• Great amp at any price!!!

  
  As reviewed by Brendan Delumpa on 3/1/2012

  I first got introduced to this amp back in October 2011 purely by accident when I saw it in GC's isolation room. I had never heard of the brand DV Mark, then one of the sales guys told me it was made by the same guys who build the MarkBass amps. I was definitely familiar with those, as the bassist in my band has one, and it sounds killer. So I had no doubt that it would perform just as well. I was not disappointed! I finally purchased the amp last week and haven't looked back. This amp is all about versatility, able to produce gorgeous cleans to full on, scooped metal tones. The EQ and presence controls are very usable, unlike other amps I've played and tested. But the real power comes from the interplay between the Continuous Power Control (CPC) and the Master and Gain knobs. The CPC controls the clean headroom of the amp, varying the output between 1 and 40 Watts in pentode mode, and .5 and 15 Watts in triode mode. The whole point of the CPC is to adjust your clean headroom to match the venue. If you're playing in a smaller venue or church (as I do), then turn down the CPC. This forces you to turn down the master and gain to maintain a clean tone, thus decreasing your overall volume. The boost, which is controlled by footswitch (any mono footswitch will work), gives you a 10 dB boost, so if you set amp to just the edge of breakup, you can engage the boost to get into overdrive. It's very effective. Tone-wise, because the EQ's are so usable, this amp is able to cop lots of different tones, from deep, Fender cleans, to snarling-dog modern amps. I usually stick the EQ's near the center mark and that tends to get me the brighter Marshall-esque tones that I prefer. Another fantastic feature is the auto-bias. As long as you install power tubes that are reasonably matched (I believe to within 10%), the amp will bias them to their optimal setting - automagically! No more hooking up a bias meter! The amp will also take either EL34's or 6L6's. I've asked if they'll take KT66's, but haven't gotten an answer, but I imagine they'd be okay since KT66's are drop-replacements for 6L6's. You can probably tell that I'm absolutely happy with this amp! Though a single-channel amp, the boost makes it act like a two-channel amp. It also is VERY pedal-friendly. I can go on singing the praises of this amp but I'll just stop and say: BUY IT!

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