H
Holy-diver
Well-known member
They recently repaired my tremoverb and the experience was the same as I had multiple times prior to Gibson
C
Candiria
Well-known member
My buddy took his JP to one of the top Mesa techs around and he couldn't figure it out. Sent it into Mesa, got it fixed and back in a few weeks. This was about a year ago.
vultures
Well-known member
Thanks for sharing the post and the insight. Tony kicked me out of his little group because he's a man baby, so I can't read or partake in the sharing of any of this info with some of the other IIC+ nerds.
mnemonic
Well-known member
I was watching some of Dann Val’s YouTube videos yesterday and based on the comments on some of them (most recent video of IIb rebuild is good), he appears to be somewhere in Europe so I’m guessing the infuriating stories are more to do with ‘Mesa authorised techs’ rather than service direct with Mesa in CA.
Speeddemon
Well-known member
Oh, he is the guy that did those insane mods to the Studio Preamp? 
Awesome YT video information there.
Awesome YT video information there.
D
dann.valentino
New member
Hello, guys! Turns out I had an account here!
First - Happy New Year to all of you! May the toanz be with ya!
Second - thank you for the positive reaction and especially to GJgo for reposting my ramblings!
I don't promise I will be active, but I will reply to the current comment for sure.
ners - The RI is a decent amp, yes, for the people that want an alternative or a workhorse so they can keep the OG at home - good option. If I was in the market for a new production amp I would probably go for something else, thou. The old Marks are a bit limited in flexibility and functions compared to new designs, but you live with those things because it sounds a certain way. Be it the way they were built, the lack of compliance laws and RoHS/CE restrictions, older tech and methods or other reasons - they are different. The point of reissuing such a model is to try and make it as close as possible with whats available and allowed nowadays. Building it like their other new amps, but stripping it of all modern functions just to say it's a Reissue, and then ask almost the same price as the the other offerings is kinda iffy to me. On top of that after further analysis - they changed key points without any real benefit - either monetary or technical reasons. The amp can be reissued almost identically, especially where it matters, but it would require more time on the drawing board so to speak and some re-tooling on their part, which costs time=money. Sorry to sound like the haters, but it's an obvious cash-grab for both companies (I call them Mebson now). That doesn't make the amp bad, but personally I would look at other models.
midnightlaundry - Before I saw the inside pictures, I checked Ola's videos I noticed the amp to be grainier, looser and the sustain a bit undefined . The filtration and some small things here and there explained why. The decision to go Pentode is interesting, but not a bad thing IMO. I got some information why they went with full Pentode, but first I will try to confirm if it's 100%.
Racerxrated - thank you that! I think I get where our perceptions of tightness may differ. I am thinking more of note attack and punch, sag or lack there of, and general stiffness of the power amp, especially when pushing serious volume. At least with the amps where he used super large filtering, not all of his amps had abnormal large filter caps. As for the perception of "easy to play" - the amp can still sound fluid, "greasy" while being heavily filtered and have all the properties of a smooth high gain amp. But some players think of sag and compression as a more pleasant or forgiving and easy to control. But I also get your side - a supper tight amp can be very easy to control in different ways... I find it hard to put into words, haha. In our case - ignore my words about the "ease-of-play", the more important thing would be, that big filtration makes the amp tight (in some cases even called stiff) - if good or bad depends on the player and his playing style/preferences.
baron55 - I would've mentioned it if I knew it, haha. Can't keep track of every company out there. Thank you for clarifying!
JimAnsell - I never been a direct customer of theirs and never relied on them for direct servicing, but my clients and local EU dealers have some scary stories to tell. As a tech - they were great a few years back and gladly helped out with documentation and info. Every tech on the planet knows that their published schematics have errors and sometimes purposefully wrong info in them, so having direct contact with the guys was great! The last few two years it has been a nightmare and the language has been the typical robotic, big-biznis, corpo talk - millions of written words and nothing actual said.
As for the C++ - Thank you for sharing this! The mod was switchable - via the front panel and via footswitch. It doesn't look to be MB done mod, but I will get back to you on that.
Candiria and mnemonic - I have a video of a Mark IV that was repaired a few times by UK certified techs... the repairs were so "good" and every next one "better than the previous" that they finally killed it. Killed it dead. I got it for parts initially, but then challenged myself on fixing it as I planned on selling it. It turned out a very rare transitional version between A and B. When I heard it for the first time after the repair - I was floored. Even with the initial settings, that I visually set while waiting for it to heat up - it sounded and felt amazing. I have a video of the first power up on my channel as well. It's so good that a close friend that was a Mesa hater now has a Mark IV as well, hahah. So I don't really trust the words "certified mesa tech" and as mnemonic said - it's probably a different story if you are local to Mesa. Small amount of tech in EU even take Mesa amps, so probably that's why their experience is lacking.
mnemonic - Thank you for watching!!
Speeddemon - I'm that dude, yup. Thank you for the kind words!!
First - Happy New Year to all of you! May the toanz be with ya!
Second - thank you for the positive reaction and especially to GJgo for reposting my ramblings!
I don't promise I will be active, but I will reply to the current comment for sure.
ners - The RI is a decent amp, yes, for the people that want an alternative or a workhorse so they can keep the OG at home - good option. If I was in the market for a new production amp I would probably go for something else, thou. The old Marks are a bit limited in flexibility and functions compared to new designs, but you live with those things because it sounds a certain way. Be it the way they were built, the lack of compliance laws and RoHS/CE restrictions, older tech and methods or other reasons - they are different. The point of reissuing such a model is to try and make it as close as possible with whats available and allowed nowadays. Building it like their other new amps, but stripping it of all modern functions just to say it's a Reissue, and then ask almost the same price as the the other offerings is kinda iffy to me. On top of that after further analysis - they changed key points without any real benefit - either monetary or technical reasons. The amp can be reissued almost identically, especially where it matters, but it would require more time on the drawing board so to speak and some re-tooling on their part, which costs time=money. Sorry to sound like the haters, but it's an obvious cash-grab for both companies (I call them Mebson now). That doesn't make the amp bad, but personally I would look at other models.
midnightlaundry - Before I saw the inside pictures, I checked Ola's videos I noticed the amp to be grainier, looser and the sustain a bit undefined . The filtration and some small things here and there explained why. The decision to go Pentode is interesting, but not a bad thing IMO. I got some information why they went with full Pentode, but first I will try to confirm if it's 100%.
Racerxrated - thank you that! I think I get where our perceptions of tightness may differ. I am thinking more of note attack and punch, sag or lack there of, and general stiffness of the power amp, especially when pushing serious volume. At least with the amps where he used super large filtering, not all of his amps had abnormal large filter caps. As for the perception of "easy to play" - the amp can still sound fluid, "greasy" while being heavily filtered and have all the properties of a smooth high gain amp. But some players think of sag and compression as a more pleasant or forgiving and easy to control. But I also get your side - a supper tight amp can be very easy to control in different ways... I find it hard to put into words, haha. In our case - ignore my words about the "ease-of-play", the more important thing would be, that big filtration makes the amp tight (in some cases even called stiff) - if good or bad depends on the player and his playing style/preferences.
baron55 - I would've mentioned it if I knew it, haha. Can't keep track of every company out there. Thank you for clarifying!
JimAnsell - I never been a direct customer of theirs and never relied on them for direct servicing, but my clients and local EU dealers have some scary stories to tell. As a tech - they were great a few years back and gladly helped out with documentation and info. Every tech on the planet knows that their published schematics have errors and sometimes purposefully wrong info in them, so having direct contact with the guys was great! The last few two years it has been a nightmare and the language has been the typical robotic, big-biznis, corpo talk - millions of written words and nothing actual said.
As for the C++ - Thank you for sharing this! The mod was switchable - via the front panel and via footswitch. It doesn't look to be MB done mod, but I will get back to you on that.
Candiria and mnemonic - I have a video of a Mark IV that was repaired a few times by UK certified techs... the repairs were so "good" and every next one "better than the previous" that they finally killed it. Killed it dead. I got it for parts initially, but then challenged myself on fixing it as I planned on selling it. It turned out a very rare transitional version between A and B. When I heard it for the first time after the repair - I was floored. Even with the initial settings, that I visually set while waiting for it to heat up - it sounded and felt amazing. I have a video of the first power up on my channel as well. It's so good that a close friend that was a Mesa hater now has a Mark IV as well, hahah. So I don't really trust the words "certified mesa tech" and as mnemonic said - it's probably a different story if you are local to Mesa. Small amount of tech in EU even take Mesa amps, so probably that's why their experience is lacking.
mnemonic - Thank you for watching!!
Speeddemon - I'm that dude, yup. Thank you for the kind words!!
anomaly
Well-known member
I gotta horror story about Mesa's tech support. I sent my Mark IV in to get fixed... What I could tell that had happened was the Pentode and triode wires got fused together somehow, then shorted. Also, one of the screen grid resistors blew... That was ALL I could see.
Always, I shipped the amp down to Mesa california to get looked at, and they told me all those things I already knew with one exception. They said one of those two racial 10,000if caps leaked all over the board causing extensive damage and a big mess. Long story short I reluctantly agreed to have the amp fixed, but the price tag was 1,000+ dollars... Thing is I looked in that amp thoroughly before I sent it. I saw NO leaking caps anywhere, let alone a big mess. So they basically ripped me off. A thousand dollars for a couple hundred dollars repair. The reason I agreed to have them repair it was it's cheaper than having to buy another one, plus I'm quite find of that amp.'
Always, I shipped the amp down to Mesa california to get looked at, and they told me all those things I already knew with one exception. They said one of those two racial 10,000if caps leaked all over the board causing extensive damage and a big mess. Long story short I reluctantly agreed to have the amp fixed, but the price tag was 1,000+ dollars... Thing is I looked in that amp thoroughly before I sent it. I saw NO leaking caps anywhere, let alone a big mess. So they basically ripped me off. A thousand dollars for a couple hundred dollars repair. The reason I agreed to have them repair it was it's cheaper than having to buy another one, plus I'm quite find of that amp.'
P
pipboy90
Well-known member
This is part of the reason I’m going to be recapping my Tremoverb and Mark IV myself.
D
dann.valentino
New member
Hey, gang! Just to let you know - one legendary dude sent me his RI and I finally could dig inside the RI for real.
Here's the first video with it and it's kinda getting spicy in the comments! My first job is to find a solution for the oscillation problem and then I will be doing a few demos and more "normal" content. More to come in the upcoming weeks!
Now that I had the opportunity to dig inside it... I made some updates to my original post that @GJgo reposted here.
My previous "analysis" was done by purely looking at pictures and knowing the circuit almost by heart helped to narrow it down. I am pretty happy and proud to say that I 95% nailed it. Except the Triode vs Pentode thing. I want to apologize for that, but hear me out.
I wasn't able to clearly see from the pics, with wires obstructing some spots and obviously couldn't look at both sides of the board to know for sure... so I was mislead by the spec-sheet and the Mesa bullshit PR where they say it's a 25W amp in Class A. That, by Mesa specs history, suggests Pentode.
Most of us know that's a pumped up number, even in Pentode for Class A. More realistic output from a push-pull pair of 6L6GCs in Class A Pentode is around ~18-20W RMS max.
Another thing is that those "Class A" sockets are biased too cold to be really operating at Class A either, but let's play by Mesa's rules... and say they are Class A and round up to 25W in Pentode, and by those same rules - Class A Triode is 15W.
Also the 562004(R1) output transformer they used since the later Mark IV Bs - realistically is better suited for Pentode wiring (Mike B's words) and it actually looks more like a normal, non-SimulClass transformer (so - without the additional "side" windings found in the original SimulClass amps - refer to my SimulClass OT shootout video).
So those two things (saying it's 25W and using 542004R-1 OT) and not being able to check it myself made me think they went with Pentode wiring when in fact the C+ and C++ are in Triode.
So Mebson's math aint mathin'.
Boogies were always rated as 60, 60/100, 15/75 and 25/85. Not a fan of that "rating", but stay with me.
They always labeled their 2x6L6GC Class A/B Push-Pull amps (or the inner two sockets) as 60W. That's not the correct way of "rating" you amp's power, but many manufacturers did it (many still do it). By just adding together the plate dissipation of each tube. What I mean by that is that a single 6L6GC has max plate dissipation of 30W (physical and thermal limit) - but that's not the amount of power it's putting out. Tubes are very inefficient by today's standards. A lot of their energy is lost in heat. So realistically speaking 2x6L6GC Class A/B in Push-Pull can get around 40-45W RMS and sometimes even 50W of CLEAN output with careful design, enough plate voltage, good bias and great set of tubes. Note that I mentioned clean output - just before clipping. Most people measure with a decent amount of clipping just to reach a bigger number, but that's a topic for another day.
Now back to Boogies and their rating - the old Boogie rating system 15/75 and 25/85 labels were more marketing than a real output measurement. So for the SimulClass amps you just add the outer pair to that base 60 from the inner pair. So 15W for Triode wired ones and 25W for the Pentodes. Again - pushed up numbers, but let's go with them. So in OG terms - 15 + 60 = 75. That's why you always see the OG Mark IIC+ and Mark IIIs (before Green Stripe) labeled as 75W. Then with the Mark III Green Stripe they went Pentode, so 25 + 60 = 85. Simple.
But now we get new math rules with the C+ RI. The Reissue is labeled as 25/75.. so play authentic and get math help by the school's bully: 25 + 60 = 75. I see my math teacher reaching for her xanax...
Now - maybe Mebson calculated the inned pair as 50W. Fine. That's closer to what a 2x6L6GC amp is expected to deliver in terms of real output. But then adding 25W out of nowhere?! That whole thing made me think that they went with Pentode in the outer sockets going by Mesa's rating history and just dropped their inner pair rating to more realistic numbers for some reason. Turns out the PR and Marketing team just writes whatever numbers.
That was a long-winded way of me saying that I am sorry! I should have confirmed in person first. I hope we can still be friends!
Here's the first video with it and it's kinda getting spicy in the comments! My first job is to find a solution for the oscillation problem and then I will be doing a few demos and more "normal" content. More to come in the upcoming weeks!
Now that I had the opportunity to dig inside it... I made some updates to my original post that @GJgo reposted here.
My previous "analysis" was done by purely looking at pictures and knowing the circuit almost by heart helped to narrow it down. I am pretty happy and proud to say that I 95% nailed it. Except the Triode vs Pentode thing. I want to apologize for that, but hear me out.
I wasn't able to clearly see from the pics, with wires obstructing some spots and obviously couldn't look at both sides of the board to know for sure... so I was mislead by the spec-sheet and the Mesa bullshit PR where they say it's a 25W amp in Class A. That, by Mesa specs history, suggests Pentode.
Most of us know that's a pumped up number, even in Pentode for Class A. More realistic output from a push-pull pair of 6L6GCs in Class A Pentode is around ~18-20W RMS max.
Another thing is that those "Class A" sockets are biased too cold to be really operating at Class A either, but let's play by Mesa's rules... and say they are Class A and round up to 25W in Pentode, and by those same rules - Class A Triode is 15W.
Also the 562004(R1) output transformer they used since the later Mark IV Bs - realistically is better suited for Pentode wiring (Mike B's words) and it actually looks more like a normal, non-SimulClass transformer (so - without the additional "side" windings found in the original SimulClass amps - refer to my SimulClass OT shootout video).
So those two things (saying it's 25W and using 542004R-1 OT) and not being able to check it myself made me think they went with Pentode wiring when in fact the C+ and C++ are in Triode.
So Mebson's math aint mathin'.
Boogies were always rated as 60, 60/100, 15/75 and 25/85. Not a fan of that "rating", but stay with me.
They always labeled their 2x6L6GC Class A/B Push-Pull amps (or the inner two sockets) as 60W. That's not the correct way of "rating" you amp's power, but many manufacturers did it (many still do it). By just adding together the plate dissipation of each tube. What I mean by that is that a single 6L6GC has max plate dissipation of 30W (physical and thermal limit) - but that's not the amount of power it's putting out. Tubes are very inefficient by today's standards. A lot of their energy is lost in heat. So realistically speaking 2x6L6GC Class A/B in Push-Pull can get around 40-45W RMS and sometimes even 50W of CLEAN output with careful design, enough plate voltage, good bias and great set of tubes. Note that I mentioned clean output - just before clipping. Most people measure with a decent amount of clipping just to reach a bigger number, but that's a topic for another day.
Now back to Boogies and their rating - the old Boogie rating system 15/75 and 25/85 labels were more marketing than a real output measurement. So for the SimulClass amps you just add the outer pair to that base 60 from the inner pair. So 15W for Triode wired ones and 25W for the Pentodes. Again - pushed up numbers, but let's go with them. So in OG terms - 15 + 60 = 75. That's why you always see the OG Mark IIC+ and Mark IIIs (before Green Stripe) labeled as 75W. Then with the Mark III Green Stripe they went Pentode, so 25 + 60 = 85. Simple.
But now we get new math rules with the C+ RI. The Reissue is labeled as 25/75.. so play authentic and get math help by the school's bully: 25 + 60 = 75. I see my math teacher reaching for her xanax...
Now - maybe Mebson calculated the inned pair as 50W. Fine. That's closer to what a 2x6L6GC amp is expected to deliver in terms of real output. But then adding 25W out of nowhere?! That whole thing made me think that they went with Pentode in the outer sockets going by Mesa's rating history and just dropped their inner pair rating to more realistic numbers for some reason. Turns out the PR and Marketing team just writes whatever numbers.
That was a long-winded way of me saying that I am sorry! I should have confirmed in person first. I hope we can still be friends!