Mesa Engineering has checked in with the following Dream Theater-related update:

"John Petrucci visited the Mesa Factory in April 2014 before his San Francisco show to hang out. It was also a great day to have John play through an early prototype of the Mark Five 25 for the first time. 

We took the fly-on-the-wall approach to capture the experience and got some epic playing from John, some great tones and a bunch of good times with Mesa founder Randall Smith, Tone Boy Doug West, and the rest of the Mesa team. 

John played through all the various modes and many different settings through a Mini Rectifier 1x12, a Rectifier 1x12 and at the end, a 4x12 Rectifier Standard Slant with Celestion Vintage 30s. He also played with a few different delays (T.C. Electronics G-Major and Jim Dunlop Carbon Copy) in the loop for singing solo tones.

Recorded with the Mark Five: 25, various cabinets (listed above) and a Shure SM57 and a Sennheiser 421."

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On October 25th, Petrucci guested on The Classic Metal Show featuring host Chris Akin and guest host Jon Drake. The complete interview, which includes discussion about the transition of drummer Mike Mangini replacing Mike Portnoy, can be heard below:

Petrucci: "Mike Mangini really helped us to get through a major band member change, and in a way that was probably as smooth as any band member change could have gone. The way that he came in, his personality, his skills as a drummer, his background, his history, it clicked to the point where it was, if we would have met Mike 20 years ago, we would have been playing with this guy. If I would have grown up with him, I would have been friends with him jamming. And that's rare. It's rare to do that one time around."

The Classic Metal Show is heard Saturdays from 9:00pm to 3:00am EST at TheClassicMetalShow.com.