New Rectoverb has more distortion than Triple Recto?? Tubes?

[tele_jas]

Hi all, I just got a new (used, but new to me) Rectoverb series II combo yesterday and I set my clean channel and main distortion channel up just like my Triple recto and I was blown away because my ROV has more distortion/breakup (and what seems like compression on the clean channel) than my triple...... heres how I had my clean channel set up:

* Channel = Clean
* Gain = 100%
* Treb = 50%
* mids = 40%
* bass = 40%
* Pres = 40%
* master = 20% (about 9 o'clock)
* the amps output also set to about 9 'clock

**** Guitar = Peavey Wolfgang*****

When I struck a chord, the sound was really broken up so I backed the gain down to about half and bumped the master up to compensate and it sounded better but still broke up more than my triple with the gain up all the way. I then tried the distorted channel (ch 2) with about the same settings as above but on the Vintage setting and it too has more distortion than my triple recto......

>> Is this because of the ROV is set to doide rectifier and my triple is tube??

>> or could it be the fact that I got the triple used with used tubes in it as well and they may be about "done" and I've just gotten used to the sound of the dead tubes in my Triple??

>> Or is this the 150wt "Head-Room" that I'm used to having with my Triple and the ROV is just getting some powertube saturation?? But I'm really not turned up that much.


Is my new baby acting ok, or is she sick?? Or is the triple in need of new tubes??

Signed, Lost in Recto-ville

 

[no soul]

You are experiencing the real difference between 50w and 150w, which is a difference in dynamics.

The powertubes break up sooner in a smaller wattage design, its as simple as that. Even though the tri rec has 3x the power, it doesent even have remotely close to 3x the volume. Matter of fact, the tri rec isnt even remotely close to having just twice the volume of the single rec, the difference, as you discovered, is headroom. I think at best the tri recto has a 4db advantage at full volume over a single recto, which really isnt much.

As far as trying to correlate this to the difference in rectifiers, you actually have it backwards. Solidstate rectifiers have more headroom that tube rectifiers.