Mini Recto Gain - Pre-amp or Power amp ?

[auburnshredder]

Question for you Mesa gurus..

I have read that Mesa is a bit different than other amps in the since that much of the gain is achieved in the preamp section and not the power amp section. Is this true? Am I really getting more gain from "heating" the power tubes up.? I know my small Soldano doesn't sound great until the master is pushed up over 7. The Mini Recto doesnt' seem to have that much more gain over 4 or 5 on the master, just louder.

Thoughts?

 

[domct203]

Question for you Mesa gurus..

I have read that Mesa is a bit different than other amps in the since that much of the gain is achieved in the preamp section and not the power amp section. Is this true? Am I really getting more gain from "heating" the power tubes up.? I know my small Soldano doesn't sound great until the master is pushed up over 7. The Mini Recto doesnt' seem to have that much more gain over 4 or 5 on the master, just louder.

Thoughts?

That is correct, Mesa high gain amps are based on cascading preamp gain for most, if not all of the overdrive.

While you may not notice more "gain" when turning up the master volume, the amp should sound fuller, thicker & smoother as the volume goes up and the power tubes begin to naturally compress (that is at very loud levels).

Dom

 

[elvis]

I would add that it depends on the amp and your settings.

For high gain amps like the Mark or Rectos, set with gain up, then yes, primarily the gain/saturation is in the preamp. If you roll back the gain and turn up the master, you shift the gain from the pre to the power amp.

For the Express/F-series, Electradyne, Lone Star and (I believe) Stiletto, the preamps are much less gainy, so the power amps account for much more of the gain and compression.

Also, the total volume makes a huge difference. A lot of the compression happens in the output tranny, the speaker, the air, and your ears. If you play low volume with lots of preamp gain, it will sound much different than turned up, even though the preamp is very compressed.

 

[domct203]

I'll echo what elvis posted. I was speaking about Recto's in general as that was the Topic and should have stated so.

Dom

 

[auburnshredder]

Makes sense...I also have a TA-15 and it seems to behave differently than the recto, as far as the pre- and power amp stage.

 

[auburnshredder]

So use of an attenuator with the min-rec would basically be a waste?

 

[Addictedtokaos]

Im been pondering an Attenuator since I got the mini. Would be nice to have a "master" output to control both channels.

Anyone hear anything about the SPL Reducer Power Soak?

http://spl.info/produkte/fuer-gitarre-bass/reducer/video.html

 

[elvis]

I use a power attenuator quite a bit, and for low volume, just turning down the master is just as good. For a few dB of attenuation, the power atten is great because you still get to slam the power tubes.

If you want a ganged master for your MR, put a volume control in the FX loop. Way easier and cheaper than a power atten.

 

[auburnshredder]

The volume control in the loop is an interesting idea...had not considered that.

I am not familiar with the SPL attenuator, but the design sounds a lot like the THD Hot Plate, which is resistor based. I have used a Weber attenuator on other amps, which uses an actual speaker motor and IMO retains much more of the amps actual tone.

I just purchased a 50 watt Weber Mini Mass on EBAY to try with the Mini Rec.

This is an intersesting article about attenuators:

http://www.tedweber.com/atten.htm

 

[Addictedtokaos]

I built myself a volume box a few year back with a 1M pot. I tried this out a few weeks back. The cleans it works really well, but the gain channel would just get extremely fizzy when adjusting the volume pot in the fx. Not the feel I was looking for.

 

[elvis]

The 1Meg pot will have very high output impedance unless you use almost no or almost all attenuation. You will want to use a buffer with volume control to keep your tone. And you will want it to take lots of Volts, preferably 18V or more.