Amp1 Mercury for me. I take one as a backup to gigs (travels in the "Tick" attached to my Mono gigbag) and for the odd rehearsal. 4 channels but I only find 2 of them useful ("vintage" and "classic" are great Marshalls ... the "clean" and the "modern", not so much). Sounds great, it's small...
That looks pretty legit to me. Lots of them don't have the COA so I wouldn't sweat that.
You can check the S/N here:
https://www.music-man.com/serial-number-database
Well that's great to hear- thanks :) The amplification issue is mostly what's holding me back. I have my current setup dialed in perfectly and the idea of starting over is daunting. Though I get the sense it'll be worth it in the long run.
95% of the time we're doing our own sound for smaller...
I've been on the fence with this for a while. I love gigging with an amp + cab (I LOVE my main amp), but it would be so much simpler with an FM9. Might have to bite the bullet and play with one for a while.
I've had both, still have the Mercury. They kind of meet in the middle sonically, but I find the Mercury the more versatile of the two boxes. (That said, it depends on your style a bit.)
If you get the "Midi1" adapter then you can use MIDI to change a bunch of other parameters that are handy.
I went to a Morningstar switcher to avoid tap dancing and then replaced any non-MIDI pedals with a HX Stomp. Made life so much easier for gigs. Zero regrets.
The speaker outputs are in parallel, so you're fine using the second speaker output rather than putting it in-line. It's effectively the same thing.
(I do the same thing with an IR loader I use at gigs.)