NAD: Mesa MkIII Blackstripe

rstites

rstites

Well-known member
I found a decent deal on a second MkIII. It arrived a couple of days ago, but no time until today to play it. It sounds good and even looks good. (Most of my equipment shows a fair amount of wear from use, but this combo looks nice and clean comparatively.) The EVM that came with it definitely has a problem I need to look into and fix, if possible. That's probably what got me the combo for a good price. However, no big deal for me as I'm relocating the amp into a rackmount chassis and then into a rack. I already have my blue stripe MkIII in there. I'm going to turn the thing into a four channel preamp, stereo power amp system, assuming I can manage things well enough not to get noise issues with the two amps.




 
Nice buy man, did you get this off CL? I've seen a couple on there over the last few months but hadn't pulled the trigger. Been jonesing for a Mark.
 
Very nice! One of these days, I'll pick up a Black Stripe. Would love to hear your thoughts in comparison with your Blue Stripe. You shouldn't have too many problems with noise as long as you keep the rails and the chassis isolated. Washers with collars and a few well-placed strips of rubber shelf-liner have saved me from more than a few headaches.

I'd love to hear some clips, too! :)
 
I've pulled it out of the combo cabinet and mounted it in a rackmount case. I'll post some gut shots tomorrow of it and the blue stripe. I played it quite a bit last night through my 2x12 cabinet. It sounds nice and it's really clear that it and the blue stripe are very much shades different....no surprise there. I'll get them hooked up later for some A/B testing. I'll still need to sort speakers out in the end.
 
Just curious... how many spaces does each one of those rack mount kits for your Mark amps take up? I don't remember seeing that spec on Boogie's site, but they look like they're 4 RU tall. Just wondering if you could let me know. I'm thinking about rack mounting mine, too.
 
Yeah, they're 4U. They come with a built in 120Vac fan on the bottom too, so you really need 5U if you want to run them hot so there's room to move air beneath the amp. The fan is seated right under the preamp tubes, so you need a space under the amp to push hot air into form the fans stock. I'm planning to move those fans to back of these rack units so they blow out the back since I'm not playing big stages out in the summer heat with them.*

* If you're doing this, you want a space between everything in a rack to begin with IMO.
 
Rackmounted Black Stripe. Hmm... I'm new to imgr. I didn't realize the default image size is MASSIVE!!! Is there a handy-dandy way to rescale these or should I bother? Maybe everyone likes close ups?
1NPJgrR.jpg
 
Here's a shot under the chassis. There's been some work in there, but I'm not positive if it's just repair or some kind of mod.

IHBwpDc.jpg
 
rstites":10dviiwu said:
Yeah, they're 4U. They come with a built in 120Vac fan on the bottom too, so you really need 5U if you want to run them hot so there's room to move air beneath the amp. The fan is seated right under the preamp tubes, so you need a space under the amp to push hot air into form the fans stock. I'm planning to move those fans to back of these rack units so they blow out the back since I'm not playing big stages out in the summer heat with them.*

* If you're doing this, you want a space between everything in a rack to begin with IMO.
Click to expand...
Cool, thanks for letting me know! I'd move the fans, too.

I agree, things that are going to get hot like this need some room for ventilation.

Love the closeups!! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top