You're close to unlocking the magic of the Mesa Mk series. Backing down the Treble (which is the more powerful of the pre EQ knobs, given its location in the circuit) will actually make the other knobs do stuff lol. THEN, man... so many cool GEQ settings to try :)
They are really cool. Just did a few sessions with a band and the lead guitarist was using the IICP module in a SYN2 into a Buddah Superdrive head. I was really blown away. It's a really cool piece of gear. I think you'll find you'll like it. I find that hearing it in person does it more justice than the demos I've seen of it. Really a cool way to chase tone. You can also change the complete character of any head you might use if you can't afford creating an amp collection. I'd like to try it out with a solid state amp out of curiosity.
I have been shaping my pre gain eq to define distortion for several years now, and I always wondered if other people were doing that, or if I am some unique weirdo with too much time on my hands. I had no idea that this was a feature on such a popular amp. Great video.
I have a Mark V, it's definitely a different approach to dialing in a tone... love how clear and articulate it sounds to me, even on high gain fast riffs I can hear all the notes. I do not think the module sounds like it though.
Mark Series channel EQ: Gain knob= Gain. Treble knob= Also gain. Bass knob= Mud. Presence knob=Treble. Mid knob=Placebo. Crank that treble knob, kill the bass knob, put the mid knob wherever it makes you happy. In this video, you can see that the Treble knob is clearly the most powerful. The more you turn it up, the less the Mid and Bass knobs do. When you dimed the treble knob, it's no wonder the mid and bass knob did nothing. That's how the Mark amps work. They sound awesome, but there's definitely a learning curve for dialing them in.
Mark 2b user here and you are exactly right. My presence knob actually does more than the syn preamp does. And, when you switch to clean...start over. The settings are all different!
Awesome content as always. Just one note on 5:07 Presence is a post EQ Equalizer. So if all the other frequencies are at zero you have nothing to be shaped.
The fundamental building block of the mark series is based on the typical fender design that can be found in amps like the twin reverb or those that tend to sound mainly clean. The tone stack is located after the first stage, which in any fender amplifier generates a large decrease in gain, keeping the sound clean (in the mark series there are more later stages, that is why the tone stack influences so much in the tone before adding distortion). This tone stack has a topology in which if you set all the pots to zero, there is no signal that passes to the next stages. The design of the bassman, which is the one that Marshall takes later, has the tone stack in later stages, after a cathode follower, this makes it much less influential on the overall tone, acting on the already distorted signal, although it gives it a lot of influence towards the power stage. Many of the modern high gain amplifiers follow this approach, the cathode follower allows to have a larger signal that saturates the power tubes more and produces in itself a very characteristic distortion.
Pretty much sums up Recto vs Mark, the Recto is the high gain evolution of the tweed bassman design and the Mark V is the evolution of the blackface twin/deluxe.
@@JimijaymesProductions No, both the Mark and the Racto are based on the twin design, the bassman is the inspiration for the british designs rather. The recto is a clone of the soldano design, with additions, but its similarity to the design of a SLO100 is undeniable and that automatically ties it to the twin/deluxe philosophy, not the bassman.
@@harporock Yeah you are right that the preamp of the SLO100 is the basis of the recto preamp but I always thought the SLO was based off a modded JCM800 with its tone stack position and cathode follower. Though the only article referencing this I've found online say it is based off the Mark II, though to me (and I could be very wrong) the preamp design (tone stack position, cathode follower etc) seems very much unlike a Mark II.
Just a friendly piece of info, the IIC+s did have a presence control, it was mounted on the back with the reverb knob and/or limit knob depending on the variant.
Just saw this video and as one of the guys who commented that: I really LOVE that you re-visited the whole thing and took those comments into account! Couldn't agree more that this setting is probably the only one that works for this kind of music. Anyway: kudos for doing the video and it's great to see that it has 2 1/2 times more views than the initial one :D
FYI: Presence is a control on negative feedback. It's not normally part of an amp's tone stack. You have to have signal at the output in order for the Presence to be doing anything. I'm not sure what the Presence will be doing in this preamp, considering Presence takes feedback off the output transformer, after the output tubes in a normal amp. So clearly, they're getting the NFB from somewhere else in the circuit.
In a Mesa Rectifier distortion channel, the presence control is located directly after the tone stack, actually. It is more likely a high pass filter behind the normal EQ. That is the reason, why it has to be dialed in with care! But, that is not very common. I don't know about the presence of the Mesa Mk IIC+. But, on a MK IV I found it not very effective, either. You must be right. They seem to get the negative feedback from somewhere else, in this module. Or, whatever it is doing... Haha...
Glad you liked the Goodmans - you've really done them justice. They have that thick, chewy midrange of the early Sabbath records. I bet they'd blend great with other (brighter) speakers. Definitely make some IRs.
I have a Mark V and need like 2 months for dialing my tone, but after that it's awesome, and very versatile (I need that too) I'm in love with the Mark V. Nice video Kohle! Your job is awesome
Mesa Mark Series are a significant part of the hi-gain tone history in the 80s. Even Whitesnake 1987 guitar tone is Mesa Coliseum (Mark III preamp and 180w power amp) mainly. The video is very good. I found out new details again... how to create a great guitar tone.
Those comments mentioned are correct. The Mark circuit is a hotrodded Blackface circuit in principle, with some interesting twists (like a parallel high gain stage which is very much an oddity in high gain amps). The ToneStack (please don't call it EQ) is in front of the amp, after the first gain stage, and works thus differently than, say, a Marshall (which also has a different topology). Bass and Treble controls are Boost controls, the neutral setting is at 0; Mid is a cut control, the neutral setting is at 10. If Treble and Bass are set to neutral, the Mid control acts like an additional gain control. The "Bright" switch enables a treble bleed capacitor, and another switch changes the frequency response of the ToneStack as a whole (in the upper frequency range). Dialing in a Mark series amp is different from what you're used to due to this behavior. You should usually start with the controls at neutral, dial in the treble first, then boost the bass as desired (it doesn't take much), and finally adjust the power amp controls (resonance and presence), which you should start also at 0 and gently roll up. The graphic EQ is between the preamp and the power amp, this is where you shape your tone. Start it with neutral, dial in the amount of mid frequencies first, then treble, then bass - most likely, you will end up with the famous V-shape in a metal setting, but there are cases where you would not want to cut the mids too much. The presence control by the way sits in the negative feedback loop running the speaker signal (after the output transformer) attenuated and filtered back to the phase inverter; the higher you set the control, the less high frequency content (it's essentially a shelving low pass filter) gets fed back into the phase inverter, having the effect that the highs get boosted in an "untamed" fashion. Presence is a pretty broad control, affecting a lot of the frequency spectrum, and defines the brightness of the overall tone of the amp significantly. If your guitar sound is biting in your ears, you should roll back the presence ;) In a nutshell, the channel tonestack defines the signal that goes into the preamp (overdrive), the graphic defines the tone of the distorted signal after the preamp. Also, the "Lead" switch engages a second, parallel amplifier path that you can blend into the "clean" signal, so it is advised you dial the channel in without the Lead engaged first, roll down the Lead volume to zero, engage and then start rolling it up. It is a parallel gain stage with brutal amounts of gain to it, and you don't need to go to the park with it - have your base sound in order first, then add in the "moar gain", not the other way around ;) It seems to me that the Synergy module based on the IIC+ preamp is simply wrong. If the controls don't do anything, there is a good chance the module is poorly designed. On a hardware IIC+ (or any Mark series amp), you will definitely hear the difference.
Saw a vid with Fryette, he designed the IIcp. One thing he did say was that the clean channel volume helps to shape the gain. Great video by the way. I definitely want the high gain amp modules, which one? ALL.
You need to dial the bass mids and presence after you've enabled the graphic eq, then they have more impact and it can get tighter than almost any other amp
Goodmans speakers review, hell yeah! The Mesa/Boogie Studio Preamp (the only Boogie I own) gets very close to the Mark II series and its manual explains quite thoroughly how to dial in the tone stack. It also mentions areas where a certain knob won't react much, how to combine it with others, and such things. It's worth experimenting 🙂 But this module doesn't seem to react like it. For some reason I never really liked how the Synergy modules sounded in any review I watched, although I love the concept, actually I remember discussing how cool would be having something like that back in the early 2000s.
I use a Joyo EQ pedal in front of my JetCity JCA22h. It often occured to me that I liked the sound more than with a TS. You can really fine-tune any bridge-pu to your liking with lots of "chug". The disadvantage to the TS is a bit that it seems to be a tad more noisy and you lack the diode clipping. Also it seems to me that you have to fine tune every guitar in your arsenal differently. The TS works with a frequency curve that seems to be the best compromise for most bridge-pu's and you got your chugging sound immediately.
the Mark II c was first widely used by STRYPER, of all bands, wherein their signature tone was a huge boost in the 400hz range on purpose, to push the gtrs out further beyond the drums in the live mix. STRYPER brought the IIc amp to popularity, because everyone had to know WHAT IS THAT TONE???? And, still is. They now use a plethora of amps, and Fractal, and Helix, and much more- Michael even uses a PRS in the studio, and Marshall DSL100 live (backline rigs on fly dates), but - originally, the Mark IIc was it- and Oz still has and uses his, at home on recordings, and sometimes out live with cover bands here in Vegas. That thing is an absolute BEAST
Mark V user here, it is also very common to crank the treble, and put the bass/middle at 0, that gives you an even tighter distortion. For me I like the treble at 2 o clock, middle at 8 o clock, and bass at 8-9 maybe, with the graphic EQ almost at a V shape but with the 2200hz slider higher than the 6600hz that I like to keep a touch above the center line
Big up for doing another take on it. So many factors in getting a true representation of a piece of gear. It's not surprising guitarist that are intimately familiar with the real Mark IIC+ were able to dial it in more to what was expected of the Synergy module. Nice try, definitely know what to look out for in the future.
That is one weird EQ. They don't usually silence an amp. They do however send more signal when cranked up (obviously). I do design and build amps that have one thing in common with Mesas and their parent project, the Fenders: I do place the EQ at the beginning of the circuit. And in no way they are innefective. They do shape tone a lot. And they do more than just taylor distortion, though they do it too. I place them at the beggining exactly because I realize that is where they are more effective over the sound. But one thing is undeniable: every gain stage has some EQ to it. You cut bass or highs, or you can bass go ahead and you can boost highs. What the EQ knobs are doing is just seasoning the amps hardwired EQ curves. Think of it like a car: you can have an accelerator pedal, like a knob is. BUT there is a lot you can do nothing about that is shaping the response of the car: the injection setting, the transmission, all sort of things that are hardwired and not adjustable. An EQ is like this gas pedal. And a Gas pedal in a car is anything but useless!
Traditional, bassman based EQs... they are really a Treble knob that BLENDS the other frequencies in. You Set the treble at noon, and youre saying "Im letting 50% of my sound be treble, and 50% all else" (if thats a linear pot). The other knobs (bass and middle) work like: "now that I have 50% of my sound for them, lets see how much of them at all I want in". The more you dial, the more you use. The less you dial, it gets shunted to ground (you dump out these freqs). Because passive EQs are subtractive, they only remove, never add. So the treble knob sets how much treble is in in comparison to how much all else you will let in. Its a blend knob. And the other knobs, mid and bass, is "of what the treble left of room, how much of these things I will let in, and how much I will let go to waste". No wonder, the treble knob is the most effective of all. It tilts the balance of frequencies entirely in its favor or against it. All else is just what you allow to pass.
Passive EQs are very misleading. It took engineers ages to really make EQs that work, really, its a recent thing. The Pultec, it took ages to be made. Parametric EQs... they are pretty recent. And passive guitar EQs, they are very limited and very little intuitive. We think they work like an active graphic EQ, that is how we intuitively use them, but they don't work that way.
I think the Synergy was likely modeling most Mesa amps. Their tone stack is a bit weird in that they work in a cascading like effect. The more treble you add, the less effective the mid will work, and the more mid you add the less effective the bass will work. So going max treble will cause the mids to have very little effect and the bass to have basically no effect. If you leave treble at 5, and max mids, this will essentially suck everything away from the bass. If the presence is having no effect it may be the very last tone control in the cascade (recalling from memory and I might be wrong?) and you likely need to roll off the high tone, use just enough of the first 3 tone controls, and then add presence to taste. The intent was that you add "just enough" of everything and don't max any one particular thing. Balance in all things is good, even tone controls ;)
Almost. Basically, the EQ out is on the wiper of the Treble, then it goes Bass and lastly, Mids. So, with Treble cranked, the whole signal bypasses the EQ section. Mids only works if you don't have neither of Treble nor Bass cranked. Presence likely replaces a bright switch that was a fixed Treble bleed before the next valve.
On the Mark IIC, the bass and mids is increased as the treble control is decreased. And if the treble is all the way up, the bass and mids have practically no effect. The presence control is the very last control before the power amp and comes after literally every other knob and control on the amp. So, no surprise it had no effect with bass, mid, and treble turned down. Boogie write good manuals. I found their descriptions of the knobs helpful.
Spot on. I love my Mark V, most people don't realize it works totally different, but Boogie does call it straight out in the manual. Whats funny is anyone familiar with Mesa Rectos will probably more easily adapt, even the knobs are totally different the general settings can end up being similar. Totally different tone, but I think people seeing the bass knob all the way down will listen with their eyes and not their ears. Recto users already know that doesnt work...
An extreme example of this style of EQing would be an Orange OR120. The eq is before the gain control, and the FAC control can be set to flood the later stages with lots of bass. It gives a pretty loose and flabby distortion... great for stoner doom, many less so for djent.
So, for everyone who is confused, there is the internal commutation of Mark IIC+ amp: "clean EQ" → "clean volume" → (switchable lead channel with "lead gain" + "lead volume" knobs) → "reverb" → fx loop → "graphic EQ" → power amp. So, graphic EQ is reduntant when you are on the clean channel, and clean channel EQ is extremely counterintuitive when you are using the lead channel. Thats why dialing tones on Mark amps is nightmare and everybody loves Rectifiers.
Greetings! We would love to hear you demo the Diezel VH4 and Soldano SLO Modules Any chance they sent you Marshall modules? Plexi etc? Just curious. Goodmans?! YES we would love to see a video on the POWER RANGERS! AND OF COURSE IR’s not many of us have access to those gems! Thank you from Canada! 🥃
Seems as there is still some kind misunderstanding here. A tone-stack of an amp is not an EQ. So what else? The tone stack of the amp is a stack of filters which are highly interactive and define the overall tone of the amp (in this case not too much because it is before the distortion). In electronics, a simple capacitor is like a high pass filter for AC-currents. It reacts similar to resistor that has high resistance for low frequencies and low resistance for high frequencies. This concept is applied for the knob that is usually labled treble. The same concept is applied for the bass knob. Just the opposite way around: The high frequencies go to ground (so they get out of the signal chain) and the low frequencies stay in the chain. This is labled bass. And if you pick only the higher half of the low frequencies that is something labled middle. Each of these interact with the other and although there is a relation to the frequencies it cannot be used as a make-everything-equal-device. Regarding Presence, as far as I know, presence is a concept that comes into play with negative feedback. This means, from the end of the signal chain you feed some signal back into the beginning to shape the tone even further. So if TMB is closed and you have no signal from those, there is nothing you can feed back even if you put the presence to 10. (or even if it goes to eleven).
Presence only functions when there is a signal. It takes a signal after the power amplification and brings it back to some of your preamp gain stage. So when all of the other knobs are down there is no signal for the negative feedback to travel back and therefor nothing happens.
Normally on marks the presence acts as an active high frequency boost/cut centered around the 5 value, if you don't have signal, it doesn"t do anything
thats because the 4 band eq w the knobs are old architecture passive eqs...heck probably even parallel eqs perhaps with even magnetic inductors in it(wich is btw buttery yummy) so why is,that all the signal is cut off when turned down ,is because these passive eq architectures nstead of phaseshifting the signal electronically (operational amplifiers ,negative feedbacks etc) used passive resistor/capacitor/inductor highpass bandpass and low pass filters and most probably 6 db per octave filters thats probably why the wide caracteristics of them and minimal to no phase shift between the bands, by a variable rezistor(potenctiometers) to the ground point and all filters addaing up an over all sum of the signal when turned (now i dont preciselly know whether all the way up or middle position) hence the total cut off when turned down
Thats cool. I was Steven Fryettes podcast who designed the module and he was talking about how RU-vidrs dont know how to set it up lol. Also I own a Goodmans 4x12 cab from the early 70s but sadly the original speakers were replaced with Dr Böhms Hifi Spezial Orgellautsprecher :D Yours sound amazing.
I'm not aware of any guitar amplifier circuits where EQ is "post distortion". It's normally located in between the gain stages of the pre-amp and therefore affects the character and the amount of distortion.
Neat info about the signal chain inside those amps and modelers. I found that reading up on the same thing on my rectifier helped me similarly, even though it's not as all important. Proves we need to use our ears, and not dial every amp in the same. Those Goodmans sound great. remind me of my Panama BFM's. great low mid boost.
FWIW … I typically use EQ at the beginning of my effects chain. It’s worth trying different placements in the chain. There is no right way - except the way that gets you the sound you want. I could easily use two or three EQs, because each pedal affects tonal character. In my ideal world, every pedal would have a dry output (thru) and a wet output with wet/dry pot, via at least rudimentary tone controls. While we’re on the subject - an 8 x EQ unit with a good screen interface, to allow EQ on eight devices with send/returns, would be a wonderful thing.
"TREBLE: This control varies the amount of treble frequency in the preamp. The first in the series of tone controls, it is the most powerful of the three because its setting determines the amount of signal fed to the BASS and MIDDLE Controls. High settings of the TREBLE Control will greatly diminish the effectiveness of the BASS and MIDDLE, causing them to have very little effect on the sound." -Boogie Mark1 manual.
That Mark IIC+ tone is the best I ever heard. To me no other amp comes close to that thing. But for some reason, Metal players tend to default to 5150s and Rectos. Maybe it's because people couldn't make sense of the knobs, haha! It's no different with this Synergy module - in nearly every video I've seen about it, the reviewer wasn't aware of how the tonestack is designed.
I don't really get the presence knob. Presence is a power amp control that (Correct me if I'm wrong here) basically just controls feedback to a filter in the power amp. By changing that feedback, you end up with more or less "extra high" frequencies. I'm guessing the presence here is just a high shelf whereas the treble control is just the level of the highest part of a 3-band crossover. Funny thing - The Randall Diavlo amps have a similar EQ. They're not pre-distortion, but the knobs will drop the signal all the way to nothing. Makes those amps extremely versatile for a wide range of sounds, although it's all going to be hard rock or metal. It's kinda cool for interesting effects in recording scenarios.
I have a V:25 and the knobs basically control input gain centered at certain frequency points. The graphic controls the tone like a more traditional EQ. It’s an effective combination if you know that. Is it user friendly? No. But it’s super flexible, which can be a good or bad thing. PS I don’t think the module sounds anything like my amp really. Maybe it’s because its a V:25. Also if you run the treble at zero it broadens the mids. You have to run the bass very very low to do that. I have gotten some nice tones doing that.
The original amp has a presence control (on short chassis on the back side) and it’s definitely powerful! On the model (which is a preamp only) it’s just useless maybe because on the real thing it’s no preamp function. It adds another dimension of treble if you want to see it this way. Technically it’s the amount of negative feedback. I can definitely encourage you to check out a Mark IIC+ or III or IV some day. They share this philosophy. Also a unique feature on SimulClass models is the possibility to blend 6L6 and EL34 tubes in the power section which gives you a nice little extra color. I will lend you one if you want ;)
Yes, on most amps the presence knob controls the negative feedback on the power amp, which is not possible here. Still haven’t figured out what it IS supposed to do though 🤪
Half right. If the unit your using is anything like the original then bass mid treble are pre gain. The tone stack is interactive, so changing one freq interacts with others. The presence is actually post gain and graphic eq. So only 3 eq knobs interact with the gain circuit.
Great video, Thank you! The Goodmans (not sure which model) were the favourite guitar speakers of the late Allan Holdsworth, so I am not surprised they sound so good. IRs would be great. I am wondering which Celestion or Eminence comes close to them these days. Perhaps the Celestion Classic Lead 80?
I would like to see the Bogner Uberschall and the Powerball (because I own this amp). And of course the speaker video would be great. I'm always looking for good IRs for great lead tones 😁
Waiting for the IRs)) By the way, recently I've tired Choptones' IRs of Dime 4x12 Cabinet loaded with Eminence SA1712. It has a lot of bass as P50e, but at the same time it sounds in your face. Very interesting.
Hey, Kohle! From what I know about regular presence on regular amps it is filtered feedback signal back into the power amp. So by turning everything else down there's nothing to feedback.
@@KohleAudioKult Large portion of guitar distortion pedals make distortion with negative feedback and put clipping diodes on it. Negative feedback is not a magick but it certainly needs something to feedback. It would be amazing to hear from you at least as a reply how the presence knob reacts relative to gain or treble amount.
Guy asked the other day if he should get the Syn system and my reply was: Have you checked out Kohle? His videos are about the best because he pipes them into 4x12s and mics up the speakers.
Presence is in the power amp stage on a real amp, it's on the negative feedback loop which feeds signal from the output transformer back into the phase inverter. If you've got no signal coming out of the preamp, there's gonna be no signal at the output transformer so the presence or resonance knobs will do nothing
This exactly like my mark iv. The terrible knob is like a another distortion knob. It even says this in the manual. I always keep terrible dimed and mid and bass just don’t do much. I found that the mark V was different - more like a normal eq.
The Mark amps are great. One of my favorite bands uses them. Chevelle and I know in a lot of there studio stuff I was told they use a lot of fuzz pedals in front of the amps but, live I know he runs a sans amp in front of the amp. They have a rig rundown here on youtube pretty cool stuff if you ever get the chance to check it out and even listen to there music if you have not listen to them before. Killer sounds.
If you're fiddling with tone knobs on a Mark, you're doing it wrong. Those knobs are set and forget. Keep the treble at a minimum of 7, bass below 2 and dial in your tone with the graphic eq.
For the most part, yes. My previous comment wasn't specifically directed towards you, but rather to novice Mark users in general who struggle dialing in good tones. Sorry for the confusion. 5:03 By the way, every Mark IIC+ does in fact have a presence control. It's on the back of the amp and it has a very powerful effect on the tone regardless of how the tone knobs and EQ are set. Just FYI.
