Help deciding on a mesa Mark 5 or 7

thanks for all the input

Im only going to use it at home.

Recently i sold my Herbert, JVM and Schmidt. The mark V 90w i had for a coulle of months and sold it last May. I dont remember much as i only had it 6 months.

I would love to have the 4, sadly i think it wont deliver at night, the time i only have i could play.

My brother has the V and 7, saturday i played both, i prefferrd the 35, i thook it with me.
Back home i hooked it up in “my” room on a 2x12.

My findings are:
1x12, extreme delivers at 10w
2x12, mk4 all the way at 35w

At my brothers, we played a C90 1x12
Im used to V30
So the 35 was shining
I noticed i could dail the V in if i had the time on 10w like the 35 but the 7 not, it only went to 25w

Back home on the 2x12 where i will be putting the amp, i was enjoying the 35w mode, meaning i could use both V or 7

It was my first time playing the 7, like the 35w wirh some time i would get to know how to dail it in.

Thanks for all your input!
It didnt help at all!!!!!!
All upur post sounded like the confersations im having in my head during the day !!!!
 
At the moment im using the graphic eq with settings that dont gell with the clean channel at all, id like to have a low gain channel. So the step up to the bigger ones is a good choice. I miss having the eq preset option for the clean channel.
 
For people that have both V and 7

I liked the solo knob

I remember that it was more then just a volume boost, it felt more as a boost before the preamp.

How do you feel about missing that on the 7?
 
skoora said:
It's the same for Ch1. Adding treble increases saturation which is the dead giveaway but adding bass will eventually get the flubs going too, more so in Tweed mode.
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Yep. But you can get away with much more bass on channel 1. It is absolutely imperative to keep it low on channels 2 and 3.
 
shadow070 said:
I would love to have the 4, sadly i think it wont deliver at night, the time i only have i could play.
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Yeah, I had the 4 and while the cleans and lead tones were glorious, low volume playing wasn't its forte, the master volume would become insanely touchy and R2 as a crunch channel was so-so, whereas your 5:35's Crunch (like my 5:25's) is awesome!
And whenever someone offers a 4 in Europe, they're usually asking stupid prices (>2k) nowadays as well.
 
rbasaria said:
But the small Vs are pretty good, but for me didn't hold up in a band context.
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This was my experience of the 5:35 head

I thought it sounded pretty good on it's own but totally sucked in a jam situation


So it was basically a massively overpriced practice amp for me
 
Orvillain said:
Yep. But you can get away with much more bass on channel 1. It is absolutely imperative to keep it low on channels 2 and 3.
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Not at all. On CH 2 you can use a decent amount of bass on Edge and Crunch. You don’t need to use the GEQ on those modes for a punchy rock and metal tone. It’s MK 1 mode where you need to kill the bass. On CH1 I never got the bass higher than 12 O’Clock if I wanted things to not get tubby. But I was always running the cleans pretty hot. If you run CH1 very clean it’s very normal you could have a higher bass setting, just like any Mark. Tweed mode needed it lower though but higher could be desirable if you were going for a cranked deluxe feel and actually wanted that kind of soft bass response.
CH 3, if running it as a traditional MK lead channel, yes. The bass stays low. But you could still set it higher than I ever could on a MKIII or IV. I could usually get away with 9-10 O’Clock without sacrificing tightness.

But so much of it depends on how you’re using the amp. Not everyone’s clean, crunch and high gain are the same.
 
Devin said:
This was my experience of the 5:35 head

I thought it sounded pretty good on it's own but totally sucked in a jam situation


So it was basically a massively overpriced practice amp for me
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I had the 25, and it was awesome at home and recording, but didn't have enough power to hold up with a metal drummer. Kinda sucked because other small amps were able to hold up fine. But yeah, I agree, expensive practice amp lol. I think if you don't play out, these are perfect.
 
rbasaria said:
but didn't have enough power to hold up with a metal drummer. Kinda sucked because other small amps were able to hold up fine.
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Which ones and with how many speakers?

I've gigged a few times with a Tubemeister 18, a Carvin V3m and an Engl Ironball and a 2x12 cab or a 4x12, and the Carvin had it easiest with 4x EL84, but the other two were also running out of breath pretty soon. I mean, I got it to work, and our metal drummer does a decent 120-125dB on his own (Paiste Rude cymbals will take the enamel off your teeth o_O ), but there's not much left in terms of trying to use a clean-clean tone then anymore.
I'd venture to say that something like a PRS MT15 or Engl Fireball 25 (both with 2x 6L6) would hold up better...but my guess is that most (if not all) 2x EL84 amps (18-25W range) will have at least some trouble with really loud drummers.
 
IDK if it sways anyone, but I consider the VII to be two amps. I mainly play in Channels 1 and 3, and I go back and forth between IIC and IV mode on channel 3. If I am feeling like a bigger, broader sound, I use IIC mode. If I want more compression and saturation with a slightly tighter sound, I go IV.

So when I go to jam with people, I can decide if I’m wanting the amp to be a IIC for the day or a IV for the day, and since it has the huge power transformer like the IIC and JP2C, it’s got a bit more punch to it than most other Mark amps.
 
I like the vii or the jp, the V90 is one of my least favorite high gainers. It’s so weak in a side by side comparison, narrow and lacks authority. I have seen another dude here mention the vii doesn’t “move air” but having also owned a plethora of mark iii and iv, a few at the same time as the vii, I just can’t agree with that at all. The vii and jp bring back the punch that they lost with the v90. But I basically love all the mark series outside the v90, all slightly different with different strengths and weaknesses.
 
Speeddemon said:
Which ones and with how many speakers?

I've gigged a few times with a Tubemeister 18, a Carvin V3m and an Engl Ironball and a 2x12 cab or a 4x12, and the Carvin had it easiest with 4x EL84, but the other two were also running out of breath pretty soon. I mean, I got it to work, and our metal drummer does a decent 120-125dB on his own (Paiste Rude cymbals will take the enamel off your teeth o_O ), but there's not much left in terms of trying to use a clean-clean tone then anymore.
I'd venture to say that something like a PRS MT15 or Engl Fireball 25 (both with 2x 6L6) would hold up better...but my guess is that most (if not all) 2x EL84 amps (18-25W range) will have at least some trouble with really loud drummers.
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I've had the MT15, Fireball 25, and EVH LBX all do pretty well against a drummer with a 212 or 412...though the LBX was just kinda barely getting there. The MT15 was me and my other guitar players main amps for a few years. The V3m is a 50 watt amp, if I remember right, so I would expect that to do better than the others.

I agree, most of the 2xEL84 amps seem to struggle doing that kind of volume really well. The Mesa was significantly worse at this than the LBX, though.
 
Holy-diver said:
I like the vii or the jp, the V90 is one of my least favorite high gainers. It’s so weak in a side by side comparison, narrow and lacks authority. I have seen another dude here mention the vii doesn’t “move air” but having also owned a plethora of mark iii and iv, a few at the same time as the vii, I just can’t agree with that at all. The vii and jp bring back the punch that they lost with the v90. But I basically love all the mark series outside the v90, all slightly different with different strengths and weaknesses.
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Yeah I think that guy was @GJgo. I also have a Mark VII and told him that it definitely moves air and has a great punch, but he wouldn't listen.
Then he tried to give some sort of anecdotal definition of punch... Whatever. I agree with you that the Mark VII definitely punches and sound great.
 
skoora said:
But so much of it depends on how you’re using the amp. Not everyone’s clean, crunch and high gain are the same.
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Precisely.

I find on my bridge pickup I can go to 12 o'clock or maybe 1 o'clock on channel 1 with the bass. But channel 2 and 3, the bass needs to be 10 o'clock or lower really. Any higher than that, it gets way too fuzzy and sludgy, which can be cool for some things, but not rhythm playing for me.
 
Currently the MKV 35 combo is my main amp. I tried out the 7 and came away thinking the V35 might have been a wise choice.

I didn’t like mark 7 mode or mark2c vintage mode.

On my 35, I really like channel 1. I use both the fat clean and the crunch modes a lot. That would be my reason for getting a 7, so I could use both in tandem. On the flipside, I could just buy a MK V25, an a/b box and save a lot of $$$.

As far as the 90watt mark V goes… I briefly had one. I LOVED channel 2’s mark 1 mode. I felt like that amp needed separate slider EQ’s per channel as I set both channel 2 and 3 up differently. I didn’t like the black shaddow speaker with the 90 watt poser section. I much preferred my v30 recto cab.

Of all the Mark amp out currently, I’d like to check out the JP2c as it has the separate EQ sliders to set up your tones differently.
 
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