Just got my first Single rectifier head... now what :P

[ibanezfreak777]

Ok
its my first rectifier head, after moving on from a Nomad 1x12 100 combo, its my first head and 2x12 rectifier cab..

I have currently a Boss gt-10 effects pedal board, I have an Ibanez Graphi eq pedal and a wah pedal...

I dont want to get back into standalone pedals, and im not sure if using the boss-gt10 is the way to go with a head like this.. So im thinking about rack effects, but then I guess I will end up needing a pedal board etc...

Seems like a big headache and extra crap to carry to rehersals and gigs..

What do you guys use and what do you recomend me doing with my current setup..

Cheers !!

 

[94Tremoverb]

Does the GT-10 have an insert loop (send/return) for patching in other pedals?

If so, you can use the "4 cable method" which is (with your other two pedals added in as well):

Guitar > wah > GT-10 input
GT-10 send > amp input
Amp FX send > Ibanez EQ > GT-10 return
GT-10 output (mono) > amp FX return

Make sure the GT-10 send/return loop is always on. If the effects order in the GT-10 can be changed, keep any overdrive/distortion/fuzz effects before the send/return loop and any time-based effects after (which will put them in the *amp's* FX loop). This will give you all the effects in the right order, before and after the amp's preamp distortion. Others such as compression, phaser, tremolo can go either before or after the loop, but they will sound different in each place.

I do basically this with a large analog pedalboard, and I think it's a lot less hassle than rack units...

 

[Blaklynx]

Hey, ibanezfreak!! It's your mate from Oz!

OK, some guys use the 4 cable method with the GT10 or equivalent unit. In a nutshell it's running the preamp section of the GT into the front end of the amp and running the effects section through the loop of the amp. In other words, splitting the GT10 into two sections - preamp and effects. That's what I understand it to be. Look it up. It seems to be popular.

My other advise is to search these forums. Plenty of good info here. Type in 'rectoverb', 'recto', 'effects loop', 'single rectifier', or whatever words you think may be suitable.

Anyway mate, have fun and just read, read, read. You'll get to understand the amp and what tricks and tips people use.

 

[ibanezfreak777]

Hey guys..

Yeah I have been using the 4CM for a while now, but I dont like how the distortion works. I roll back the vol on my axe and the tone just dies.

I want to use the channel 2 on the mesa for the lovely gain it gives and just lightly sprinkle effects.. If I use the 4cm method doesn't that render the channels useless ?

Whats the point of owning a rectifier and not use the gain it has ?

Im a little confused to say the least as to how to set it all up, but I will read heaps and experiment..

Cheers !! and keep the suggestions comming if you have more

 

[ryjan]

What effects do you use? The 4cm with the GT10 works great but there are a ton of perameters that MUST be set up properly or it will jack your sound up. I still use an old GT3 with my mark iv but just for chorus on the clean channel and for the tuner.

 

[fishyfishfish]

I use a Nova delay in the loop that sits on the top of my amp, and floor pedals are: tuner, Boss Super Chorus, BB Preamp.
I went from a huge amount of rack gear to a small pedal board to a huge pedal board now back down to a couple of pedals. 99% of the time I can do most gigs with no effects, but for some reason I need my amp to have delay to be complete. Go simple as you can!

 

[ibanezfreak777]

Well im thinking I just dont need the boss anymore... Its just real big, and bulky, and I dont need that now that I have a large amp and cab...


Maybe I need to return to pedals ? hmmmm im perplexed at the moment...

I probably dont need all those effects that the boss has in it...

I am going to try and sell my boss and then look for something else...

 

[YellowJacket]

I have a piece of advice.

Guitar --> high quality patch cable ---> Amp ---> Speaker lead ---> Cab.

Turn the amp at least to a quarter on the master for each channel. Set the knobs all to 12:00 and then shape your tone to taste. You'll find you don't need a super high amount of GAIN depending on what you are going for. Distortion with the gain at 12:00 noon is THICK already. Distortion with the gain up at 2:30 is scorch lead saturated. I personally run my gain up at 2:30 and use the volume knob on the guitar to switch from a rhythm crunch to a saturated lead. Try whatever and find what works for you but trust me on this, discover what an amp and guitar can do before adding boxes. The raw tone of the amp HAULS already!

 

[ibanezfreak777]

I have a piece of advice.

Guitar --> high quality patch cable ---> Amp ---> Speaker lead ---> Cab.

Turn the amp at least to a quarter on the master for each channel. Set the knobs all to 12:00 and then shape your tone to taste. You'll find you don't need a super high amount of GAIN depending on what you are going for. Distortion with the gain at 12:00 noon is THICK already. Distortion with the gain up at 2:30 is scorch lead saturated. I personally run my gain up at 2:30 and use the volume knob on the guitar to switch from a rhythm crunch to a saturated lead. Try whatever and find what works for you but trust me on this, discover what an amp and guitar can do before adding boxes. The raw tone of the amp HAULS already!

Thanks for the info its appreciated.

I have been playing guitar for over 20 years, and I know what sound I like when I play lead, so I know I need delay for certain, I am only new to using a head and cab seperate... and as far as pedals go. I only want delay, wah and maybe a nose gate, chorus for clean and that should be about it... oh and a tuner

Cheers !!

 

[YellowJacket]

Hey, I was just saying what I use with my recto. I don't like tone suckers (pedals) in my setup.

 

[94Tremoverb]

I have to say I love effects and find the guitar > amp > cab approach limiting (though not unusable), but I agree with Yellowjacket that the foundation should still be a good *tone*, and that does not come best from a multi-FX unit or even pedals. Even the guys who use multiple pedals into a clean amp tend to use an inherently toneful amp (eg a Fender Twin or and AC30). If you're using a great amp like a Mesa you shouldn't need anything else to get the basic clean and overdrive sounds, everything else is like the seasoning on top. For that, I find single pedals sound much better than multi-units, at least unless you're going to spend more on the FX than the amp cost (which probably means rack rather than floor multis).

Guitar > wah > Single Rec with GEQ (and delay if you need it) in the loop > cab should give you a solid and versatile foundation to start with.

The problem comes when you start to think "I just need chorus for that song" and " I just need a phaser for that part" and... before you know it you've built something the size of a guitar case that weighs as much as the amp and cost ten times as much as your old multi-FX .

 

[ltd2recto]

Congrats! You've got one hell of a rig there. It may seem like a hassle to set everything up but its worth it. I wouldnt get a pedalboard started. The GT10 4cm will do everything you need including switching your channel for you per patch. Go from clean w/ chorus to distortion w/ delay/reverb/EQ with the press of 1 button. All using the recto's preamp. You could also use the preamps in the GT10 into the recto's poweramp per patch if you needed a certain sound. The great thing about the 4cm is it allows you to place effects before or after the preamp. There is a fair amount of programming involved but once its set, its set.

You would need to mod your loop to series. It is very easy to do. Instructions/pictures can be found in this forum.

My amp sounds better with the GT8 than without it. Mainly cuz I pull about 2-3db @ 220Hz in the loop using the GT's parametric EQ.

 

[ltd2recto]

Hey guys..

Yeah I have been using the 4CM for a while now, but I dont like how the distortion works. I roll back the vol on my axe and the tone just dies.

I want to use the channel 2 on the mesa for the lovely gain it gives and just lightly sprinkle effects.. If I use the 4cm method doesn't that render the channels useless ?

Whats the point of owning a rectifier and not use the gain it has ?

Im a little confused to say the least as to how to set it all up, but I will read heaps and experiment..

Cheers !! and keep the suggestions comming if you have more

I use my GT8 strictly for effects. If you want to use the recto's preamps (& you do), turn off the preamp section/cab sims on the GT10. The loop on the GT10 has to be set to on. But to make the 4cm work you'll need the series loop mod.

Read this sticky at the boss gt central forums. http://www.bossgtcentral.com/showthread.php?24755-Copy-of-my-previous-tutorial-about-4CM-(adapted-to-the-GT10)...

 

[YellowJacket]

I have to say I love effects and find the guitar > amp > cab approach limiting (though not unusable), but I agree with Yellowjacket that the foundation should still be a good *tone*, and that does not come best from a multi-FX unit or even pedals. Even the guys who use multiple pedals into a clean amp tend to use an inherently toneful amp (eg a Fender Twin or and AC30). If you're using a great amp like a Mesa you shouldn't need anything else to get the basic clean and overdrive sounds, everything else is like the seasoning on top. For that, I find single pedals sound much better than multi-units, at least unless you're going to spend more on the FX than the amp cost (which probably means rack rather than floor multis).

Guitar > wah > Single Rec with GEQ (and delay if you need it) in the loop > cab should give you a solid and versatile foundation to start with.

The problem comes when you start to think "I just need chorus for that song" and " I just need a phaser for that part" and... before you know it you've built something the size of a guitar case that weighs as much as the amp and cost ten times as much as your old multi-FX .

I suppose effects are fun to thicken or modify tone, especially for cleans or lead. Wah pedals are **** fun but I found in concert that half the time I'd forget the dang thing was still on and I'd happily go on playing rhythm, wondering why my amp sounded like it took a dump. Pedals are simply too much for my pea-brain to comprehend, I prefer to let notes and technique do the talking for me! I think if I WAS to equip a pedal board, I'd have tube reverb, tube tremolo, delay, a tuner, and a wah. I have a good ear honed from years of string playing (cello) but at concert volumes, you really cannot hear anything whatsoever, which makes tuning difficult. As it stands, I try and make good music with my extremely minimal setup! After all, I am a minimalist in the opposite form of The Edge. (He has minimal technique, I have minimal effects)

 

[jtroska]

I suppose effects are fun to thicken or modify tone, especially for cleans or lead. Wah pedals are **** fun but I found in concert that half the time I'd forget the dang thing was still on and I'd happily go on playing rhythm, wondering why my amp sounded like it took a dump. Pedals are simply too much for my pea-brain to comprehend...

:lol: Reminds me of my last show.

My other guitarist has a huge pedal board. When we did sound check, we both played dry and it sounded pretty **** good. But she likes to stomp on extra effects to thicken her solos. Fair enough. Trouble is, she gets addicted to the extra volume boost she gets from having some of those pedals on. And then she doesn't turn them off when she returns to rhythm playing. That **** delay pedal was running all night. And I don't even know what she had going on during the No Doubt song but she was twice asloud as anybody else and there was a weird droning noise over everything. :?

 

[YellowJacket]

Nothing like playing in a band with a volume *****. I worked with one of those and he would do EVERYTHING to be louder than whatever I happened to be playing. He was a bass player and it always made for a bass heavy balance, at least on stage. The guy has a 1,000+ watt ampeg head and recently bought an 810 fridge. I don't know how his bandmates deal, especially since the guitarist likes to gig with a Peavey Classic 30 and a 2 x 12.

The one thing about a volume ***** guitarist is that they'll just get turned down in the mix by a sensible soundman, so nobody will get to hear their solos anymore BAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

 

[94Tremoverb]

I find the same problem with wah pedals, which is why I insist on using one with an LED .

"And I don't even know what she had going on during the No Doubt song but she was twice asloud as anybody else and there was a weird droning noise over everything."

Maybe an octaver or a harmoniser... I love those for making a solo sound huge but they absolutely *must* be turned off again afterwards!


I think you can make good music either way, with or without effects, the trick is to know how and when to use the effects and when *not* to use them so they don't take over from the music. Even the Edge uses his more sparingly than you might think - except his delay, and he uses that almost like another guitar player... he does definitely have a minimalist technique, but it's not 'no' technique - it's not quite as easy as it sounds to do that well.

I'm somewhere in the middle - I can play all my music perfectly well on an unamplified acoustic guitar, or on an electric straight into the amp, but I find the sounds more interesting and powerful when I can add other stuff too... they're still less important than the notes and chords, but they do add a lot to the arrangement. I would never just leave stuff on when I was supposed to have gone back from a solo to a rhythm part though - it defeats the whole point of enhancing the structure of the songs and just makes a big muddy mess.

I also hate volume wars on stage... nothing worse than hearing a band where everyone is constantly trying to be louder than everyone else to the point you can't really hear anything properly at all. Dynamics, leaving space, listening and making your sound fit in volume and EQ with the rest will always make you sound better than battering everyone else to death with volume and 'cutting through' .

 

[YellowJacket]

I find the same problem with wah pedals, which is why I insist on using one with an LED .

Hmm, maybe I should try that. Shame I'm spending so much $$$s on cabs, electronics, pups, etc.

I think you can make good music either way, with or without effects, the trick is to know how and when to use the effects and when *not* to use them so they don't take over from the music. Even the Edge uses his more sparingly than you might think - except his delay, and he uses that almost like another guitar player... he does definitely have a minimalist technique, but it's not 'no' technique - it's not quite as easy as it sounds to do that well.

LOL! Notice how I never accused the Edge of lacking creativity. I'm just saying I watched 'it might get loud' and I doubt that guy could play a C major scale to save his life. He's better than Fred Durst though :lol:

I'm somewhere in the middle - I can play all my music perfectly well on an unamplified acoustic guitar, or on an electric straight into the amp, but I find the sounds more interesting and powerful when I can add other stuff too... they're still less important than the notes and chords, but they do add a lot to the arrangement. I would never just leave stuff on when I was supposed to have gone back from a solo to a rhythm part though - it defeats the whole point of enhancing the structure of the songs and just makes a big muddy mess.

Makes sense. Either I don't click with effects or I haven't ever bothered to use them. I like your idea of using a wah with a led, that sounds acceptable.

I also hate volume wars on stage... nothing worse than hearing a band where everyone is constantly trying to be louder than everyone else to the point you can't really hear anything properly at all. Dynamics, leaving space, listening and making your sound fit in volume and EQ with the rest will always make you sound better than battering everyone else to death with volume and 'cutting through' .

I agree. When someone has to 'cut through' something, it begs the question 'what' exactly it is they have to cut through? Wouldn't that imply some sort of deficiency in their setup whether it be gear, eq, or songwriting?