rack vs head

[oneamongthefence]

I'm really curious about the differences between having a head or having a preamp/poweramp rack unit. I'm guessing that the programability is easier and more options, but am curious about tonal differences and what's the advantages and disadvantages of having a rack unit vs a head or combo.

I'm thinking of getting a rack unit due to programability and easier to carry around etc... but don't know where i would start if i was going to do it. I have a dual rec tov and love the recto sound ie. modern heavy gain and crunch. So is the recto pre the best preamp for that? haha help a rack noob out!

 

[CoG]

if you want to have the full on dual rec experience you need a 2:100 to go with the Rec Pre. That will lead to you having a rack that is louder than God, weighs a LOT, and you will have limits to how quiet you can play and still sound good (same deal for a DR head, though.)

unless you seriously need to raise the roof in big venues with no decent PA, the 20/20 gives plenty of juice on the power side.

Mark, who's on this board, used the RP/2:100 combo live for a while and was really happy with it.

Note that the RP is *not* programmable, you can only switch between channels 1, 2, and 2 louder on the fly. The Triaxis is programmable but doesn't do modern metal crunch. I wish they'd make a Rec Pre with Triaxis programmability but I bet that would cost some heavy coin.

as for rack versus head:

1) racks can be more hassle but you can get more "pro" gear into a rack form (noise reduction, serious multifx, power conditioning, wireless, multiple preamps, etc.)

2) racks can give you more versatility in less space/weight/money (multiple preamps into one power amp, multiple fx units-- you can end up carrying around stuff like MIDI interfaces, a bass preamp, mic pre, an I/O for a laptop)

3) heads are usually more forgiving of being banged around

4) racks are more expensive/hassle to start, but less so than ending up with multiple heads. I know one guy who's "pro" and tours six months a year, but is not famous enough to have people carry his gear His rig is this hideous frankenstein with 2 heads and a combo amp. He really wishes he'd planned better and spent the coin on a rack.

5) maximizing the features of a rack for gigging usually means going MIDI at some point, which some guys just find to be too much hassle.

 

[Russ]

I would like to interject here with my biggest complaint about racks.

Though racks can give you lots of options and some real quality processed sound it is very difficult to attain the organic nature of a straight up amp head. I tried for years to get as real of an amp tone as I could from racks and eventually ended up dumping everything and going back to playing a multiple amp setup. This is not to say that you can't get good sound from a rack. This is just to say that in reality it is hard to gain that real organic tone and feel.

 

[oneamongthefence]

thanks for the responses guys. It gave me more to think about. I've got myself somewhat involved in racks. I have a two spot rack for my g major and my power conditioner all controlled midi by my dmc ground control pro. so the whole midi thing doesn't bother me. I think it'd be cool to have a rec pre and another preamp(for cleans) running into the same power amp so i can a/b the amps for my dirty and clean channels rather than having two big heads or combo amps. I definitly see it gives more options... but don't know if i'm convinced enough to change over.

 

[t0aj15]

There's only one way to now for sure.

 

[CoG]

the rec pre has really beautiful warm clean tones, btw.

I think what often happens with racks is that guys end up just putting too much stuff in their chain-- pedal, preamp, bbe sonic max or something, digital multifx, separate reverb unit, power amp.

 

[oneamongthefence]

the rec pre has really beautiful warm clean tones, btw

Hmmm... interesting. I've been able to get pretty good cleans out of my tremoverb head but had no idea the rec pre has good clean tones. Thanks for all the info guys

 

[CoG]

doesn't really do chimey or sparkly. more "warm." I don't have any real sparkly guitars, though, so ymmv.

 

[disassembled]

The triaxis has pretty good cleans too and is only 1 space. In effect you could have a 2 space rig (like I do currently) by using the 20/20 PA along with a TA. While this doesn't lend to bone crushing bass at blaring volumes it is loud enough to play with a band and have a good tone. I just picked a 2:90 simul power amp recently so with that I could have a nice 3 space rig that is more than loud enough to provide over the top bass if one were so inclined.

I agree with what was said above about people adding too much to rack systems. When I play an amp I prefer to NOT use effects so why would playing a rack be any different for me? I am sort of wanting to buy a cheapie delay/verb pedal to through in the loop but that's about it. I use a nice 5 button boss midi controller with 1 EV-5 expression pedal if I want to manipulate any parameters. I understand everyone has different needs but too much crap loads the signal down a bit and just makes setting up/tearing down a chore.

Some other notable rack pieces to look at would be the studio and quad since they are, in essence, Mark series preamp boards rack mounted. Some versions of the TA come with the "Recto board" which is just an attempt by Mesa to go for an all in one unit. They did not succeed IMO but the Recto channel on my TA certainly provides a completely different flavor of tone and gain which is good. Not having spent any time with a Mark series amp and very little time with a rectifier series my opinions hold little weight i know but in the end i enjoy my tone and that's all that matters.

Good luck.

Greg

 

[Telelee]

Organic sounds may come from taking one's guitar and going direct into the tube head and then into the cabinet with quality cabels. A lot of people who use racks also use digital rack effects or even several pieces of rack gear and it may be killing the organic tone somewhere along the chain.

Once one leaves the tube chain and use effects, one may be accenting the digital/analog sound thus losing the organic feel. If one is going to use rack effects with rack gear, the effect and cabels must be of the highest quality and even with that, there may be an issue.

 

[Russ]

I am glad to see that I am not the only one that feels this way.

 

[Nick_cor]

I think one of the major complaints with going rack is.. they can be alot more expensive depending what you put into them, and soon as you realize it, your rack is about 20U and weighs a 200Lbs. If that's not a problem, where you can have 2 guys help you lug your rack around, then it's better because you can be very specific, BUT it's true that you can never sound the same with 2PA -( PowerAmp + PreAmp ) so that's why people prefer heads, which is suprising because some people forgot to mention that there are heads that are rackmountable! and if your looking for a recto, theres the dual racktifier. Apart from that, you can always get rack cases that hold your heads, how do you think john petrucci plays live? http://www.johnpetrucci.com/images/equipment/rack_2002.jpg

so don't worry about racks so much, worry about your tone first of all, THEN work your way around it..

 

[voodoo_child]

Im using a Rec pre with a 20/20.

Like the guys say, its not going to give you an exact Dual Recto vibe without running it through the the 2:100, but i didnt buy it to nail the recto tone as perfectly as i could - i bought it because i wanted a simple, killer-sounding, high-gain preamp. After looking at a bunch of other pres (soldanos etc), i decided the Rec was the best for me.

Yep, the Rec pre wont get you sparkling, chiming cleans. 'Warm' is definitely the right word.

A couple of points about whether a rack is for you or not.
1) Tidyness - with my rack set-up ive got one cable from guitar to preamp, and one cable from midi board to effects unit.
With my old head & stompbox setup, i needed to run a cable to and from the fx loop to my delay and chorus on stage, I needed power on stage for my stompboxes, a cable for the amp footswitch etc. Its not a big difference really, but my set-up is a little quicker with the rack, and the stage is a little tidier. Pop the lids of the rack case, plug in the guitar, the midi-board, and the power-strip (or conditioner) and away you go.

2) Modular. Chop and change, if you get bored of the Rec pre, swap it for something else, if you need more/less power change the poweramp. You could have a rec-pre, a soldano, JMP1 & engl preamp in the same rack for less than would cost to buy four heads, and would take up less space too.

At the end of the day, some guys run one or the other, and some guys run both depending on the situation. Or some guys chop and change year to year. Try it and see what you reckon.