Mesa Single Rectifier owners..

AdamWathan

AdamWathan

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Apr 12, 2002
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Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
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I finally had a chance to try mine out today for the first time since getting home from work. It sounds good but it is quite loose in the low end and I found the EQ controls seem to barely affect the sound? At least compared to my 5150 and Blackmore anyways. It seems like it more or less has one sound and the EQ is just for very subtle fine tuning... Do you guys find yours are this way as well? What are some suggested settings? I'm going to try it with my Sparkle Drive tomorrow so hopefully that will clean the low end up a bit. Might throw $40 down for a TS7 and see how much different that sounds than the Sparkle Drive because I have a feeling the Sparkle Drive affects all the frequencies a bit more evenly than the cheapo Tubescreamers, which is probably a desired affect with most guitarists but not for our purposes where we WANT that mid boost and bass and treble cut that other people seem to frown upon :lol:

I'm going to try and make some comparison clips tomorrow night between my 5150, Rectifier and Blackmore all through my Mesa cab with and without an overdrive so hopefully I'll have a cool little shootout up for you guys to check out on Thursday.
 
I would never spend that much on an amp if it couldn't do it all from the head itself!

I'm really surprised to read this post.
 
Not meant as a flame you understand.. it just surprises me that a Mesa amp is even capable of having loose bottom end!
 
Amberience said:
Not meant as a flame you understand.. it just surprises me that a Mesa amp is even capable of having loose bottom end!
Click to expand...

well they are... ever tried one??? i think the general consensus is that ts or overdrives make most amps sound tighter. I`ve never really been 100% happy with any amps tone without one (although the jsx sounds perty good)
i find that without a ts you can not get as high of gain without losing clarity and getting a really saturated tone. Really they are tube heads with a built in solid state clip circuit that is not as tweak-able as a good old ts!!!

I have a dual rec, and it is not really capable of anything i would use for a heavy tone (without a ts). not by todays standard anyways. although for rock and punk its tits

forbidden: are you using the tube rectifier, or the silicone diode? also try the tight transformer setting as opposed to the spongy one.
 
I find most amps unplayable without a TS, as a lot of people will agree here.

Recto's are no exception... in fact, I can't get a usable tone from them without a boost. The low end is just too loose!
 
Hmm. Very curious. So do you put the TS into the drive channel? And how do you do it? Do you have a high-gain on the amp, and a low gain almost clean on the TS, or the other way round?

I've got a tube pa amp, and I find mere pedal distortion to be a bit pants... kind of lusting after something with good amp distortion. I play Tool/ISIS/Cult of Luna type stuff.. probably not as high gain as a lot of the popular stuff around here I feel, so I'm not sure if this thread applies to me.
 
I'm amazed you think the 5150 controls are more responsive than the Recto's; to me your description of the whole "one tone with fine tuning abilities" sums up the 5150 perfectly; the only controls I think make a real dramatic difference are the mid and especially presence. I've only tweaked a Recto a couple of times, but I found it to have a lot of responsiveness in the knob sweepage (but nothing comes as close as the sensitivity of the knobs on my JSX)
 
DSS3 is right. I don't own it but I recorded one recently. It sounds and feels horrible without an OD.
 
the manual for the rectifier explains how the tone circuit works. turning up the treble knob raises the level of the tone circuit (bass, mids and treble) so raising treble also increases bass and mids.

i usually have the bass (which the dual has alot of) around 2 or 3, treble 5 or 6 and mids about 3 or 4 gain 4-6 with a ts7 ( or maxon 808) gain around 2 or 3, tone at 5 or 6 and output (or blend) maxed out.

I also have the presence down usually around 2 or 3

i like the bold transformer with the silicone diodes for tight high gain, and spongy with tube rectifier for saturated tones (ala coc or down)
 
I owned a single rectifier for all of 1 day before taking it back to GC to get my money back. Got super lost in the mix in a live setting and even squeeled at high volumes (with a duncan). sorry, I guess that doesn't help you much.
 
Went and bought a TS7 today and played around with it a bit more, got it sounding pretty good in band practice but to be honest, it seems I am always going for the exact same guitar sound with any amp and I end up making my 5150, Blackmore and Recto all sound DAMN similar haha... I noticed that the Master Volume control on the lead channel actually affects the tone and not just the volume, cranking it all the way really opens up the top end. I'll have to play around with a active EQ a bit more because it's new to me, but with the TS7 it sounded pretty great. Even with the ENGL though, I still find myself wanting to come back to the 5150 :lol:

I'm going to try and record clips tomorrow, I got my Redeye finally and tried to do some reamping today but was getting a RIDICULOUS amount of feedback and gave up with no idea of what was going on until half an hour ago on the drive home when I realized that the channels on the Onyx software mixer that the mics were running to were guaranteed not muted and the mic'd sound was being fed through the cabinet which is obviously going to create nothing but chaos :lol: Oh well, next time!
 
not sure if this helps..

but Joel Stroetzel.. i know, uses a mesa dual rec(i know its not single like yours) but uses a maxon OD808(ordered my the other day, wooop) to boost his tone.. but also has a TS7, but uses the 808 more!
 
If you read the Tubescreamer FAQ that JBroll wrote up, the TS7 and 808 should theoretically sound pretty much exactly the same. I've got a Voodoolab Sparkle Drive which is an 808 with a blend knob, and the TS7 is supposed to be a TS9, so I'll try both but I'm not expecting to be able to tell the difference :lol:
 
iamandy said:
not sure if this helps..

but Joel Stroetzel.. i know, uses a mesa dual rec(i know its not single like yours) but uses a maxon OD808(ordered my the other day, wooop) to boost his tone.. but also has a TS7, but uses the 808 more!
Click to expand...

I believe he is using Splawn Nitros now :)

I don't know if he boosts them, tho....
 
i have a ts 7 and maxon 808, the 808 is a bit more transparent. i believe the 808 is modeled after the ts808 which has one less stage of clipping than the ts7.
ts 7 is kinda harsh and a bit tighter sounding. the maxon has a clearer tone but does clean up the low mid mud just as effectively without emphasizing the highs as much
 
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