Vintage 1980 Blonde Mesa Boogie Mark Iib Reverb Altec
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SN# 5162 1980 Mesa/Boogie MkIIB, 60 watt 1 x 12″ combo with reverb, the model that country legend Brent Mason used in his recording rig (he said he likes it for its clean tone). The amp features treble, middle, and bass controls, with volume 1 and master for the clean channel, lead drive and lead master for the overdrive channel, and pull pots for bright (for each channel separately), midrange shift (fat boost), gain boost, and “pull lead,” in case you don’t have the footswitch with you. On the back panel, it has controls for reverb, presence, and slave level, as well as jacks for effects send and return, and slave out. The reverb tank, wrapped in a padded vinyl bag, is a Hammond 3-spring long tank; the reverb is lush, and sounds fantastic. There are three speaker jacks: one 8 ohm and two 4 ohm. M/B says that impedance matching is not important and that for the most headroom with a single speaker, the 8 ohm speaker should be plugged into one of the 4 ohm output jacks. The MkIIB is renowned for its clean channel – smooth and fat – but this one has had a few minor tweaks done to make it better: first, when it was new, the overdrive channel was a little too dark in relation to the clean channel, so on M/B’s recommendation, one capacitor was changed (this happened when the amp was less than a month old). The two channels have a much more balanced tone since the mod was performed. Some time later, when the power tubes needed to be replaced, amp design/repair wizard Bruce Egnater installed a small trimpot inside to facilitate setting the bias – now any brand of 6L6 power tubes can be run, whereas in the original circuit, only M/B power tubes were recommended. The final mod was a new pair of capacitors in the tone stack (SCR Solen fast caps), recommended by Gerald Weber and based on the last version of the tweed Bassman, which ran all .022uF caps. Before these caps were changed, the amp had a bit of a boomy quality, but now it has an amazing sound. Also included with the amp are the original compact footswitch with red LED indicator, the original soft cover in black vinyl, the original bill of sale, and all factory correspondence and Mesa/Boogie sales literature from the period, including Maintenance and Repair Information and schematics. The amp is loaded with a sought after Altec Lansing 12″ 8 ohm speaker, which sounds great. Please remember that Mesa/Boogie Mark series amps are designed to be played loud, and sound much better (especially the overdrive channel) at gig volumes. This is a small (approx. 60 lbs. and 18.5″ x 18.5″ x 10″) combo amp that can cover pretty much any size performance – its volume capabilities are quite amazing. The amp has played many gigs and has some rips in the cream-colored tolex and a couple of tears in the grille cloth, but it’s in surprisingly good shape for its age (Mesa/Boogies tend to show lifting along the edges of the tolex, and this can be seen in the photos); it was recently in for service, and pronounced in great shape by the tech. It has never had a problem during a performance. During this period, M/B stopped offering their solid state Fetron device in the preamp; this amp has the switch under the chassis to drop the voltage for the Fetron, but M/B found that the Fetrons were unreliable, so they included an extra 12AX7 preamp tube instead. This amp will be shipped with two spare 12AX7s. 
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