Slaving my Mark V into 5150 III and vise versa.

Sorry for the nub question but I've never done any slaving...

What do I need to do to slave my Mark V into my 5150 III... I assume if it's the Mark V going out, it'd be slave out to effects return on the 5150 III? and what do I need as far as speaker loads on them... I just don't wanna blow my stuff up... lol.. but these are my 2 favorite amps, and I think I might have some cool possibilities here.

Well it depends on what you want to achieve. If you use the SLAVE OUT on the Mark V you'll be getting the wet signal of the amp. So with a 5150, you'll be putting a distorted amp into a distorted amp. If that's what you want then good luck.

If you simply want to run both at the same time, a simple splitter will work (line 6 m5 would split your signal or something more dedicated). And you can go into the front end of both.

You'd have to check with the MarkV manual whether or not you can run the amp without a speaker attached; normally if this is possible, there will be a switch on the back that says "speaker off" or something to that effect. Check your manual.

If you have two cabinets however, there would be nothing stopping you from running the MarkV into one cab, slave into the FX Return on the 5150 connected to the other cab. If you have a slave level control on the rear panel it might help to balance the signal level, as the 5150 effects circuit may want to see a certain level to operate without too much noise or overload distortion.

Keep in mind that patching into the FX return on an amp will disable almost all tone and gain controls on the "slave" amp, with the exception of the master volume and presence/resonance controls. The "Master" amp (MarkV in your case) is acting as a "preamp" for the "slave power amp".

My final advice, read both manuals regarding this type of setup and hook it up. Turn everything down to minimum volume and bring things up slowly to see how it reacts.

Good luck

The MKV always needs a speaker load connected, even when using the Slave out.

Dom