NAD - Mesa Mark V

[aryasridhar]

Got this beauty today, Mesa Mark V.....

Tried the 25 and the 35w versions too, but they for some reason felt like they were falling short somewhere, a tad fizzy to my ears, I am blown away by the full Mark V, tried it with the Mesa 412, with a wide range of guitars.....Joe Satriani JS1200, Schecter, Fender Strat, Epi Les Paul etc.....each one got me tones that were just unbelievable.....

So had to pick the big brother, also since the 35 and 25 are more like better suited for a studio than in a live situation....with the clean and crunch on the same channel and not foot switchable, that really broke the deal for me....especially since I do not want to own pedals now, and want to totally depend on amp drive, instead of drive pedals.....except a few modulation pedals, Soul Food & the Keeley Oxblood, do not want to own any other pedals...

 

[Lef T]

Congratulations.
The Mark V is a beautiful amp.
I tested out a lot of amps before deciding on the V.
I run mine with a Mesa RA 1x12 and it is superb.
I don't use any gain pedals and the sounds I get are truly amazing.
I run a Nemesis delay and that's my only effect.
Rock on !

 

[logdrum]

Yep. Klon type pedals on Mark amps' gain channel = howling vocal single note leads. Congrats

 

[ZosoRush]

awesome!!!

 

[59Bassman]

I've had my Mark V head for 3 1/2 years now. I love this amp. I bought it primarily to be a midlife-crisis shred amp, but it's turned out to be far more versatile. The clean channel is as good as my old Vibrolux, and I find the Crunch mode to have the tone I was searching for back in the 80's. Like you, the shared clean/crunch on the little Marks was a deal breaker for me.

Mine takes pedals very well. I normally run a Boss SD-1 and some sort of Rat (VFE Alpha Dog) out front, and some delay/modulation in the loop. I like the gain channel set a bit hotter, so I do like having a lower gain pedal out front either as a bit of grit, or to tighten up the drive channels if I'm using single coil pickups.

Great amps, and a ton of ways to set them up. Enjoy that rascal!

 

[jpage]

Congrats man--that is one badass amp

 

[Ghast]

You better update your sig to include it. If someone else does first, the amp officially belongs to them. Sorry, TGP rules.

(Killer amp though, my dream head)

 

[hendrik7]

I miss the Tweed channel on my Mark V...and the Edge mode....and the Mark I mode.....crap!

 

[Hefalump]

Congrats! Love mine.

 

[Geetarman74]

Great amp....congrats! I've had the Mark V combo for years and it has stayed while many other amps have come and gone. Mesa really got that one right! Enjoy...

 

[pcbb]

Congrats on a sweet amp

 

[aryasridhar]

Thank You Guys, I am indeed loving this amp, so far have only scratched the surface, hope to dig deeper and get better tones and also get better at playing No more excuses...haha

 

[DRS]

I picked up the MkV:25 as that's where my budget ended and I am happy with it but the big V would have been better.

 

[Deanriffs]

Happy NAD! My Mark V is my go to gig amp.

They really come alive when you open up the master past 9:00. I run mine at home with a rectifier 4x12 and gig with a mesa 1x12 or 1965 Bassman 2x12 cab.

 

[jpage]

Once you get it heated up a little the MV feeds back in such a fantastic way it's addictive...you start working that into solos...just a really fun amp to play.

 

[jlb32]

Congratulations! Mesa Mark amps are just killer amps. Love my Mark IV but if I decided to change it would definitely be a Mark V or JP2C.

 

[DreamTheaterRules]

Congrats on the amp! It is truly great. One bit of free advice.... don't drive yourself crazy with flipping switches and twisting knobs. My strong suggestions is leave all 3 channels in full power 90 watt mode for a few weeks. In other words, the FULL amp. Then, once you have fully tried out all 3 channels and all 9 voices, then and only then, start messing with variac, and 45 and 10 watts, and the switches on the back, and so forth. They ALL have something to offer and it can be addictive to just keep tweaking. But I got rid of digital modelers because I wanted to turn it on and play and have great tones. This amp has so much to offer you can get lost in the tweaking.

One more free tip. Turn the master up somewhere very close to noon, the adjust the channel volumes from there. Even if they are at 9:00 or below, it will sound better than turning the master down and the channel volumes higher. I heard the opposite and did my first few months with Channel volumes at noon and master lower... once I read that master at noon and channel volumes lower was better I tried it. And it IS.

Man, you are in for a ride, and it will be a good one!

 

[aryasridhar]

Congrats on the amp! It is truly great. One bit of free advice.... don't drive yourself crazy with flipping switches and twisting knobs. My strong suggestions is leave all 3 channels in full power 90 watt mode for a few weeks. In other words, the FULL amp. Then, once you have fully tried out all 3 channels and all 9 voices, then and only then, start messing with variac, and 45 and 10 watts, and the switches on the back, and so forth. The ALL have something to offer and it can be addictive to just keep tweaking. But I got rid of digital modelers because I wanted to turn it on and play and have great tones. This amp has so much to offer you can get lost in the tweaking.

One more free tip. Turn the master up somewhere very close to noon, the adjust the channel volumes from there. Even if they are at 9:00 or below, it will sound better than turning the master down and the channel volumes higher. I heard the opposite and did my first few months with CHannel volumes at noon and master lower... once I read that master at noon and channel volumes lower was better I tried it. And it IS.

Man, you are in for a ride, and it will be a good one!

Thank You, I'm already loving the tones off this amp, probably the best thing I've done so far with amps...really love it!!

Ran into a glitch today, the footswitch cable the store gave me is a 7 pin DIN, whereas the footswitch needs 8 pins, that I realised after about 4 hours of troubleshooting, so called up the store and they'll be giving me the right cable....

The FX loop was not switchable due to the missing pin.

 

[aryasridhar]

Loving this amp, tried some random settings with my les Paul...

 

[aryasridhar]

Good lord this amp is just leaving me speechless every time I power it up...