I love the way both of these amps sound though, if yours is working good? I'd keep rocking it man
I had gone down the Mesa Boogie rabbit hole some time ago and started buying up a lot of different Mesa Boogie amps, and even purchased several different Rectifiers and even the recording preamp.
I had found the Mark series were more my style/tone but I have enjoyed the Roadster the best out of all of the rectifiers.
I had 4-5 different rectifiers and compared them all along with a Road King 1 and Road King 2 and Roadster.
I felt the rectifiers were always too bright/sizzly for me, and liked the Road Kings more for the overall tones plus the tube/cab switching options.
I found I had liked the Roadster the best out of all of them, and still like it the best.
I have one that is pretty much brand new (I believe one of the last ones made) and play it for a few minutes here and there with a Horizon Precision Drive in front.
It seems to work really well with the amp and gets the "ideal" rectifier tone for me.
The Road Kings were fun with the tube/cab switching once I had understood how it worked from the manual, but by the time I had finally read the manual, I had decided to sell them.
Another person had mentioned something about the Road King 1 that made me remember an issue that came up for me.
I had an effects unit inserted into the RK1 shortly after purchasing a used one, and after playing for about 15 minutes, the volume would drop but if I would turn the effects loop off, then the amp was loud again.
I had come across some post where a person had mentioned for the RK1 to just leave the reverb "on" if using the effects loop and there would be no volume drop, and damn, they were right, everything worked fine, so I just left the reverb "on" but the reverb turned all the way down since I was using the reverb on a G-Major for the effects. There were no other issues for me with the Road Kings other than that weird thing that happened with the RK1 effects loop (I'm glad the leaving the reverb "on" was an easy fix for it).
I did like the clean channel better on the RK2 than the RK1 plus the RK2 did have some other tonal improvements as well.
But the Roadster still sounds much better to my ears than the RK1 and RK2 (and those other rectifiers I had), and the cleans are even a lot better on the Roadster, plus eliminating the tube/cab switching had made the amp less confusing for people.
I don't have the need for my Roadster these days, so I sometimes consider selling the amp, but then I turn the amp on with the Precision Drive and ....... yeah, it's not going up for sale yet
Definitely a real fun amp!
Plus mine is more special for me since it's like brand new inside/outside plus I had a badass custom head shell made for the amp (it was a combo conversion) with several different front panels to choose from when I want a different look for the amp (stained, bare wood, tolex, and jute).
And I agree with you, if it still works well for the person and still sounds great to them, then they should keep rocking that amp!
I do 100% get the sentiment about not wanting to work on these - holy hell the parts are crowded in there and repair work can be a real pain, depending on where you need to get to. This one showed up with a bad tube and a blown screen resistor, but luckily that was easy to access.
