Surprise of the Year: Under Gibson Ownership, Mesa Boogie is Reissuing Amps - The Mark IIC+ Returns

[RobB]

I'll take the above, non-audio review over anything I've seen on YouTube, et al. 

[tbonesullivan]

12 hours ago, Devnor said:

My IIC+ reissue arrived a few days ago.  I would post a pic but I can't figure out how on this site  My dealer received 5 amps and just learned I was number 5 on the waiting list. While I was waiting on the amp, I've been playing my OG IIC+ SRG. Few thoughts:

Just being real here but if I had to do a blindfold test and not hearing with my eyes, I would not be able to tell the difference between my OG SRG and the reissue. All the sounds & quirks are there. It's pretty amazing actually.  Has all the note bloom and feedback as the OG.  It reacts the same with different guitars as the OG.  At extreme settings, low masters and high V1 & drive, it gets just as noisy.

The tones on all the youtube demos are shit. Being in the room and interacting with the amp in the way the player wants to hear things is such a different experience.  

Right now there are some people claiming some "oscillation conspiracy" that the design is flawed and going to be recalled. Some people on youtube are having issues with microphonics when they dime some controls on a 4x12 in a tiny room. It's getting kinda toxic in all the Mesa groups I am in on Facebook, which is one reason why I'm ready to just leave them all.

Like, it's an ultra high gain design, so with that much gain, you can get microphonics.

[Devnor]

13 hours ago, tbonesullivan said:

Right now there are some people claiming some "oscillation conspiracy" that the design is flawed and going to be recalled.

The settings they use to drive the amp into oscillation aren't realistic.  This is not how you dial in a Mesa for chugga chugga. You don't set V1 and treble at 8-10 and the lead master at 8 with the overall master set at 1. That's just dumb. All a newbie user needs to do is use the sample settings and adjust to taste.  The pots on these amps have a +/- 20% tolerance so what might achieve the same level of gain on one amp at 6, may need to be set to 8 on a different amp.  As you crank up the master, the dial back V1. treble and lead drive for the same level of gain. Unless you just enjoy excessive levels of hiss then, you do you. 

IMO if you are buying this amp to drive it into max gain, saturation and compression, you are just wasting your money, 

Now that I have the amp, I'm dropping out of the groups.  All this infighting from users that only know what they heard on youtube is getting very tedious.  I've love to be able to discuss the gear and its capabilities but until Ola Englund gets one and does his chugga chugga thing, making it sound like every other tone on his channel, lots of folks will be in this mode of increasing unhappiness and disappointment.  We predicted that right? LOL

Last night explored the clean channel.  Using the Tyler Dann Huff guitar, the combo of the amp and onboard tyler/demeter clean boost resulted in gobs of sustain and bloom, totally clean and fun to play. Needed to dial back the treble and add bass so if I switched back to the lead channel, it got a little gnarly. Balancing the two sounds has always been a challenge. Maybe a TS is the key. 

 

[tbonesullivan]

On 12/13/2024 at 10:06 AM, Devnor said:

The settings they use to drive the amp into oscillation aren't realistic.  This is not how you dial in a Mesa for chugga chugga. You don't set V1 and treble at 8-10 and the lead master at 8 with the overall master set at 1. That's just dumb. All a newbie user needs to do is use the sample settings and adjust to taste.  The pots on these amps have a +/- 20% tolerance so what might achieve the same level of gain on one amp at 6, may need to be set to 8 on a different amp.  As you crank up the master, the dial back V1. treble and lead drive for the same level of gain. Unless you just enjoy excessive levels of hiss then, you do you. 

IMO if you are buying this amp to drive it into max gain, saturation and compression, you are just wasting your money, 

Now that I have the amp, I'm dropping out of the groups.  All this infighting from users that only know what they heard on youtube is getting very tedious.  I've love to be able to discuss the gear and its capabilities but until Ola Englund gets one and does his chugga chugga thing, making it sound like every other tone on his channel, lots of folks will be in this mode of increasing unhappiness and disappointment.  We predicted that right? LOL

Last night explored the clean channel.  Using the Tyler Dann Huff guitar, the combo of the amp and onboard tyler/demeter clean boost resulted in gobs of sustain and bloom, totally clean and fun to play. Needed to dial back the treble and add bass so if I switched back to the lead channel, it got a little gnarly. Balancing the two sounds has always been a challenge. Maybe a TS is the key. 

 

Yeaaaap. With the IIC+ being unobtanium, I think people really didn't realize what it was really like. At the time, when the Mark III came out, people bought those. I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of people sold their Mark IIC+ amps because having a third mode was useful, especially if they got it modded to have an R2 Volume on the rear. And then when the Mark IV came out, it had an ACTUAL clean mode that didn't influence the lead channel. And it seems like the only people who consider the R2 channel on the Mark IV to be "useless" are the super metal heads. They either want crystal clean, or ultra gain.

From what I've seen, it also seems like many of these owners, who never had an original IIC+, didn't bother to read the manual, at all, or pay attention to the "classic" settings. They also seem to have zero understanding of microphonics.

Tonight I'm gonna break out the Mark V and make some noise. I think my favorite channel on that is actually channel 2. The best description I heard of the modes is EDGE = Plexi. CRUNCH = JCM800, and Mark 1 = Santana.

Once I get done amp downsizing, a Mark IV B is going to be top on my list.

[tbonesullivan]

Ahh, and now finally the video has dropped that made all the whiny people shut up. I should mention that it originally did not say "boomer amp", but that was added as a tongue in cheek thing later.
 

 

[velorush]

Though I do not chug, I always find him extremely entertaining.

But you're right: that was the video the entire forum world was waiting on. 😂

[tbonesullivan]

1 hour ago, velorush said:

Though I do not chug, I always find him extremely entertaining.

But you're right: that was the video the entire forum world was waiting on. 😂

You can see in his face that he's betting getting non-stop messages about the damn thing since it was announced. I follow his instagram and he was trolling people with pictures of the IIC+ with totally weird settings two days ago. I am not a huge fan of his style of music, but his videos are definitely very well done, and entertaining.

[LucSulla]

His full review is the best on the web right now IMO. 

Gibson should crawl over broken glass to thank him for this. 
 

 

[LucSulla]

I'm definitely getting the itch for one of these. 

I would love to get another Mark III like I had, but they've gone up so much that I don't know if it wouldn't be easier to just get one of these and know the caps are new and so on.