Rectoverb 25 REVIEW

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elvis

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My Rectoverb 25 Review:

I have now owned the ROV25 for 24 hours. I have about 3 hours in on it.

At the store: With no reference, I plugged in and played. I hadn't played in the couple of weeks previously due to some travel. So I was really cold. The amp seemed pretty anemic. When I used settings from the modern rock demo video, I was surprised that it had so little gain. Of course I was playing it at pretty low volume, as I generally don't like to bug the folks in the store. One of the employees came over and cranked it, and the thing really came to life. Fire-breather indeed.

I was surprised at how much low-end it had, as most 1x12 cabinets disappoint me. It was really full and heavy. So I bought it for further "study"…

At home, I cranked it up, and again, it seemed kind of anemic. I A/B'd it with my Mini Recto with the same settings. The MR was running into a recto 2x12 with V30s. The difference was night and day.

Guitar: I used a 2005 American Deluxe Tele, stock. I am particularly sensitive to how the high end comes across, as well as how much of the "tele" character comes through. In general it sounds a bit better through my Dyne, and a bit less 3-D through the MR. I used the neck pickup mostly, as the bridge pickup tends to carry its character no matter what amp you play it through.

Gain: Once I got the volumes and settings about the same, the ROV had just as much gain as the MR. But the MR sounded way clearer.

Tone: The MR had much more top end, and the ROV sounded really muddy by comparison. I played with the tone controls a little, but it was just off. So I moved to a speaker A/B.

Speaker: I used my MR (by now I was warmed up and readjusted to how my MR normally sounds). Plugging the Fillmore into the MR gave the same muddy, low-end heavy tone to the MR as well. Interestingly, the Fillmore is noticeably louder than the recto 2x12. I played back and forth quite a bit and tried to tweak the tone to match the tones of the two speakers. I wound up cutting the mids and bass a lot to compensate the tone of the Fillmore, but it gets pretty honky in the mids. I had to crank the treble to get close, but the Fillmore really doesn't sound like the V30.

Once I got the tone about right, I switched over to the ROV into both speaker cabs. I found the tone controls behaved pretty much the same as with the MR. I believe that the ROV is very close to the MR, if not identical. The Fillmore is a VERY different beast than what I am used to. I thought, based on the description, that the Fillmore might sound a lot like the Jensen-equipped 4x10 that I usually play through (that is at the practice studio, so I haven't tried it), but I think it is wholly different from that as well. I use the same tone settings with my MR on both the 2x12 and 4x10, with only a small change in tone overall.

When I looked at the tone settings in the ROV vids, I noticed that the bass and mids tend to be set pretty low, and the treble high. Now I know why.

How do I feel about it? The amp is awesome, and I really need a 1x12 combo form factor for gigging. I am tired of lugging the 4x10. I also want to be able to use my MR as a spare in case the ROV goes silent on the gig (I have been bringing two MRs up until now). I think I can probably get a tone I like from the Fillmore, but I doubt I will ever get it exactly. I am impressed at how much low end it can carry, and I will bet it rivals the 4x10. It is the clarity that I am struggling with, and this is something I have always found with Eminence speakers. I also really like V30s. So I may swap out the Fillmore for a V30 in the end. I do think I will keep this amp long-term.

Reverb: I am not a big spring reverb guy. I use a TC Electronic G System for reverbs and delays. To me the reverb sounds pretty much the same at any setting, but the reverb control makes the artifacts at the end of the reverb louder and longer lasting as you turn it up. I am not sure if I will use that feature. If I feel like just bringing the amp and nothing else, I would use the built-in verb.

48-hour ADDENDUM:

I spent the entire initial review on tone and setup. I should add some general comments as well.

First, I love the form-factor. It is big enough to fit a 12" speaker and carry a TON of bass, but nice and small and light (surprise!). It will be perfect for gigging. The controls and connections are slightly different on the back, but not complicated. I think it is a great choice to have per-channel reverb controls, though it will annoy people who actually use them that they are on the back. The chassis is quite a bit bigger than the MR, again to fit the cabinet. The plus is bigger knobs and easier tweaking. It looks and feels right to me. I really like the black/cream covering. Everything is well-built, quality is great. I miss the loop disable, as I use that whenever I get no sound after setting up to see where the problem is. I guess I can always unplug the loop cables.

After a few hours last night with it, I continue to evolve the tone settings. A lot of the problems can be cured by adding treble. Otherwise, it is just a low-end heavy cabinet. I am getting used to that, and am curious to see how it sounds with my band. I got some really good clean tone and tele character from the clean channel. I did not get similar tone to the vids, but part of that as far as I can tell is that I think they had the masters way up when they filmed them. I'm not really pushing the power stage, and that is still a big part of this amp. I fired it up loud about midnight last night and it really added a lot of life to it. Ears were ringing...

I think the low end is probably an asset, but it will take some time to figure out how to tame it.

Addendum: This thing really thrives on volume. The character is completely different when you turn it up a bit. More lively, and the low end evens out much better. I am kind of used to playing the MRs at a pretty tame volume, but this made me remember that they ROAR at higher volume. Maybe the speaker will soften with time, maybe not. I'll find out...

Addendum: After a month or so, no real change in speaker tone or dynamics. I replaced it with a Mesa V30, expecting it to radically change the tone to be much closer to what I'm used to from the MR into a V30 recto cab. No dice. Only a very subtle shift in that direction. The tone seems to be dominated by the cabinet. Granted, it is a brand-new V30. Still, it is a long way from my other cabs. I will tweak on it, but I think that this is just how it sounds. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm missing some lively high-end dynamics that this thing just doesn't have. EXCEPT at high volume, where it really does come into its own very nicely.
 
Your description of the Fillmore sounds like a set of speakers I broke in a few years ago. At first they were dull and bass heavy, but after 8 or so hours they opened up and started sounding good.

I'd give the Fillmore a few more hours to settle in.
 
I agree w SD. Work in that speaker pretty good before you write it off. You can always swap out for a v30. I really wanna play one to get a feel for what the reverb is like though. From the sounds of it it doesn't seem to be anything to special though. In my experience the reverb in the rectifier series has never been to great though IMO The Expresses on the other hand thats a different story…. :)
 
Thanks for the review, Elvis. I enjoy the objectivity and attention to detail! And I laughed when I read how you justify your GAS with a line that I, a fellow gear addict, have used: "I bought it for further study." 8)
 
Cool review. I especially like the focus on the Fillmore; the "honkiness" is intriguing.

How do you think it would work paired with a V30? I've got a MR with the Mini cab and V30, and I love that combination. I recently picked up a bare ported reflex cab about the size of a 4x12 but set up for a 1x15. I'm thinking of just cutting a 1x12 adapter template and was going to get another V30 from Mesa, but now I'm thinking of getting the Fillmore. I'm really keen to experiment with a seriously over-sized 1x12 cab (especially since it was free!)

Any thoughts? I don't want to derail Elvis' thread, so if anybody, especially Elvis, since he's actually played with both speakers, wouldn't mind chiming-in on that in a PM, that would be cool. :)
 
Thanks for the comments! I added a bit to the review.

Kiwi, I think it will probably pair well with a V30. I know I will try it that way at some point. Experiment away and let us know what happens.

Also, since the amp is really the same as a MR, you can use that for speaker tests if you have one. The one thing you can't do is try out the ROV combo cabinet without an actual ROV combo. But if you're going the head route, it's just a MR with reverb.
 
I tried one out in a local store. The clean channel is really nice and the reverb sounds great. The pushed mode was alright, but I didn't spend much time on it to really see what it could do. Channel 2 was pretty frickin' cool in both modes, but I think it's voiced for Vintage, judging by the feel. The reverb sounds kind of crappy on channel 2. I had it on just a touch; it was too lush and the spring sound kind of seemed like a mismatch for a hard rocking tone. It would have been better for the taper on the pot to have a more subtle response. I turned it down a hair and it was better, but still really bold. When I went full on metal, I turned the reverb completely down.

The tone controls don't seem as interactive as my Dual. Dialing in more bass was futile and I was trying to dial out the treble a bit to compensate for the lower bass response. I know a drop from 100W of 6L6 to 25W of EL84 is going to be quite different, but it's definitely a different amp than a regular rectifier series. It didn't take long to get a nice sound. I don't usually like EL84 amps very much, but this one was cool.

I had the volume pretty far up and spent about 45 minutes with it in the amp room. I liked it, but I don't think I'll pick one up immediately. The shop had it priced at around $1200.
 
Nice thorough review.

Thanks for putting the time and efforet into it.
 
I thought the original MR was going to be my last amp for a while. I heard that they added reverb, which is nice, but I don't use a lot and when I do, it's outboard....but they made it look my trem-o-verb...and the knobs aren't backwards from what I played for almost 20 years..I'm rationalizing, aren't I? They got me. It's a solo volume knob/switch away from being the perfect amp.(for my purposes)
 
OK, I changed out the Fillmore in my RV25 for a V30. It really didn't change the tone much

Two possibilities: Break-in and cabinet character.

It is late and I don't know what to make of it. I will play with it for a while and see what happens.
 
Elvis,

We are waiting for the updates about the speaker replacement.
I will sell my Mini Rectifier to buy this new Rectoverb 25!!! But I still don´t know if I will go with the combo or the Head format. I would love to buy a combo, but I do have some concerns about it, since the Recto tone is often related with closed back cabinets with V30 speakers (or something similar).
I´m running my Mini Recto in a Marshall 1912 cab with a WGS Retro 30 right now and love it.
How good is the reverb on this amp?
Sorry for my english. It´s not my native language.
 
bts,

I don't have any new info yet - haven't played the amp in the last couple days.

So far my experience is that the tone is dominated by the cabinet, not the speaker. I currently believe that the Fillmore is not all that different from the V30, maybe a bit more bass-heavy and slightly less mids.

I will have to play with the tone settings on the RV25. It really lacks the mid/high punch and crispness I get from my other cabinets, but it does have lots of low-end. The trick will be if I have to kill off the bass to get the tone I want.

NOTE: I am playing at pretty low volume. When you crank up the RV25 combo it really sounds great and has a lot of life. It's just at the volumes I use where it seems kind of boxy and confined.

Remember, I really wanted the 1x12 combo form, so I am willing to go through some pain to use it. If I were only looking at tone, I would keep using what I have been using: Mini Recto into 4x10 or 2x12. Maybe a 1x12 would work, but I never found one I was really happy with. I think that the RV25 would sound just as good into those cabs, but I don't use spring reverb at all, so I would stick with what already works for me.

I highly recommend you try the combo and a cab you are interested in. Neither may work, or both, or just one. For me, I still have work to do. And I am way less negative about the Fillmore, since it clearly isn't the problem.
 
Elvis,

I saw in other topic that you put Fillmore speaker back in your Rectoverb 25 combo, with better results this time. Could you share your impressions? Thanks.
 
No problem. I was working on tone settings with the V30 and got way outside of what I had tried previously with the Fillmore. So I put the Fillmore back in and got reasonable tone. I am way happier with the tone right now, and surprisingly got much much better tone in the clean channel than I thought possible. Still, my MR into a recto 2x12 is better to my ears. Right now I am as good as I think I will get, and I am gigging with the ROV, so I guess it is good enough.

For sure the Fillmore was not the problem I initially thought. In retrospect, I would not have changed it out. There is nothing wrong with the Fillmore.
 
Thank you a lot for your answer. I think I will try the combo format, and I believe it will fill my needs (just want my Mini Rectifier + Marshall 1912 cab tones with reverb option). In my case I think I can get even closer than you, since I didn´t use a 2x12 with the MR, just a 1x12. 8)
 

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