Triple Recto Rev G vs "C Modded" Rev G

If your goal is recording, yes for the reasons you stated, it is nuts. See below.

If your goal is in the room, I promise just like a IIC+ vs a JP2C, there is a big difference in feels and that's what you're paying for. The early serial Rev C I had had feels and lead tone on par with a IIC+. No joke.




My goal is always recorded. If an amp delivers under a mic, my brain fills in the gaps for the room sound. I will say a recto is one of the hardest amp to record and get what’s in the room. Its low end frequencies rarely translate as easily as a Marshall or Fender does on a mic. You can have a literal Elephant in the room but hear a castrated warthog being swarmed by bees on the drive.
 
Mic recordings always make amps sound much more similar than they do in the room.
Unless you’ve played and felt a Rev C and compared it to other two channel Rectos, you don’t get it.
It’s hard to justify the going prices for these, but it is what it is. They are without question the best sounding and feeling Recto ever made imo.
This.

If all one wants to do is record, just get a decent modeler and be done with it. So much easier to use, just record direct with it. But, if you want to still feel a great tube amp as you play it, be able to try and tame a superlead at volume while you work the feedback, and then it hits you in the face like a sledgehammer when you start heavy riffing then the great ones are always worth the effort to own and try. Whether it's a Rev C, Wizard, C+, early Bogner/Diezel etc etc these rare and spendy amps DO offer things other amps just don't quite have.
 
This.

If all one wants to do is record, just get a decent modeler and be done with it. So much easier to use, just record direct with it. But, if you want to still feel a great tube amp as you play it, be able to try and tame a superlead at volume while you work the feedback, and then it hits you in the face like a sledgehammer when you start heavy riffing then the great ones are always worth the effort to own and try. Whether it's a Rev C, Wizard, C+, early Bogner/Diezel etc etc these rare and spendy amps DO offer things other amps just don't quite have.
To judge a tube amp from a recorded clip is like judging a muscle car from a YouTube demo.
 
To judge a tube amp from a recorded clip is like judging a muscle car from a YouTube demo.
Not if it’s recorded well. I want a good sound on recording but the fun of it is doing it, trying to ride that bucking bronco at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive. I use recording as the ultimate judge of if an amp’s for me or not, but I still need that in the room energy and feedback to want to bother recording anything anyway. Modeller’s and only having sound from monitors/headphones would be the death of enjoying recording music for me.
 
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My goal is always recorded. If an amp delivers under a mic, my brain fills in the gaps for the room sound. I will say a recto is one of the hardest amp to record and get what’s in the room. Its low end frequencies rarely translate as easily as a Marshall or Fender does on a mic. You can have a literal Elephant in the room but hear a castrated warthog being swarmed by bees on the drive.
I don't think even the most experienced guys can really "fill in the gaps for the room sound" with much accuracy of amps they haven't tried. I've tried that so many times with amps I've heard every clip I could find before trying it and still plenty of surprises have happened (for better or worse) once I'd hear some amps actually in person. There's just too much the mics alone aren't able to pick up (at least with current technology). If one only cares about recorded scenarios that's cool, but for other scenarios I think it's a big mistake to rely only on clips
 
I don't think even the most experienced guys can really "fill in the gaps for the room sound" with much accuracy. I've tried that so many times with amps I've heard every clip I could find before trying it and still plenty of surprises have happened (for better or worse) once I'd hear some amps actually in person. There's just too much the mics alone aren't able to pick up (at least with current technology). If one only cares about recorded scenarios that's cool, but for other scenarios I think it's a big mistake to rely only on clips
Exactly. No recording is going to replicate the in the room experience of a Wizard, a Coli, a Plexi, etc, nor the glaring differences in certain amps that can be made to sound extremely similar under a mic.
 
I don't think even the most experienced guys can really "fill in the gaps for the room sound" with much accuracy of amps they haven't tried. I've tried that so many times with amps I've heard every clip I could find before trying it and still plenty of surprises have happened (for better or worse) once I'd hear some amps actually in person. There's just too much the mics alone aren't able to pick up (at least with current technology). If one only cares about recorded scenarios that's cool, but for other scenarios I think it's a big mistake to rely only on clips
It’s psychological. When I used to have a plexi reissue as my only amp in the late 90’s, I would record with a Powerbrake on the lowest click late at night and record on my trusty Yammy MT4x. At first the sound in the room was very underwhelming and not super fun but because the recording would still sound nearly as good (very close) to when I had recorded it much louder, the room sound started being fine to me because I knew what was ending up on tape. My imagination was literally filling in the gaps of the perceived sound as I played because of the end result. This in return bolstered my playing.
 
Ahhhh, the elusive “in the room tone”, the most selfish and useless tone in existence. It still blows my mind how much people care about this. Should an amp sound good playing by yourself in the room? Sure , of course. But Jesus, how hard is that to do? I could not give a damn about a tone in the room if I can’t get it to a track, the fuck use is it if you can’t hear it in a song?
 
Not if it’s recorded well. I want a good sound on recording but the fun of it is doing it trying to ride that bucking bronco at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive. I use recording as the ultimate judge of if an amp’s for me or not, but I still need that in the room energy and feedback to want to bother recording anything anyway. Modeller’s and only having sound from monitors/headphones would be the death of enjoying recording music for me.
I can appreciate your need to feel the itr energy of a screaming amp as opposed to modelers/monitors, headphones.
And as awesome as some miced clips sound, there’s still no substitute for the itr experience of a tube amp at volume. Especially when comparing them for their differences, whether subtle or glaring.
 
It’s psychological. When I used to have a plexi reissue as my only amp in the late 90’s, I would record with a Powerbrake on the lowest click late at night and record on my trusty Yammy MT4x. At first the sound in the room was very underwhelming and not super fun but because the recording would still sound nearly as good (very close) to when I had recorded it much louder, the room sound started being fine to me because I knew what was ending up on tape. My imagination was literally filling in the gaps of the perceived sound as I played because of the end result. This in return bolstered my playing.
I'm not talking about volume or punch, but more so details going on around the notes that create tonal complexity or what we perceive as a more 3D sound. Those are some of the many qualities that mics just don't seem to be able to show like what we hear in person and that's really where the magic happens (fort me at least) in separating nice gear from exceptional gear. I'm sorry but that's not something I believe we can fill in the blanks for if we haven't heard it in person. It's part of why I was never too impressed with Dumble clips until hearing one in person. It definitely was not the loudest, punchiest or biggest sounding amp I'd ever heard, but for any other amp I'd call 3D this was 5D at least lol in detail in the notes

This is also more applicable in classical guitar (my main thing) where you can hear an AB recording of a $7000 guitar vs something like a great Hauser worth $250k and they may sound close in recording, but hear them in person and the tone quality is light years apart (even most who don't play guitar usually will hear the difference in person). Again I don't believe you can really fill in the blank for it based on its clips. Just my experience, YMMV
 
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Ahhhh, the elusive “in the room tone”, the most selfish and useless tone in existence. It still blows my mind how much people care about this. Should an amp sound good playing by yourself in the room? Sure , of course. But Jesus, how hard is that to do? I could not give a damn about a tone in the room if I can’t get it to a track, the fuck use is it if you can’t hear it in a song?
Who said anything about strictly playing by yourself in a room? It could also be live in a rehearsal spot, club, arena, anywhere…
The point is no recording will ever capture the power, punch, depth, openness, etc of a tube amp ripping at volume.
After all, these amps were made for recording AND playing live. Different animals, different applications.
 
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I'm not talking about volume or punch, but more so details going on around the notes that create tonal complexity or what we perceive as a more 3D sound. Those are some of the many qualities that mics just don't seem to be able to show like what we hear in person and that's really where the magic happens (fort me at least) in separating nice gear from exceptional gear. I'm sorry but that's not something I believe we can fill in the blanks for if we haven't heard it in person. It's part of why I was never too impressed with Dumble clips until hearing one in person. It definitely was not the loudest, punchiest or biggest sounding amp I'd ever heard, but for any other amp I'd call 3D this was 5D at least lol in detail in the notes

This is also more applicable in classical guitar (my main thing) where you can hear an AB recording of a $7000 guitar vs something like a great Hauser worth $250k and they may sound close in recording, but hear them in person and the tone quality is light years apart (even most who don't play guitar usually will hear the difference in person). Again I don't believe you can really fill in the blank for it based on its clips. Just my experience, YMMV
I’m not talking about filling in the blanks from a clip. I’m talking about filling in the blanks in the room where an amp that records well doesn’t necessarily juggle God’s balls in the room.
 
The thing for me is, what sounds good in one room could sound like shit in the next room over. V30s might sound great in my carpeted and dead sounding drum room, but then I could roll the rig into my open living room with hardwood floors that sounds more like a club stage and it’s bright, harsh and just not good, so what’s the actual room tone? Stick a 57 on the cone though in either room with the same settings and the difference would be minimal recorded.
 
I’m not talking about filling in the blanks from a clip. I’m talking about filling in the blanks in the room where an amp that records well doesn’t necessarily juggle God’s balls in the room.
I think I can agree (assuming I understood correctly) in that a lot of amps that sound decent enough can get the job done in recording well. It seems that many of the qualities that separate them hearing in person don’t always translate in a recording context, which is what I meant and that we can’t use that to assume how it’ll sound vs another amp in person. Whether one cares about that or not is up to them. I personally find it a bit boring/uninspiring to think about gear in a purely functional way in how it translates in a recording context, but that’s just me
 
Ahhhh, the elusive “in the room tone”, the most selfish and useless tone in existence. It still blows my mind how much people care about this. Should an amp sound good playing by yourself in the room? Sure , of course. But Jesus, how hard is that to do? I could not give a damn about a tone in the room if I can’t get it to a track, the fuck use is it if you can’t hear it in a song?
...And who gives a flying fuck about recording in the first place?? This isn't "Recording forum 101". It's Rig Talk. I get that guys here record; that's fine but the overwhelming majority of guys play their rigs at home, for fun...gig a little, and a smaller number yet record. Good for them. But I personally don't give a shit about 'how an amp records'. If you judge amps by 'records' made, I'll just laugh at you for that stupid logic.
 
The thing for me is, what sounds good in one room could sound like shit in the next room over. V30s might sound great in my carpeted and dead sounding drum room, but then I could roll the rig into my open living room with hardwood floors that sounds more like a club stage and it’s bright, harsh and just not good, so what’s the actual room tone? Stick a 57 on the cone though in either room with the same settings and the difference would be minimal recorded.
I think our ears though adjust to the room pretty fast (I understand it doesn’t translate that way in a recording context where mic’s don’t adjust like a human ear). Likewise, play any classical guitar in a very dry room it doesn’t sound great even with a $250k Hauser, but sit there for a few minutes, compare with a few guitars and our ears can still evaluate plenty well the guitars and at the same time we understood the room just doesn’t sound good for the instruments
 
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...And who gives a flying fuck about recording in the first place?? This isn't "Recording forum 101". It's Rig Talk. I get that guys here record; that's fine but the overwhelming majority of guys play their rigs at home, for fun...gig a little, and a smaller number yet record. Good for them. But I personally don't give a shit about 'how an amp records'. If you judge amps by 'records' made, I'll just laugh at you for that stupid logic.
It’s not all one way or the other but there’s reams of pages on this forum and any gear forum about chasing those sounds on those records made 🤷🏼
 
...And who gives a flying fuck about recording in the first place?? This isn't "Recording forum 101". It's Rig Talk. I get that guys here record; that's fine but the overwhelming majority of guys play their rigs at home, for fun...gig a little, and a smaller number yet record. Good for them. But I personally don't give a shit about 'how an amp records'. If you judge amps by 'records' made, I'll just laugh at you for that stupid logic.
Nobody’s ever hosted an ampfest with a bunch of dudes standing around monitors listening to clips for a reason…
 
It’s not all one way or the other but there’s reams of pages on this forum and any gear forum about chasing those sounds on those records made 🤷🏼
The thing is, let’s say I wanted to chase the MOP sound (I wouldn’t actually, but hypothetical). In a recording context I might be able to get it convincingly enough for many with a mark iii, iv or VII, but in person I only ever sounded like I really got at all in that balllpark reminiscent of their sound with a iic+ simul-class (not my preferred c+, but what they used), so it may sound silly in a way, but I think what a lot of guys really want is to hear a sound in person that matches what they feel they hear on whatever record they chase. It probably seems goofy to recording guys, but I believe that’s what they’re really looking for. At least I was back in my late teens. I stopped though really caring about other band’s sounds a while ago now
 
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