brian_hahn's Reviews

Hidden gem

If you don’t have a mark or recto and you see one of these in decent condition pick it up. Get your tech to lift the ground on the reverb input and this amp will absolutely sing. The tone is kind of between a mark and a recto. The rhythm has more of a Marshally crunchy grind like the recto but less boomy bottom end (it runs el-84’s) and the leads are smoother closer to a mark. Mine is a head with tan tolex and beat to hell but fully functional (minus the reverb disconnected use the fx loop). Just remember if you disconnect the reverb you’ll be sending a massive signal into the PI and power tubes so have some el-84’s with lower current throughput. I’ve had good luck in the 35-40 ma range for ia. Set it up like this and it gets that cranked AC30 mojo but with Mesa voicing and features. This only works with the dc-3, skip the 5 and 10. Models with big bottle tubes also have a long tail PI and more headroom. The magic comes from the (frankly) unreasonable plate voltage and bias, unbalanced paraphase inverter and unbypassed power tube cathodes. It will brutalize el84’s we’re talking service life of 3-6 months for a quartet but it will sound fantastic clean and dirty. This is old school power amp distortion technique paired with a modern cascaded gain stage preamp.

Preferred Settings + Usage: