I’m about ten years late to the party on this one, so there’s not much I can say that hasn’t been said before. But after owning a Mark IV for a couple of years and loving it, I finally picked up a Mark V. Is it better than the IV? In some ways, definitely. In others, maybe not - but barely.
How is it better? Well for one, the spring reverb actually works and sounds great. My Mark IV as soon as you turn the reverb above “0,” the drive channels instantly lose a ton of bass and fullness, and sound tinny. At first, I thought there was something wrong with my IV, but turns out that’s just expected behavior for them. Since the Reverb isn’t footswitchable, in my mind it may as well not even be there. The V corrects this problem on both fronts - reverb can be turned on and off via footswitch, dialed in different amounts of each of the 3 channels, and it sounds amazing with a nice long tail and doesn’t affect the core tone of any channel at all.
Other great features are 3 modes per channel, some of which are a little better than others but that’s the point - nearly anyone’s preferences are catered to in this amp. I find channel 1’s clean to be almost identical to the Mark IV’s RHY 1 channel, but with a more usable EQ. The Mark V also adds a fat and tweed mode to this channel, expanding the range quite a bit and can even double as a light crunch channel in tweed mode.
Channel 2 offers Edge, Crunch, and Mark I modes… the standout to me here is the Mark I mode by far. With the gain and treble maxed out, the Mark I mode could be a high gain amp all on its own. This is one of the best tones I’ve had from any amp really, and I’d even be happy if this was the only channel/mode of an entire amp! It’s much darker than your usual Mark tone, though it can get lost in the mix a little and probably isn’t the best pairing for lower tunings. Keep the treble maxed just like you would on a real Mark I or it becomes very dull and muddy. This is Fender EQ topology, remember.
Channel 3’s Mark IIC mode gets a lot of praise, but I’ve grown fond of my Mark IV, so I jump straight into IV mode. It is an excellent recreation - side by side nearly identical to my Mark IV the way I have it dialed. On my IV, I set my gain and drive to 8, and treble to max. On the V, I set the gain to about 7-8, treble maxed, so I’m not surprised they sound so close. However, the Mark IV does have a couple of controls that the V doesn’t have, and if you really use those then you might be disappointed by the V. For example, the IV has both a gain control and a “lead drive” control, which can be dialed in differently for some variety on the tone. I personally like them both set exactly the same, which is how the V works, but if you like lower gain and higher drive, or vice versa, you can’t get that same tone out of the V. Another missing features is the “harmonics” or “mid gain” switch of the IV, which changes the voicing of the amp. The V feels to me like it’s based on the “harmonics” voicing, which is the most popular voicing I’m sure, but if you like the “mid gain” voicing it isn’t here. And last thing, the IV has “shift” controls on the presence pull pots, which drastically changes the way the attack of the notes sounds and feels. I like to use the shift function on RHY 2 of the IV to liven it up, the V does not have this voicing at all.
One other issue with the V so far, on the IV I had a six button footswitch - the first four buttons being RHY 1, RHY 2, Lead, and Lead +EQ. I liked being able to jump from Lead to Lead+EQ directly from the footswitch without tap dancing, and the volume levels were pretty close on that channel. On the V, engaging the EQ on Channel 3 results in a HUGE volume boost, so much so that you either have to press both the “EQ” and “CH 3” buttons at the same time with your foot, or as I’ve done, just set it so that Channel 3 has the EQ “always on” and dial the master to match channels 1 and 2. It’s really a minor complaint, but I do feel like that’s the only way to use it - maybe if there were a total volume control as part of the graphic EQ, kind of like how MXR EQ footpedals are - that could balance the volumes a little better. Anyway, those are my only complaints and overall it’s a superior amp to the Mark IV as long as you are using multiple modes. If you live and breathe on the IV’s lead channel, I think the IV has the superior lead channel and offers a few cool features that the V doesn’t have.