Metropoulos Forum

Here is a couple of clips from my '76 mod 5.

guitar to amp to cab, mic into protools and a little reverb.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=13270405

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=13270407

Gets the tick of approval. A very big tick that is.

I was having discussions with Mark about getting a mod 5 and then sadly and unfortunately he passed away.
Anyhow by some fluke of a chance i managed to snap one up that came up on ebay.( i was searching for a year everyday ). i did not bid, i just paid for the asking price for a jcm800 with mod 5. I feel incredibly blessed to have one of these as there are only 49 amps in the world that mark did, and considering i have zero experience building amps.

Oh. and who ever said the mod 5 is a one trick pony should bite their tongue. Just by pickup position selection & volume pot control on my steinberger gm4t (the guitar shaped one with the wooden body not the bat shaped one) i can go from vh to acdc to pink floyd to malmsteen to mark knopler to eagles. Just brilliant. Im glad you have one of these amps too!

STEINBERGER, this is not one of Mark's that he modded.
When i got the amp it had a PCB board, which i hate, that was modded back in the early 80's. So I pulled the PCB board and other modfications it had and made my own board and did the Mod 5 to it. The important part is that the PT, OT and choke are original.

For a 50W, it sure has some balls.

You are absolutely right the Mod 5 is very versatile and just a fun amp to play!

I'm probably the guy that said the Mod 5 is a "one trick pony"...at least in my experience it is. Of course you can get dynamics and change the sound quite a bit by selecting different pickup combinations and twiddling the volume and tone knobs and all that just as you would with any guitar and amp...but I can't get a good clean tone out of it...The clean channel on my Rockstah Marshall was left untouched by Mark, but I would need to have channel switching and I would have to change the volume to get the levels matched...just can't get a good clean sound at my fingertips. It certainly doesn't come close to my Super Reverb for the SRV type stuff when I play my strat.

I like the amp a lot for the first album tones in a bedroom/small club setting, but at least for me it is actually a limited amp. It sounds terrible with low output pickups in my experience...I'm still learning and playing around with my Mod 5, so who knows-I might stumble on some switching option or figure out a way to dial in more things...but for now it is pretty good for Van Halen, but not much else.

Well done. Amp sounds good.

nice amp, which schematic did you used? im trying to do the mod 5 in my amp too

Sounds great! Very squishy and detailed at the same time.

You did this to a '76 2204, or 1987?

jnew wrote:Well done. Amp sounds good.

thanks James.

colonias wrote:nice amp, which schematic did you used? im trying to do the mod 5 in my amp too

Colonias,

thanks, I didn't use a schematic.

AndyK wrote:Sounds great! Very squishy and detailed at the same time.

You did this to a '76 2204, or 1987?

AndyK,

Here is what she looked like when I originally got the amp.





It was originally modded back in the early 80's.

Here are some pictures after i took out the PCB and put in the Point to Point board and Prior to doing the Mod 5 to her.

http://s1192.photobucket.com/user/tgrov ... 1976%2050w