars and having played several of my friends guitars through the Mark V. I can't really tell you to go one way or the other when it comes to Passives Vs. Actives, but I would suggest that you don't rule anything out. Try as many possibilities as you can because every guitar really is different. And there's so many pickups out there I can't imagine that there wouldn't be some Passives out there more suited to your sound, you just might have to keep looking and listening for awhile.

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BrentSSL said:

So I did a bad thing I have had a Mark V a little over a year now and missed my recto tone so while trying the Throttle box and The Triple Wreck Wampler and I boosted my Mark V with the mesa tone burst(sounded good). I was trying to get it into early recto territory because I wanted to see what it could do with a boost(not that it needs it btw). Here is the thing before I got a Mark V I was using actives EMG of course like there is any other kind. I also had a few dual and triple rectifiers my 2 favs were a rackmount 2 channel (really sounds almost better then a pre 500 IMHO) and a early 3 channel that I EQed 10 band MXR effects loop. Well now I have a Mark V and passives 2 new things for me I am not sure about passives yet because when I switched to MKV I switched to passives. I also moved into an apartment at that time so I really havent been able to turn up the MKV until recently. To me actives are more clear and a little more to the point then passives plus with passives I feel like end of the note is not as strong as it is with a EMG 81 in the bridge. I am now realizing that all the years using a Dual rec I was basically boosting because I had EMGs which I also believe may have made up for a tiny bit of signal loss with my old school ew100 sennhieser wireless.

So boost or go back to EMG's to make up the small bit of signal loss and the slightly weak points of the passives. Keep in mind I am not looking for an active sound just the advantages of the tightness of the sound and to make up for the slight lack of signal loss I just want to squeeze more power out of the passives. Because lets face it with the MKV you could play a first act guitar through it and it would still sound awesome as alll Hell :twisted: Also when I say the passives sound a little weak it not bad I feel like it just fizzes slightly towards the emd where actives don;t let me know guys thanks :mrgreen:

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