This is the closest thing to the real Atomica I believe there is. This is the ONLY Brad/Rob Atomica Mark has ever seen let alone played. It will be the ONLY Brad/Rob Atomica he ever works on. There was quite a bit of things that needed to be reworked to get it to what he envisioned the Atomica should be. I purchased this amp from Brad 08/2012. It is SN 008. It came to me with a bad OT. I had asked him for a replacement but received zero response. I asked Mark for help and he was interested in actually seeing the amp that bears his name. Mark spent hours digging through this amp fixing and replacing things that were to his liking. This is definitely not a one trick pony now. George built a great amp but you can't just give people a recipe and expect an award winning meal. Build quality was very good of course, but things were not the way he wanted. Schematics only get you so far. Just when I thought it was perfect he would solder in another part and make it even better!! He never settles when it comes to tone and feel.
Completely reworked input section. TWO gain knobs that work in conjunction to shape BOTH tone and gain. Original gain sets the tone with the bright/gain caps. Second gain adds the balls and mojo. They work perfect together and add infinite tonal possibilities. Yes you can actually turn up the gain so the bright caps actually work correctly now. The diode clipping now has 12 stages instead of 3. Way more flexibility. OT replaced with his spec'd Mercury Magnetics OT gives great string resolution. Three way power switch now.... middle off, up normal, down lowers the plate voltage approx 100 volts similar to a variac. Very cool to crank the master up more and get that coveted power stage gain. There's more Mark mojo in there as well. And yes he signed it. I will try to get clips as soon as I can. Iphone clips don't do it justice
Mark is a good friend and I WILL NOT be entertaining any drama. I know it all and I'm not interested. There's three sides to every story and I'm not going there, so please limit things to this specific amp. He put his heart and soul in this amp and it's amazing! I might consider selling it if the right offer is there. Just putting this out there for discussion. It won't be cheap as Brad dinged me full price for a pre-owned amp.
5150