help with mark v 90 tone

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GG_youDead

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Hello everyone! For a while now ive been chasing for a good tone for my amp and i cant really achieve one that i really like and i cant really find a lot of sound guides for the 90 version i love my first channel tone clean bright sweet sound but in my second and third channel they just dont sound to my liking i tried JP settings but its not i lt sadly i tried ola's settings which are great but a bit too heavy for my liking for the second channel im looking for a classic crunch rock tone nothing too heavy and aggressive but still a bit dark something like alice in chains to porcupine tree and on the third channel something bright and tight but also not distortion aggressive like if id want more distortion ill just attack the strings harder like muse JP TOOL megadeath steve vai etc I also have strymon sunset, and my guitar is Majesty 7 with piezo and illuminators pickups if it helps. ty in advance, everyone!
 
Preamp tubes can possibly help.
V1 with the Svetlana 12AX7 tube, I found this one works very well with the clean, and aids on some tone correction for the other two channels. It has just a bit of less gain than the Mesa 12AX7 and a different vocal sound. For V2, Tung Sol 12AX7 is an improvement but I may have been after more gain, more so for correcting the bright shrill of the edge mode.

If you want to drop some gain on CH3 with a mild approach, The JAN 5751 tube does a decent job in V4. That has the last high gain stage in the lead drive circuit. I did not state if it was a Phillips, GE or other as the JAN 5751 can be expensive. I have not tried current production version to relate. The JAN/Phillips 12AT7 in V4 will work too but will darken the sound a bit more.

I have used just about every tube in current production in the Mark V90, only because I could not find any channel or mode that I cared for.

V3 is the last stage following the lead drive, and tone stack of the other two channels. A good quality tube here matters. Mullard long plate 12AX7 or CV4004 (medium plate) can aid here. I have also tried the Svetlana 12AX7 tube as well (very similar in appearance to the Mullard CV4004 or Tung Sol 12AX7) but has a different tone and gain characteristic. Another option is the JJ ECC803 which is a long plate version of the ECC83s (Mesa standard 12AX7 tube).

V6, does not matter much. Part of V6 is used for voicing CH3 as the last gain stage in the signal path before the GEQ. Stock or other will do fine.

As for the Phase inverter, that is more to taste. Stock tube is fine, Mullard long plate adds more balanced tone, Sovetech LPS is similar but a little less in the low end.

You can get some interesting response with different preamp tubes in the Mark V90. I tried doing similar things with other amps but it did not seem to matter as much as the end result was not much noticeable. What I liked best in the Mark V90 tubes have been long out of production since 1994-1996, the Mesa branded Chinese 6N4-J Beijing Square foil getter tube that was commonplace with the Mark III amp. It is one of those 12AX7/7025/ECC83 replacement tubes. They do a really good job in the V3, V4, V5 and V6 positions. It tightens up the tone a bit so you avoid some low end swamp if you like to dial in more bass. Overall, they improved clarity and note definition I was not getting with the stock Mesa tubes (JJ ECC83s) as that was too much ice pick for me. My Mark V90 is a special case amp, Only available to the lucky few, it is the limited edition Lemon Ice model. It is just the general run of the mill production from 2012 that fell sort of excellence and has been terrible to deal with so tube rolling became a standard practice with that amp to see if anything could be done to compensate for the excessive brightness and other noisy issues.
 
Hello everyone! For a while now ive been chasing for a good tone for my amp and i cant really achieve one that i really like and i cant really find a lot of sound guides for the 90 version i love my first channel tone clean bright sweet sound but in my second and third channel they just dont sound to my liking i tried JP settings but its not i lt sadly i tried ola's settings which are great but a bit too heavy for my liking for the second channel im looking for a classic crunch rock tone nothing too heavy and aggressive but still a bit dark something like alice in chains to porcupine tree and on the third channel something bright and tight but also not distortion aggressive like if id want more distortion ill just attack the strings harder like muse JP TOOL megadeath steve vai etc I also have strymon sunset, and my guitar is Majesty 7 with piezo and illuminators pickups if it helps. ty in advance, everyone!

What are you using for a cab?
 
Hello everyone! For a while now ive been chasing for a good tone for my amp and i cant really achieve one that i really like and i cant really find a lot of sound guides for the 90 version i love my first channel tone clean bright sweet sound but in my second and third channel they just dont sound to my liking i tried JP settings but its not i lt sadly i tried ola's settings which are great but a bit too heavy for my liking for the second channel im looking for a classic crunch rock tone nothing too heavy and aggressive but still a bit dark something like alice in chains to porcupine tree and on the third channel something bright and tight but also not distortion aggressive like if id want more distortion ill just attack the strings harder like muse JP TOOL megadeath steve vai etc I also have strymon sunset, and my guitar is Majesty 7 with piezo and illuminators pickups if it helps. ty in advance, everyone!
I'm new to Mesa and plenty of folks here said I was"180° away from everybody else’s around here!"
However here the settings I'm using. https://boogieforum.com/threads/mark-five-variac-power-and-el34-power-tubes.87433/post-536346
I have tweaked them a little since these photos, but so will you and I won't re-post new pictures of minor tweaks.
I am very happy with the way my Mesa Rig sounds. It's "fire."
Here are some pictures of my 2 Meas rigs and the "never fail" Marshall JVM410 2X12 rig I use at home
https://boogieforum.com/threads/post-your-mark-v-photos.86781/post-532775
https://boogieforum.com/threads/post-your-mark-v-photos.86781/post-533552
 
If you haven't, read the manual. Cover to cover. The Mesa Boogie Mark series amps are not like other amps, in that they have the tone stack BEFORE the cascading gain stages. This is one of the reasons that the Graphic EQ is so useful: you can put back in the tones that you end up needing to remove to avoid having totally muddy overdrive. This is particularly important on the High Gain channel. If you have too much bass in the higher gain settings, it'll become total mud. On the other hand at lower gain settings, the overdrive is very bright, so you usually want to add back in some mids and bass. How you play is also going to influence the type of settings you need.

There are lots of sounds in there, you need to search for them. You also will definitely want to look into the amps / rigs that people were using for the sounds you are looking for. Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains was playing Bogner modifed Marshalls, and has a Signature amp with Friedman. Getting a Marshall type sound out of a Mark V takes a lot of dialing in, and possible changes to the power tubes.
 
So just one man's perspective here. The choice of cab/speaker is a big part of the equation. When I got my V:90 it came with a std sized horizontal Recto 2x12. Initially it was ok but it wasn't long before I felt there was just too much v30 mid-range hump goodness for my ears. It was punchy but lacked the bottom end clarity I like to hear on cleans and other crunch settings. However with the bass heavy LSS, the Recto was a good pairing. For the V I ended up making a custom vertical 2x12 with an EVM (closed bottom) / v30 (open top) pairing, which I feel provides better overall balance for my setup.

With the Recto cab did end up modifying it more like a Road King cab, pairing one v30 with a Scumback M-75. This was much better with the V, even though I still prefer the vert 2x12. YMMV
 
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