Hi there. I recently aquired a used spider valve hd100 mkii in a straight swap for my laney ironheart head. It's alot more veristile compared to the laney.
I was not used to the volume that's for sure! lol. The master volume was so sensitive compared to my old laney which I think had a built in attenuator in the master volume, whereas the hd100 is pure master volume.
I have 2.00 firmware and use the mkii edit program extensively to setup patches.
I have setup my volumes on all patches I use as follows.
Pedal Volume: min - 0, max - 40.
Channel volume for distorion/gain - 12 o'clock
Channel volume for cleans - 11 o'clock
Master is still pretty sensitive but I'm not blowing my head off but there is no more popping when switching between patches anymore.
I used to have the presence set to 100% but I was using metal blue, but now I am using metal-amber (mesa-boogie orange channel) and only need it set to 12 o'clock now and have a terrific tone.
I also use a bbe 482i sonic maximizer to clean up any mud in the tone and it all sounds killer together.
All in all I am so happy with this amp and everyday I keep discovering new tones with it. All I need now is to upgrade the fbv express to an fbv shortboard and it will be complete.
