I prefer my 3 channel Mesa Dual Rectifier to my MK III & MK IV

Donnie B. said:
Hopefully they keep on all the trained repair techs - you'd think that Smith would have included
that in as part of any sale agreement?
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Mike Bendinelli & Mesa support for me have been nothing short of fabulous. Always promptly returning my calls.
Remains to be seen what Gibson does.
Having been thru many Corporate takeovers as both customer & employee only one thing changes during a takeover and thats "everything".
Its been my experience that when a new company vows "nothing will change" it never pans out.
Plus Gibson has a bad record of over-extending itself in areas beyond its capacity and dropping the ball.
 
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I love my Dual Rec. With the right pedal to shape the EQ at the input, it can absolutely get as tight as a Mark series amp or whatever else. That's the secret/beauty of the Dual Rectifier. It basically doesn't filter away any bass at the input of the amp. The negative of this design is of course that by default the sound can be flubby and undefined, but the benefit is that Rectos allow the player to shape the preamp in virtually any way they want. Basically, with a lot of high gain amps, a lot of filtering is done at the input internally so there's only so much you can do to shape their sound because you can't add back what isn't there. With Rectos, everything you give them is sent right on through so you're free to sculpt away whatever frequencies you want to suit your playing.

Here's my Dual Recto on the Orange Modern channel, stock:


Here's the exact same guitar line reamped through the exact same amp with the exact same settings, but with just a Boss GE-7 cutting a ton of bass and boosting a ton of treble. The pedal's level overall is on 0 db so it's only cutting and boosting exactly how the sliders are set.


And just for fun, here's the same setup but with the GE-7's output level boosted, hitting the Recto's input with around +12 db. The GEQ is basically acting as a treble booster at this point:



I used pretty extreme settings on the Graphic EQ here to exaggerate the effect but I cannot stress enough how much a simple bass cut / treble boost at the input can make a Recto as tight as you want.
 
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TheGreatGreen said:
I love my Dual Rec. With the right pedal to shape the EQ at the input, it can absolutely get as tight as a Mark series amp or whatever else. That's the secret/beauty of the Dual Rectifier. It basically doesn't filter away any bass at the input of the amp. The negative of this design is of course that by default the sound can be flubby and undefined, but the benefit is that Rectos allows the player to shape the preamp in virtually any way they want. Basically, with a lot of high gain amps, a lot of filtering is done at the input internally so there's only so much you can do to shape their sound because you can't add back what isn't there. With Rectos, everything you give them is sent right on through so you're free to sculpt away whatever frequencies you want to suit your playing.

Here's my Dual Recto on the Orange Modern channel, stock:


Here's the exact same guitar line reamped through the exact same amp with the exact same settings, but with just a Boss GE-7 cutting a ton of bass and boosting a ton of treble. The pedal's level overall is on 0 db so it's only cutting and boosting exactly how the sliders are set.


And just for fun, here's the same setup but with the GE-7's output level boosted, hitting the Recto's input with around +12 db.



I used pretty extreme settings on the Graphic EQ here to exaggerate the effect but I cannot stress enough how much a simple bass cut / treble boost at the input can make a Recto as tight as you want.
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I just got my very first Recto over the weekend, 2016 DR MW Blackout. I literally just figured out this exact same thing tonight. I'm using a Helix into the front and going through all the different drives to see which one I like with each channel and mode. Very interesting. Then I tried an EQ to cut down some of the boominess and bam! that did the trick perfectly. I'm really liking it so far.
 
TheGreatGreen said:
I love my Dual Rec. With the right pedal to shape the EQ at the input, it can absolutely get as tight as a Mark series amp or whatever else. That's the secret/beauty of the Dual Rectifier. It basically doesn't filter away any bass at the input of the amp. The negative of this design is of course that by default the sound can be flubby and undefined, but the benefit is that Rectos allows the player to shape the preamp in virtually any way they want. Basically, with a lot of high gain amps, a lot of filtering is done at the input internally so there's only so much you can do to shape their sound because you can't add back what isn't there. With Rectos, everything you give them is sent right on through so you're free to sculpt away whatever frequencies you want to suit your playing.

Here's my Dual Recto on the Orange Modern channel, stock:


Here's the exact same guitar line reamped through the exact same amp with the exact same settings, but with just a Boss GE-7 cutting a ton of bass and boosting a ton of treble. The pedal's level overall is on 0 db so it's only cutting and boosting exactly how the sliders are set.


And just for fun, here's the same setup but with the GE-7's output level boosted, hitting the Recto's input with around +12 db.



I used pretty extreme settings on the Graphic EQ here to exaggerate the effect but I cannot stress enough how much a simple bass cut / treble boost at the input can make a Recto as tight as you want.
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I agree 100%, and that’s a great explanation. Rectos have more low end and gain than you could possibly need, and it’s up to you to find your sweet spot. It’s better to have too much, then not enough. Until you figure them out, you can’t really dial in a Recto with your eyes. You may as well close them when your turning the knobs. With a good clean boost, enough treble and presence, and the gain and bass rolled back to a reasonable level, they tighten up plenty and sound killer.
 
I wish somebody had explained the Recto preamp design / cut-bass-with-a-pedal thing to me 20 years ago. I played a couple of them in music stores in the late 90's and couldn't believe how much I hated them after all the hype, specifically because of how flubby and undefined they were because I was just plugging straight into them. After that I just sort of wrote them off into the category of "bad amp, forget about that one" and went on my way.

I could've saved myself a whole lot of tone chasing had I known that all a Recto needs to sound as good as any other high gain amp (and I've played almost all of them and really do mean that) is a good EQ pedal to shape what goes into the preamp, and maybe another EQ in the loop if you really want to get fancy.
 
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I absolutely love Rectos, had a bunch of them. Love them in the bedroom, love them in the band. Where I always struggled was in recording, oddly enough. I could get it sounding absolutely massive in the room, and never pick up a good bottom end thickness on the mic.

I also agree that with a boost & some sculpting (and more importantly tight playing) you can get a Recto similarly as tight (but with different, boomy character) as an average Mark. IMO however, once you get a really good Mark this changes & there's no way a Recto can keep up.

VESmedic said:
There isn’t a single mark recorded tone I prefer over a recto, not once. And I’m talking true mark series tones, that were literally just the mark, not the combo stuff like Metallica did etc.
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VES, not even.... this?

 
VESmedic said:
one of my favorite albums, always has been! Absolutely love this tone, I thought it was a triaxis though and/or a mark 3? Either way, I’ve always loved This tone, probably my favorite mark series strictly tones. I love lamb of god but to me their tone is more in their vibe and songwriting and it just fits, vs just the actual tone by itself. Not sure how much I’d like it with any other players. Same with dime: I love his tone, but it’s dime playing ya know?

on that note, dead heart is still a pinnacle to me and many others and it’s phenomenal. It’s hard to compare politics of XTC to it though because obviously the song writing and more importantly the tuning was completely different. I’d like to hear politics slightly remixed, to especially remove too much of the rumble on the palm mutes/ low end, with some multiband compression etc. that would be sick with just a touch of it I think.
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I love that tone too, but I think alot has to do with the overall mix/production.
 
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