Clark Kent's FW18 Mesa Mark IV John Petrucci Guide

I have a similar problem Ron_R : I kinda resolved it turning a little down the LOW RESONANCE in the speaker tab of the amp block. 7 was a bit too much, turning it down at 6.00 seems to cut out this vibration :)
 
I had to turn that LOW RES to 2 to virtually get rid of it. I imagine it has to do with the IR I'm using (don't remember which atm) and the speaker in the XiTone. Still sounds amazing, and those two notes really ring through and only vibe if I sustain them for awhile. Love the preset though. Thanks CK!!!
 
Clark Kent said:
So me and Irotlas went all in yesterday. We have a Mark IV at our rehearsal space that's all set for the Petrucci tone. EL34s in the outer sockets and running a Mesa 4x12 Traditional cab like the sir himself. We decided we would do the mother of all A/B tests and go through everything! Essentially we wanted to get "that Petrucci sound" so we set the Mark IV like Petrucci:

BottomMK4Settings.jpg


And started comparing what each knob did. F.ex. how every GEQ knob on the amp worked against the USA Lead GEQ page. It took as the whole day but finally we know how to set the amp sim to sound EXACTLY RIGHT! The way we compared this was that we used a Line6 wireless system for the guitar and headphones and we would take turns on who's tweaking and who's playing. The one playing would walk far away so he wouldn't hear the real amp in the room but just the signal of the real amp or the Axe-Fx. At first it was really obvious which one was the real thing. Luckily in the end we got so close that we wouldn't bet money for it. :)

Remember, this is not us trying to tone match anything. We're not going for Petrucci's album tones. What we're doing is turning the Mark IV amp sim to sound just like the real thing with the Petrucci settings.

So first of all the correct amp sim to use for this sound is: USA Lead so not the + or Bright switches. Turn the FAT on which does what the pull fat switch does in the real amp.

Then the speaker page needs a small adjustment for the low resonance. Remember that we were using the same cabinet Petrucci uses himself. 110hz as the frequency. 2.8 Q and 7.00 as the low res amount. That's it. Obviously there's a particular Cab Pack out there that is based on this cabinet so you might want to look into that if you're really into getting this sound nailed. :)

Overall we were struggling with getting the palm mutes correct and I think that's something people in here have been also complaining about a little bit. It's got everything to do with the MASTER VOLUME setting. 4.00 matches Petrucci's settings so leave it there and never touch it. 4.5 screwed it up. 3.5 scooped the sound a made it fizzy. For that right fast attack palm mute of the real thing the master has to be at 4.

The GEQ. We went through it quite thoroughly and realized the small differences. On this particular amp that we had the 2200hz and 6600hz frequencies were lower than on the Axe-Fx. F.ex. 6600hz frequency was around 4000hz but the Axe-Fx frequency was around 5000hz. Don't worry about this. The Q on those knobs is huge meaning that they're wide EQs and the frequency isn't that important and I'm sure the GEQ on the Axe-Fx matches Cliff's GEQ. However on the real thing when you set the GEQ symmetrically it's not actually boosting the same amounts. The real Mark IV had 1-2dB more highs. What we really want to know is "what are the settings for the GEQ in the Axe-Fx to match those Petrucci settings?". Well I've got them for you. +7.00 for 80hz, 0.00 for 240hz (yes... this knob worked a bit differently on the real amp), -6.5 for 750hz, +2.00 for 2200hz and +6.50 for 6600hz.

So now this poor Mark IV has lost it's value. Everyone Axe-Fx owned owns it. :) I'd love to hear how this works for you so please post clips in this thread. I'm really interested to hear them.

Here's an extremely quick clip I put together with my EBMM BFR JP6:


The IR I'm using for this clip is from Cab Pack 7: CK USA Trad SM57-MD421 01
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Think we could have a preset for this? I'd love to try this tone out with a few IR's (Both yours and OH)
 
esbatmusic said:
Think we could have a preset for this? I'd love to try this tone out with a few IR's (Both yours and OH)
Click to expand...

Well I did my best to explain the whole preset. I probably don't have that exact preset anymore but a tweaked version. The boost is just stock settings for the the TS808 and the delay is 500ms.
 
Konstantin said:
OMG. This is the same sounds :) I hear only a small difference in the low frequency. Can we get this preset?
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Well that's most likely pretty close to the preset I described in the beginning of this thread. The bass is lowered a lot. Maybe even 0? It's Irotlas Axe-Fx and not mine so I don't have that preset. :)
 
Thomas Larsson said:
I still think the presence controll doesn´t work much och this simulation.
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The presence control on this amp is quite different than on other amps in real life also. Personally I had it set to zero and simply used more treble back when I didn't have my Axe-Fx and only a Mark IV. It's not comparable to presence knobs on modern amps.
 
I suspect this may be sacrilegious around here, but I'm not a big Petrucci fan (or anything metalish/harsh for that matter). But, somehow this thread inspired me to check out the USA Lead amp (with stock cab #58 ) and use the tweaks here as a starting point, and I may have my new favorite amp for crunchier stuff! It is a very nice full-bodied clean(ish) sound for using a pick (but not as outstanding for finger-picking) when I don't need it to be super-clean, and really jumps out. So far I've just noodled on my own with it, but looking forward to seeing how it sits in the mix with the rest of the band next week. Thanks for the effort here!

One routine that I've developed is when I tune in a new amp, I dedicate a footpedal to control the crunchiness (usually by increasing input gain (sometimes a master or a drive pedal) while decreasing output level in the amp block). That let's me fine-tune the crunch-factor for whatever mood I happen to be in.
 
That's great to hear Scott.

"USA" in general has a reputation of being a metal amp manufacturer when infact they have some of the best clean and crunch sounds.

The USA cleans and the TX Star are the best cleans IMO.
 
First off, thanks to Clark for the awesome thread. I had not explored the Mark IV in the Axe really at all, and this was a good intro. I'm reasonably familiar with the amp itself, so this was a cool experiment for me.

Using your suggested settings, for me, the tone was flat and bassy -- which is absolutely not a reflection on your settings, so much as my gear. My assumption is the difference in guitars, as I don't have a JP model, or other similar more modern model guitar. For this clip I'm using a PRS Mira, which I dig because it's half way between an SG and an LP in terms of tone. Being that it's a more vintage-leaning guitar, I found I had to use the following settings, which are slightly tweaked from the original recommendations:

Turn bright switch on
Treble on 8
Mids at 5
Bass 2
Pres 3.5
Input drive: 5.0
Input trim: 1.0
Overdrive: 8.27

In the Amp EQ section, I basically used your original settings, but pulled the 240Hz slider down to -1.00.
I don't have cab pack 7 (yet) so I used: 073: 4x12 Ck USA Trad 57-121 UR

I'm not really a chugga-chugga kinda player, so this is probably a little safe and derivative. Oh well. Here's my clip:

https://soundcloud.com/anthony-ferguson-7/mark-iv-tone-test


Thanks again, Clark!
 
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