A page dedicated to the tone and creativity of MESA Engineering's famous Mark Series. These little giant killers, first introduced in the early seventies, have been the choice of most major top players. Made famous by Santana and boosted by The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Grateful Dead, very few if any stadiums, coliseums or concert halls haven't been assaulted by a Boogie. Currently the state of the art is the Mark IV which represents the culmination of 30 years of evolution and refinement.
Amp Switching: A common problem with a multiple amp set-up of such high gain amps is how to harness them QUIETLY and to have flexibility in the control. In this respect MESA Engineering attacked the problem with enthusiasm and came up with its High Gain Amplifier switcher. A standard one rack space switch what has four seperate transformers to ensure silent switching between any combination of pre-amps, power amps and other effects, with no loss in signal quality to each of the units. Each line can be switched via tip to ground foot switch or with the TriAxis pre-amp. Thus any combination of amps can be on at any one time with no line buzz, popping or signal weakness. Offers a fantastic pallate of tone which one can effortlessly choose ones color of choice with a click of a switch.
Set-up: The switch has the wiring diagram and options printed on the top of the unit. Very easy to read and understand. Just follow the arrows!
Footswitches: If one doesn't have a TriAxis or some such other MIDI control, an easy fix is to take two dual foot switches and make a Stereo female to two Mono males as a spliter adapter. Then, run the standard stereo cable from a standard MESA dual footswitch to the adapter. Thus each button will control an amp channel. I place two dual footswitches marked AMP 1, AMP 2 etc. in front of me and I can then switch between any or all.
Set-Up:With six amps, I set the amps up so the IIC+ is Boogie Lead with the Pre-amp junction out into the Amp junction in of the Mark I. The Mark III Stack and Maple Mark III are linked in Stereo via a G-Major effect rack and are set hyper clean with the internal reverbs of each set at zero. The signal goes from the MESA Amp switch to the input of the amps. The Effects Send is then routed into the G·Major input and then via the output to the effects Return on the Boogies. The effect is incredible! The Mark IIB and the Imbuya Mark III are in Stereo via a Boss Stereo Chrous. The pedal is set with minimal chrous and thus primarily a stereo effect. I set this as the Crunch amp with the IIB in lead mode set to give a subtle break up and the Mark III optomized for the Rhythm 2 mode.