Carr Mercury V: The Amp to Rule Them All

I watched lots of vids on the Carr Mercury V before I purchased one. Every vid had an impact on me. But this video is the best of them all. Really gets down to the amp itself and what is does aside from just playing it. Fantastic review of this amp. And I thank you Mark for time spent giving us a fantastic review of this wonderful amp. I’ve had my Carr amp a couple months now. It will never get old. Something new every time I plug in. So much to explore with this amp. For me, It’s the amp of all amps. Definitely not a one trick pony like so many amps out there. The Carr Mercury V covers a tremendous amount of territory. You can do so much with this amp. And it will make you a better player as well. I’m a home bedroom player, this amp fits the bill perfectly. If you think about it, Most of us spend the major amount of our guitar playing time in the bedroom. Don’t get me wrong, this amp will do any venue out there

Great review, I have one also. This is the amp I have searched for all my life. Its like a Swiss Army knife. Does the fender clean, Marshall crunch and killer sustain. Its sooooo touch sensitive you can get every nuance of picking and muting, sounds HUGE for a 1x12 and the icing on the cake....the attenuator! This is the last amp I will ever need and I have had many from Marshall, Boogie, Fender,Peavey, nothing touches this amp.

Great demo! You helped me decide on this model. Just ordered it. Thanks for the detailed walk through.

The channels are already jumpered or in parallel with the switch up. When you switch it down to series it reconfigures the input to cascade the high / low channels in series similar to what you find on a JCM 800 master volume Marshall. This is a brutal little amp that will cover so much ground. If I didn't have a Kemper (making tube amps obsolete for me) I'd buy one of these in a heartbeat. Great bedroom or studio amp. Probably not quite as useful in some live situations.

i did'nt stop there i went all the way and bought a carr slant 6v. party time! so happy !

Man, I was all set on buying a Tone King Imperial then I played the original Mercury today and now I have no direction in life.

Thanks for uploading this extensive demo. This amp sounds magnificent . The (only ?) downside of it seems to be that you have to be practically next to it and change the settings by hand if you want to swap between tones... Which is fine for studio/bedroom use, but for live...? A multiple footswitch with Series/Parallel, Boost and reverb would have been welcome.

Incredible tone. Great walkthrough!

holy smokes... this amp sounds amazing

If this amp had a footswitch with buttons for the three boost modes, I'd buy it. I still might buy it, but ...

The only thing that sucks about this amp is they didn't make the High/low and boost knob foot switchable. Could have covered a lot more sounds on the fly with a 4 button footswitch.

Still have this Beauty ??

Mark what kind pickups are in the neck of your Suhr strat? I want to make sure I get the right ones 😎

Nice demo. I noticed that the neck position pickup on your Suhr strat produces less 60 cycle hum than your Bridge Humbucker. What pickup is loaded into the neck position on this guitar?

Great Video, I just got the same amp. What model Suhr are you using in this?

I can't decide between this or a Skylark. I'm more into "Fender" tones which is supposedly the Skylark's forte, but the Mercury has so many useful features. Mercury is ~ $140 more than the Skylark - not a problem for me.

This amp sounds amazing but how would you compare it to your Magnatone Varsity Reverb? Are they at all similar for the exception of an attenuator?? Great vid btw

How’s it holding up after all these years?

I have a Dr Z mini Z right now but I want something with more head room but also small. My attenuator is a real tone suck on that amp sadly. I don't pedal up too much, a chandler germ drive, jhs charlie brown, talisman plate reverb, and a gurus optivalve before everything kind of always on. I want to try my stuff on this amp but there are no dealers by me in NY. I might just order one though. There are no used ones ever so, that's a testament to how much people like this amp I guess.

Great video, thanks! I can't decide between this and the Skylark. Did you choose it just for the boost switch?