Mesa Newbie

[JoeDogInKC]

I picked up a used Rect-O-Verb 50 v.2 head today. I know that all Mesa's take a bit of time and patience to "dial in", but I'm hoping that someone can help me find that awesome crunch tone. I'm also thinking of re-tubing it and I'm wondering what the recommended tube brand would be. I'm thinking either JJ's or Groove Tubes, but being a newb, I figured I'd get some opinions.

 

[Jorn218]

Congratulations on your new amp. The best thing you could do to start acquainting yourself with your amp and how to dial it in is to go to Mesa's site and download the manual for your amp and read it. I hope this doesn't sound like I am being a dick because I'm not meaning to be. Mesa's do indeed have a bit of a learning curve compared to say a Marshall. I have had my Dual Rec going on 8 years now and I still read the manual from time to time. The manual will also give you some initial settings to start from to dial in "your" tone.

As far as tubes go, I would get in touch with Doug from Dougstubes.com and tell him what amp you have and what tone you are looking for and he will tailor a set of tubes for you.

 

[elvis]

+1, right on the mark.

Mesa tone controls are very powerful, so very twitchy. Start with everything at 12:00 and work from there. Also, the bass controls tend to run "too much". So if you are struggling to get more bass, what is often happening is that the bass control is too high, making the low-end sound mushy and killing the low mids. It is counterintuitive, but turn the bass down, and you may get a low-end boost.

A little more info, before you go diving into the "tubes" posts on this board:

Preamp tubes last a lot longer than power tubes. If you have to choose between them, replace the power tubes.

There are lots of brands of tubes, but unless you are buying NOS, VOS, or any other old tubes, there are only 2 manufacturers: China and Czech republic. As a rule, China tubes are bright, Czech are dark. Mesa and JJ are Czech.

Beyond that, tubes are selected (by test after manufacture) for gain and other characteristics. But these are more subtle.

It would be worth getting a few brands of tubes and "rolling" them (rotate them through the different tube sockets" to see if you wind up with a favorite. Some sockets are not very sensitive, so all the tubes will sound the same. Others (usually V1 and/or V2) will be quite sensitive to the tube you put in it.

Take your time and have fun!

 

[deeman]

You never want to feel like you're Russian your decision on the perfect tube. I always Czech many sources before purchasing.

That aside, Tung Sol in V1 is a popular tube placement.

 

[tele twister]

Welcome Joe,
I will only use Mesa approved tubes in mine. (perhaps I was brainwashed by the manual)
Anyway, if it don't say Mesa on it, I ain't putting it in there, dad gummit !

 

[TRENCHLORD]

If you're not having any actual tube problems then I'd suggest ordering a pair of str440 from Mesa, a pair of their str447 (el34), and a couple of their spax7 preamp tubes for good measure (in the V1 position).
Try both the spax7s and then the stock again (in the V1 slot) just to see if one sounds better to you. Also won't hurt at all to grab a Tung-Sol or two to compare.

Do the same thing with the power tubes. Rotate through the pairs and see if one of them is "better". (remember to flip the switch on the EL's)

This will give you backups and allow for some experimentation at the same time.
Might grab an extra fuse as well for spare.

 

[knotts]

Congrats on the new amp. These are all good pieces of advice. I say continue to mess with the controls first to get a better feel for it before you start messing with tubes. Since the controls are cascading, turning down the treble will have a substantial effect on the amount of mids and bass blended in. After you get your treble set, adjusting the mids will also have an effect on the bass setting. Work from the gain control down to the volume (assuming that the layout is the same as my roadster). After you get the feel for the controls, I would look at a V1 change to a tung sol. As suggested contact Doug, he'll hook you up. He helped me make the most out of my roadster.

 

[KiwiJoe]

Congrats on the new amp. These are all good pieces of advice. I say continue to mess with the controls first to get a better feel for it before you start messing with tubes. Since the controls are cascading, turning down the treble will have a substantial effect on the amount of mids and bass blended in. After you get your treble set, adjusting the mids will also have an effect on the bass setting. Work from the gain control down to the volume (assuming that the layout is the same as my roadster). After you get the feel for the controls, I would look at a V1 change to a tung sol. As suggested contact Doug, he'll hook you up. He helped me make the most out of my roadster.

Best advice right there. Unless there is something wrong physically/mechanically with the tubes, I can't see replacing them, especially if you haven't familiarized yourself with everything else about the amp's controls first. Otherwise, not having much experience in tube rolling with that amp, you're really just shooting in the dark.

 

[Blaklynx]

If the tubes are OK, play with the EQ of the amp as suggested. To be honest, I always thought recto amps lacked something on their own and needed some help. You'll find out a number of owners use a TS9 type pedal to boost their amps. I write a little bit about it below and even more in previous posts. You also don't mention what cab you're using.

I own a Rectoverb II. I run Winged C EL34's in 6L6 mode. I won't go back to 6L6's. In V1 I have a 5157 preamp (I think it's a Sylvania JAN tube) to reduce the input gain (rectos have more than enough gain), a Sovtek 12AX7 LPS in the PI slot and all others are JJ 12AX7's. My amp had all Mesa tubes before I replaced them. There was nothing wrong with them but I felt the amp didn't sound the way I wanted. My tubes are still good so I have no need to replace any at this stage.

For classic crunch: Clean channel, Pushed mode. Gain to taste, EQ to taste. You can push this with an OD pedal if you want. One of the best sounds I found was cascading two pedals, MI Audio's Tube Zone and Crunch Box in said mode. I can't remember the order of the pedals but with some tweaking of the pedals and the amp, the sound was nothing short of classic ACDC Malcolm Young stuff. Sounded great.

I use Raw mode plenty and cascade OD/Dist pedals (I have many of them) and use two EQ pedals; one out front and one in the loop. You really need to understand the basics of the EQ on this amp and understand how each pedal and the front EQ affects the input stage. The EQ in the loop does the final tone shaping. I've written plenty in my previous posts if you search (it may be a pain to search posts but believe me, you'll learn a heap about this amp and rectos in general, search Rectoverb and see what hits you get)

In the end, we can say what we want. My gear and the playing environment would be different to yours. What may sound great to me may sound garbage to you. Only you can decide to take the plunge and spend a few $$ to experiment; but that is the fun of tube amps, isn't it?

If you haven't already found out, these amps sound better turned up, but they will shake the foundations. Just protect your hearing; these amps are loud.

Enjoy your amp.

 

[JoeDogInKC]

Thanks for the information, everyone. Since this thing is fairly old, I went ahead and ordered a complete set of JJ's tubes for it. I now know that I may have wasted my money on the preamp tubes, but the price was right on Amazon.com, so I just went for it. Being that it's my first Mesa (well, I had a Stiletto Trident for less than 24 hours and returned it because it was broken), I wasn't really sure what to expect out of an amp of this age.

While waiting for the tubes, I've been doing a fair amount of experimentation and was never able to get the kind of high gain crunch I was looking for. The mid control doesn't seem to scoop as much on the lead channel and it still sounded both honk-ey and quite harsh. If I backed off the treble or presence, it would just sound muddy and have no grit.

So, I threw my Line6 M13 in front of it (I will be doing the 4 cable method later this week) and experimented with pedals on channel 1 clean. Once I dialed in the clean tone to something suitable, I added a "Tube Screamer" clone with almost no gain followed by a "Tube driver" with a fair bit of gain followed by a gate. The results of that have been mighty impressive. Way, way, way better than the tones I was getting out of my Rebel 20 with a similar setup.

While I'm here, this amp came sans footswitch. I'm looking for one, but haven't really had any success except for 3rd party substitutes.

1. Is it possible to get one from Mesa?
2. Would it be cost prohibitive to do so?
3. Does anyone have any experience using an M13 with a midi cable to use as a channel/solo footswitch? I know that it's possible on other amps (5150, for example), but I can't find any detailed information about how to do it.

 

[Authorized Boogie]

You can find the original foot controller here: http://mesa.stores.yahoo.net/fcrvrb-n.html

Thanks!

 

[Blaklynx]

Can't help you with you the 4 cable method. Authorized Boogie is from Mesa... in case you didn't know and had doubts about him posting a link to a shop. And don't worry about the age of the amp. She'll be right. Anything goes wrong, it can be fixed. These aren't throwaway amps.

Slowly, you're getting to know the amp. Don't expect high-gain-compressed-chugga-chugga-liquid-sustain-for-days type tone. It's not going to happen with this amp without help. It's a great rhythm machine no doubt. Don't expect Santana sustain with the amp as standard. For sustain type tones you need to experiment with pedals to push the amp. I've written plenty as I've said in my previous post.

Use your Line 6 and play around. Cascading 2 types of drives can work really well. Try an OD and a Distortion together. Swap the order. Try them at different levels and gain levels. Adjust the amps gain, too. Don't be afraid to turn the amp gain very low and use the pedals to push the signal instead.

And the amps EQ.... don't be afraid to cut (sometimes a lot) rather than just keep on adding. Too many make the mistake of increasing controls instead of cutting. If you want more EQ flexibility, shove an EQ in the loop and try put one out front, too.

Well, now you know what you can do if you don't get that tone.

 

[JoeDogInKC]

Thanks a lot, Blaklynx! Yeah, I quickly found out that it's not quite the high-gain monster I was looking for, but the cascaded drives on a supreme clean sound fantastic, very much like I was looking for. I'll keep experimenting though, obviously.

Authorized Boogie,

Someone apparently worked on this amp and swapped the gain controls for channels 1 and 2. Are there any exploded diagrams for this so I can see how to swap the controls back to their original positions? It's certainly a job that I can handle, but I'd like to know what I'm getting into before I attempt it. With new tubes, the gain situation resolved and a footswitch, I'm sure that I can resell this thing easily when it's time to move up to a Dual Rec, Mark IV or Mark V.

Thanks!!

 

[Authorized Boogie]

Thanks a lot, Blaklynx! Yeah, I quickly found out that it's not quite the high-gain monster I was looking for, but the cascaded drives on a supreme clean sound fantastic, very much like I was looking for. I'll keep experimenting though, obviously.

Authorized Boogie,

Someone apparently worked on this amp and swapped the gain controls for channels 1 and 2. Are there any exploded diagrams for this so I can see how to swap the controls back to their original positions? It's certainly a job that I can handle, but I'd like to know what I'm getting into before I attempt it. With new tubes, the gain situation resolved and a footswitch, I'm sure that I can resell this thing easily when it's time to move up to a Dual Rec, Mark IV or Mark V.

Thanks!!

Sorry, but we don't provide schematics for current production amps. Any authorized Service Station can do the job for you.

Also, with your JJ tubes - are you sure they are rated for the correct current draw range required for the fixed bias? Its fairly important to be sure the amp is operating correctly = sounding correctly. Thanks!

 

[JoeDogInKC]

Thanks for the information. Of course, the Amazon page didn't show bias or voltage settings, so I'm hoping that there is some documentation that comes with the 6L6GC's.

Perhaps I'll have an amp technician fix the gain knob and just install the tubes while he's at it. I'll look for an authorized one. The one I know about has a $75 bench fee, and who knows how much it'll be after that.

 

[JoeDogInKC]

Wow, got my new JJ's tubes and got the gain knob situation resolved. NOW it's a totally different amp. Whatever idiot worked on this in the past didn't just switch the pots like I thought. He soldered the clean channel to the lead channel's gain pot and vice-versa. Since the lead channel has all the extra cascading preamp tubes, they weren't being used! The freakin' clean channel had all those extra tubes. The cleans sounded great that way, ironically. However, the cleans are now easier to dial in and the lead channel has that amazing cascaded gain sound that I've been looking for.

Side note, boy are these amps nitpicky with the tone controls. I dialed the Treble down to about 9:30, Mids to about 11 and Bass to about 10. The mids really bring out the crunch and the Treble down low takes away the high end fizziness. Oh how I look forward to tomorrow during the day when I can crank it a little and really get a good idea of how it sounds. SO much happier with this now! I'm sure the next owner will be too. Poor guy that owned it before me either messed it up himself, or had a bad amp tech.