Hey Dante,

   That's a pretty good analogy comparing it to integrated stereo systems, I never thought of that, but it's pretty close.
    I usually just break down the basics of a guitar amp like a Fender Twin, or Vox AC 30, or a Marshall Bluesbreaker. All of these are the same thing: a preamp, a power amp, and speakers. You take away any one of these three things and you don't have an amp. As for effects and how they fit into this picture, I like to throw this idea into the picture: Every guitar player knows what stomp box pedals are, because we all started with them, and plugged them into the front of our amps. A lot of those effects do sound better in the front of an amp. Other effects sound much better in between the preamp and power amp.  A rack system lets you put the effects where you want them.

    Here's another question people ask about rack guitar systems: Why would you want a rack type of guitar amp?

  Let me throw out a bit of history of how rack components came into being. In the late 60s and through the 70s into the early 80s, guitar players were using pedals for effects as I mentioned earlier, but many of these things were noisy and some were kind of finicky because they were cheap circuits trying to emulate tricks done in recording studios. Remember the echoplex, or early phase shifters? These are things done with tape decks in the studios. Well, these things evolved into fancy studio processors and sounded so much better than the pedals. Well, now all the high-profile artists got the idea that they wanted to take these studio-grade effects that they used on their records on the road with them when they toured. They bought these high-end processors and had their amps modified to send out line level signals that they could put in these processors, and ran the outputs to separate amps and speakers to duplicate what they did in the studios with the same fidelity. It worked. Stomp boxes got kicked to the curb, and rack processors like Lexicon, Eventide, and a few others were hitting the road and playing arenas around the world. This went on through the early 80s to 1987. That's when Dave Tarnowski saw an opportunity to turn the amplifier industry on its ear, and brought out the MP-1. Now, you could take your preamp signal and insert these processors in between your preamp and power amp, and have all your effects that you want. Plus, he came up with the ideal of making the preamp, which is your basic tone shaper, programmable and allowing you to get any kind of amp tone you wanted from clean to gnarly distorted, and save every single different sound you wanted in a memory chip. Now, you didn't have to be like Joe Perry and take 25 amps with you to every gig. It worked. By the NAMM show of 1988, everyone was making programmable rack preamps. The history speaks for itself.

I bought a used Mp2 and did the Factory Reset but the user entered presets seem to stay? So I opened it up looked for a reset jumper didn't see any and the battery seems permanent on the board.
Is there a way to bring the user presets to what the Factory shipped it with like on the JMP1?
Also is there a list of the Factory presets? the manual didn't list them and say how many they had when new.
Thanks

@ Dante,

    I know you've been using Macs for a long time, and you swear by them. I don't know how many other members here use Macs so it's a singular point of reference, but you seem to not have issues like I've had.

    I've never used GarageBand or Logic. I've heard other people heap praise on Logic, but not too many talk about Garageband. I also remember you not having issues with viruses and other stupid things that Micro-shaft users have to watch out for.

    Anyway, as I told Richard, I'm only looking at a laptop right now to see if it's going to work out. What I'll be looking for is: how well I can navigate my way around the Mac OS, how well I can connect my audio hardware and install my software in it, and how it will handle it. I'm not really looking to use the laptop as a full blown DAW, but at the most maybe as a portable studio recording device with a smaller interface. If it holds up with what I've got now and doesn't drop its connections with the hardware or glitch the software, then I might consider upgrading to a more powerful desktop.
   If you have any suggestions or recommendations about what I should be looking for in a Mac, (like Richard has), I'm open to it. This is all uncharted territory for me.
   I should mention that when I do get the laptop, I mainly want to use it for networking and maybe shooting some video content on it. I can't do that with any of my pcs because they won't even hold together just trying to make audio recordings.

@ Richard,

  I'm not too concerned with running multiple monitors since I'm only looking at a laptop. I don't do that with them anyway.

   Since the price point is pretty close on both, and I'm just sick of win-blows, I think it's time to try something different and see how that works out.

  I know that Focusrite claims the 18i20 will work on Mac as well, but the real question is will it work the same way it's working now? I've always dealt with issues using software that needs a lot of processing power with Micro-shaft PCs, even when I built my own using the best processors, motherboards, etc., and still had these kinds of issues.

   I'm going to go with a good laptop to start with and install my interface with it and see what I get when everything is installed. Then I'll have a better idea if it's the interface or the pc. One thing I can tell you for certain, I'll never get another Dell for as long as I live. We got new computers at my job just two years ago, and they are total garbage. We are constantly calling I.T. to help resolve issues with these damned things. Yep, you guessed it, they're all Dells.

Yup - Nearest to the Front (I should have rotated this to match the PDF)
NOTE: you can see the Volume & Presence knobs at the bottom of the PDF (just noticed that)

Not really sure, compare it with the pcb. But from what I can see the jacks are in the back so I "presume" that these are at the front. So double check it when the unit is open.

Thanks man!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that mean the two closest to the FRONT of the unit? That's what it looks like
So, Q6 and Q7 are for channel A?

Here is the loadsing chart for the MT100, the power fet's for the B channel are Q106 and Q107 located on the bottom left of the PDF.

I've been using Macs forever. You can easily mirror your display or use the HDMI port to run a TV for a monitor, I have a 48" monitor (LED TV) hooked up to a 2015 MacBook Pro.

PCs are disposable, you rarely keep them more than a few years, then get another one. My Macs last me 10 years....easily. Why drive a VW when you could drive a Mercedes? 

More expensive? Sure. Worth it? Absolutely

Garageband will get you VERY far to record your ideas. If  you want to 'master' your tracks further, you can open Garageband files with Logic. Cubase is not all that different and you'd probably have a relatively easy time using Garageband.

FYI: I haven't seen a virus since the 90s, maybe it's happening in the background and I don't see it

People often ask about the rack rigs because they don't understand how that's a guitar amp....I describe it like this; remember stereo systems in the late 70s and early 80s? There was this approach to building a home stereo whereby you could mix/match components (tuner, amplifier, phono player, etc.)

Rack gear is the same philosophy, the Preamp is generating all the tones, the Poweramp is just making things louder, and you have an effects unit (or two, or more) to give you the shimmer. It's a component guitar rig. Use the stuff you like, make your rig.

Where the ADA stuff excelled, as Richard and Harley stated, was that ADA gear is fully programmable. That was unheard of until modelers came around. Well, you don't need a modeler with an ADA, you craft your own tones and just trust you ears.

AS to how they get the 'voices' described, I feel like it's a combination of tube circuitry (sometimes only using one preamp tube) and EQ. I think there are some EQ settings we're not seeing behind the scenes. I'm not technical, this is all presumption on my part (which can be very dangerous )

I've stated for years that Modelers are nothing more than fancy EQ settings to emulate the sound (or voice) of a particular amp