Stymphalian Productions - Mesa Mark IV Pack, 3.0

  • Hey guys!


    This is the first Stymphalian Productions profile pack that has been merged with the 3.0 firmware!


    The Mesa Mark IV Kemper Pack contains 15 profiles in total, spanning across various styles from lush clean tones to balls out thrash.


    The profiles are -


    JS-MIV Abyss Clean
    JS-MIV American Metal
    JS-MIV Burning Lead
    JS-MIV Classic Crunch
    JS-MIV Classic Thrash
    JS-MIV Dream Clean
    JS-MIV Heavy Crunch
    JS-MIV JP Rhythm
    JS-MIV JP Solo
    JS-MIV Kraken
    JS-MIV Precision Metal
    JS-MIV SGT Slaughter
    JS-MIV Smooth Clean
    JS-MIV Thrash Angel
    JS-MIV Tight Mark


    Visit the Big Cartel page below to get the tones!


    http://theblackstymphalian.big…rk-iv-kemper-profile-pack


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    Edited once, last by Jaymz ().

  • Amazing profiles. Never been a huge Mesa fan, but I am convinced now. Especially love the fact you included some stomps and effects. Great work and keep them coming.

    “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”

  • Have only had time to do a quick run-through of the Mark IV profiles so far - I really like them. They definitely go for balls-out metal, but I was surprised to find some really, really good clean profiles in there too. There's a Petrucci clean that sounds EXACTLY like Pull Me Under. I will record a clip when I move the KPA back to the "studio". The added effects I was also surprised are done very well - normally I immediately replace non-EQ effects with my own presets, but these I found a bit more inspiring.


    As for the distorted tone, you really pulled a great range of tone from this amp. The classic thrash profile NAILS the Metallica Puppets tone. The American Metal profile is pretty spot on for Lamb of God. I saw the name of the profile and the first thing I tried was Laid to Rest, and it sounded very, very similar to that tone. Overall I didn't feel like I needed to tweak too much.


    I definitely recommend this pack, but I want to mention some things I think could be improved upon. Out the box, these profiles are HOT. I almost always have to turn the gain down, sometimes quite a bit. I'm using a EBMM JPM (1st edition), but I swapped the pickups for Dimarzio Crunchlab and Liquifire. They're hot but not extreme. I don't think I've seen too many commercial profiles with this much distortion - 8's, 9's, and even a 10. Of course that's an easy solution - just turn down the distortion, but it takes a bit longer to audition them.


    The other thing is that these are mainly designed for straight-up metal. You get that phasy SM57 shoved into the speaker sound. That's a good and bad thing. Through headphones it's more obvious, but through the stage monitor, it's not as noticeable. A touch of Pure Cab can clear that up, but you still don't quite get the crystal clear amp in the room sound.


    I mainly spent time playing the JP rhythm profile, and comparing it to my favorite SoundLab Mark IV profile, which has a very JP tone to it. I tweaked them to be similar EQ-wise - I found that each had favorable aspects and neither "beat" the other out-right. The SoundLab was a bit more open and midsy with less phasy-ness, but yours was more punchy and searing in the upper mids. I get a better djenty chug out of these. EDIT: It's a lot like changing the High Resonance setting in the Cab block. There's never a perfect setting there, and the further you go from center (0.0), the more fake things start to get.


    So well done. I still need to A/B these vs. Arthur D's Mark IV pack, which was also very dialed towards modern model. But my main issue with that pack was that it needed a good bit of pre-EQ to get them where I wanted, and they always seemed a bit dark, like it was hard to get that djenty upper midrange to always come through like I wanted. These I feel do not need any front-side or Amp parameter tweaking - there's a wide range of tones and they're dialed in pretty much perfectly.


    I also have ChopTones Mark V channel 3 pack (the first version), Pete Turley's Mark V, TAF Mark V, and Soundside's Mark V. I felt ChopTones sounded good but didn't give me the impression I was playing a Mark V vs. any variety of other boosted high-gain amps. I think they used boosts rather than the amp's EQ knobs to dial in the distortion tone, which washes out the Boogie mojo. Pete's I thought were better, but he prefers Marshall cabs with T75's and those more 80's esque sounds. They are good, but not what I want from this amp. TAF's were just weird - seems like a lot of tweaking and cab swapping could get close to the sound I want, but it was such a struggle. Soundside's sounded a bit dull, and I feel the quality is good, but the amp is not dialed in like I would want it - what I do love about Armin is that he lets you know all his settings for each profile, for the most part. But the JP settings profile just didn't get the JP tone for me, so I moved on.


    If you are looking for a JP tone, it's here, but I think I prefer SoundLab's. If you want Lamb of God, Between the Buried and Me, or Puppets/Justice-era Metallica, you will love this pack.

  • Very in depth review! Thanks man :)


    I think the high gain is my error as im sure I turned the gain up on the profiles while I was jamming on them with my EMG loaded guitar *pups set quite low* so the sounds are profiled with lower gain but i've bumped them up manually before hand.


    Really appreciate you going into this much detail and checking out the pack.


    Would it be ok to quote some of this?


    Cheers!

  • Of course. One more thing i should mention. The signature mark iv sound imo is when you really drive the treble on it and every note gets a little vowel-y. I call it "getting rad". Not sure why i call it that but... anyway, of all the boogie packs i have this one gets the most rad. Its why i chase this amp tone, so this pack makes me very happy. At first i thought maybe the kemper just couldnt do it, but then i started hearing hints of it in some profiles. These really nail it home.


    I also found myself back Definition down just a little to get a bit more fatness to the tone, but it doesnt sound harsh, even at 10

  • From what I heard from that YT clip, they sound really immense. "Totally" different sounding MK4 profiles than in my pack, which I like. I heard a lot of MK4 profiles and they just weren't my cup of tea (personal taste I guess). I profiled a combo version connected to mesa Boogie MK4 2x12 and Mesa Stiletto cabs. It took me 2 days to find amp's sweet spot with no pedals in front of it. examples
    Good job James!

  • Yeah I much prefer the Mark IV without a boost in front. Running the treble higher also gives it some nice saturation...I think I usually kept it around 7 or so.


    Curious about the Mark V too, I heard it's rhythm tones are even better than the IV but it's not quite as "liquid" in the lead side of things.