[zysdale]I've been to the Mesa factory, in Petaluma. It's in a nondescript little industrial park. I had to have my Mark IV repaired, and rather than wait for one of their local repair shops to take forever to do the work I just drove it over to the factory and had them do it, lickity split. They gave me a tour of the factory. It's not a particularly impressive facility, or operation. I saw a hippy looking dude in board shorts and a manboobs tank top soldering together a Stiletto Trident's circuit board, with his can of Rock Star sitting right on top of the output transformer, inside the open chassis.Atomic Punk wrote:If that is the case, then I think that was the idea for creating that amp in which m2's engineering buddies from Cal in the Mt. Tam area --> ("Bay Area") intended.
Mesa really still is a small company.[/zysdale]
Nope. Pissed me off.No reverb on the Mk-5?
It's being marketed primarily as a metal amp, in which case on-board spring reverb is superfluous. Lotta metal amps have no reverb. No need.That doesn't make sense.
I disagree, since it still has the Mark I cleans and Mark IV leads, but goddammit, they didn't consult with me first.
They simply wish to market it as the culmination of the Mark Series amps, which has always meant high gain/hard rock/metal. The Marks were usually the first to the market with that level of saturating gain.What makes sense is the Mk-5 would be marketed as a generic quality amp to a larger crowd that doesn't differentiate what the tubes in different stages in the amp can do. Hmmm.
This amp was built solely as a means of re-introducing the Mark IIC+, for the benefit of all the Metallica types out there. The Mark I and Mark IV inclusions were included primarily as a means of trading on Mesa's heritage. Rather than merely re-issuing the Mark IIC+, hey, here's an all new Mark Series, which combines the best of all your favorite Mark Series amps.Mebbe the new consumer with another tattoo inked on some heavily used body location... next to the piercing(s) wants that product? Gimme my Mk-IV any damn day.
Mesa is Rectifiers, and Mesa is Mark Series amps. Scooped mids thundering metal, or warmer, smoother hard rock, with solos. The Mark V was designed to provide more of a heavier metal tone (IIC+) for those who still want the Mark IV's smoother lead tones, and they threw in decent clean tones from the Mark I. It's early Metallica crunch, along with the Mark IV's Lamb Of God metal crunch and Petrucci's lead tone.
[zysdale]I got that straight from the mouth of the tech who was working on one of the prototypes, there at the factory.[/zysdale]
