disclaimer: i don't own a recto (YET! i'm still GASing for one)
however, after talking to a lot of recto players, i know a couple of things that you could try. this is mostly modern voicing though..
you said you're using a tubescreamer, so you already have some slight gain boost going on. in this case maybe you should turn the gain down to around 13:00 max 14:00
turn the mids up! i know a lot of guys LOVE their mids cranked. you don't have to turn them way up, but i'd at least get them in the 12:00 range. at least.
having the treble high on a mesa is actually quite a good thing, due to the way the eq controls work. i'm not totally sure about the rectos here, but their older amps have cascadic gain stages and pre distortion eq, meaning that the higher the treble is set, the more signal passes through the treble control, i.e. more available gain. most mark series players tend to crank the mids to around 16:00 in order to get the most possible gain out of them
in a band context, one should generally keep the presence lower IMHO. this isn't really as crucial for recording, but when playing live i tend to have the presence totally off. IMHO (and here it gets very subjective) at high volumes the super high presence frequencies get only blocked out by the drummer's cymbals and wash out the mix. when playing alone you don't notice this, actually the guitar tends to sound fuller as there's a larger frequency range covered. same goes for excessive lowend. alone it sounds great and earth shaking, but in a band context you're fighting the kick and bass guitar, a fight you cannot win in the end
last but not least, you could try to experiment with the master and channel volumes. for example, on my marshall i have the channel volumes almost cranked, with the master only around 11:00. when i still had my engl blackmore, i have the master cranked way up, and used the lead channel volume to control overall loudness. things can sound way different depending on how you have those two controls set. on a mesa it might be a little difficult to get crazy with it though, as the channel volume also sets the fx send strength IIRC.
hope this helps some. as always, those are just a few suggestions, no strict rules
This will always be a debate, it is every 3 days at the HC forums, in fact there is a 5 page or so thread about it now. I saw Cryptopsy a few days ago and the one guitarist used a 3 channel that sounded great!! I bet with a tube upgrade you could get very close to the sound of the old ones. I really doubt that the 3 channels are that bad. People are out to make it seem like Mesa Boogie would intentionally release a subpar product, which I don't believe. Just my 2 cents though.
