I put a down payment on the Mark V:25 and waited for a couple of months for it to arrive here in Hong Kong. Happily it arrived and I picked it up yesterday. This is truly an amazing amp! I can't believe the range of sounds that are packed into this little box. My profession in in the field of electronic gear manufacturing, and I can appreciate what went into this little beast. Six amps in one!
The first thing that I noticed when I powered it up was the sound of the cooling fan. Not so noisy, but it did highlight to me that stuffing this many tubes and circuits into such a small space necessitated some serious cooling to manage the thermals.
A couple of odd points that I have noted. When I took the custom made patch cord from the output of my Pedaltrain and tried to connect it to the amp’s input, it would not fit. Another off-the-shelf guitar cord did fit however. When I compared the two chords I noted that the tip was slightly larger in diameter. That same cord though has no problem to plug into my TA-15 or 5:50+. So I am thinking that this is a jack design limitation as dictated by clearance limitations inside the cavity of the amp. (Side Note: The custom cable is from the Lava pedal board patch kit).
Second point is on the headphone circuit. Not enough gain, and the tone is not so great. But when I use the Cab Clone XLR jack to my MBOX 3, it sounds glorious and the preamp inside the MBOX allows me to get plenty of gain/volume with the headphones plugged into the MBOX. But the headphone jack is part of the Cab Clone circuit, so this discrepancy puzzles me. I assume that this is because the Cab Clone is passive, and so it needs a pre-amp to boost the signal for headphone use.
I am also wondering about the CabClone circuit’s position in the circuit. The Master Volume has definite control over volume when using the DI output, so is this signal coming post-power tube stage with a dummy load to safeguard the output transformer? I believe that there are some guys on the Boogieboard who are associated with Mesa, so hoping that they can shed some light here.
The first thing that I noticed when I powered it up was the sound of the cooling fan. Not so noisy, but it did highlight to me that stuffing this many tubes and circuits into such a small space necessitated some serious cooling to manage the thermals.
A couple of odd points that I have noted. When I took the custom made patch cord from the output of my Pedaltrain and tried to connect it to the amp’s input, it would not fit. Another off-the-shelf guitar cord did fit however. When I compared the two chords I noted that the tip was slightly larger in diameter. That same cord though has no problem to plug into my TA-15 or 5:50+. So I am thinking that this is a jack design limitation as dictated by clearance limitations inside the cavity of the amp. (Side Note: The custom cable is from the Lava pedal board patch kit).
Second point is on the headphone circuit. Not enough gain, and the tone is not so great. But when I use the Cab Clone XLR jack to my MBOX 3, it sounds glorious and the preamp inside the MBOX allows me to get plenty of gain/volume with the headphones plugged into the MBOX. But the headphone jack is part of the Cab Clone circuit, so this discrepancy puzzles me. I assume that this is because the Cab Clone is passive, and so it needs a pre-amp to boost the signal for headphone use.
I am also wondering about the CabClone circuit’s position in the circuit. The Master Volume has definite control over volume when using the DI output, so is this signal coming post-power tube stage with a dummy load to safeguard the output transformer? I believe that there are some guys on the Boogieboard who are associated with Mesa, so hoping that they can shed some light here.
