Roadster with EL34's....spongy and tube recto?

[rpurdue]

i seem to remember reading that Mesa recommends running the roadster in tube recto and spongy with EL34's but i can't seem to find that in the manual. Am i imagining things?

 

[LithiumZero]

That is correct

 

[knotts]

Are you running EL34's in your roadster? Curious to hear your thoughts.

 

[LithiumZero]

I ran them in mine briefly. While I liked channel 2 Brit mode better I thought that it compromised the other channels and it didn't have that classic Recto roar

 

[rpurdue]

Honestly, i'm not super happy with it either way. I tried a 2009 standard 3 channel dual rectifier and i liked it more. It's more in your face and open sounding.

 

[LithiumZero]

I love the roadster but prefer it with 6L6's. I find it covers nearly every tone I could want. I never cared for the 3 channel duals but have yet to play a Recto Reborn

 

[rpurdue]

I love the roadster but prefer it with 6L6's. I find it covers nearly every tone I could want. I never cared for the 3 channel duals but have yet to play a Recto Reborn

I tried a 2009 with a recto reborn and the differences on the gain channel to me were minute. I'm retty sure out front no one would even tell the difference. There was more sparkle and clean head room but i play a Tele so that's never been an issue with me. As for the roadster it may have been user error on my part lol. For some reason the 3 channel just EQ'd more like a conventional amp while the roadster was very finnicky to minute EQ changes.

 

[Given To Fly]

I love the roadster but prefer it with 6L6's. I find it covers nearly every tone I could want. I never cared for the 3 channel duals but have yet to play a Recto Reborn

I tried a 2009 with a recto reborn and the differences on the gain channel to me were minute. I'm retty sure out front no one would even tell the difference. There was more sparkle and clean head room but i play a Tele so that's never been an issue with me. As for the roadster it may have been user error on my part lol. For some reason the 3 channel just EQ'd more like a conventional amp while the roadster was very finnicky to minute EQ changes.

The Roadster does not EQ like a conventional amp. I think every Roadster thread on this forum has at least one post saying "Read the manual" because the gain and tone controls interact in such a way that is un-intuitive...until you read the manual, then it starts to make sense. I haven't played a Dual Rectifier though so I can't make a comparison.

 

[LithiumZero]

The roadster works exactly like every other rectifier it just is a bit darker sounding than others in the recto family.

 

[nitrous12]

i seem to remember reading that Mesa recommends running the roadster in tube recto and spongy with EL34's but i can't seem to find that in the manual. Am i imagining things?

Do we know why this is?

 

[deeman]

on the back of my dual rec it says 'best to use tube rectifier with EL34's'

I've never ran it with EL34s but have always used the tube rectifier with the 6L6's and enjoy the tone.

 

[knotts]

I just dropped EL34's in my roadster last night before rehearsal. I'm not convinced it was the right decision, but I definitely need to tweak more before I come to that conclusion.

 

[boojo35]

I put EL-34's in my Roadster and don't see myself ever looking back. It is way more in your face now and has more useable tones. Maybe my 6l6's were just that sick and who knows how long it sat in the store before buying it but it was really dark sounding and did not sound good unless it was real loud. Now it sounds good at much lower levels. Of course being cranked up is still better like all tube amps seem to be.....

 

[Chester]

Went from 6L6 to EL34's, then back again

I much preferred the roundness and response of the 6L6s, which was a real surprise to me. I have EL34 =C=s in my MKV & Lonestar, and plan to keep them there, but not in the Roadster

As others here have advised, I put a TungSol in V1 and it opened the amp up nicely

 

[nitrous12]

I am on the EL34 side myself. Shouldn't be a big surprise seeing as the past 6 years were spent on Marshalls or similar.

Depending on the set of tubes the Diode/Bold option on EL34 can get pretty hot, which is why they recommend the absolutely coldest settings. I had it running on Bold/Recto today and had some pretty good tones going on when I gave it some volume.
I would really like to be able to dial the bias in correctly for Diode/Bold, which has me strongly considering doing the bias mod.
My only hesitation is I am not yet 100% I am keeping this for a foreseeable long haul.

 

[knotts]

Went from 6L6 to EL34's, then back again

I much preferred the roundness and response of the 6L6s, which was a real surprise to me. I have EL34 =C=s in my MKV & Lonestar, and plan to keep them there, but not in the Roadster

As others here have advised, I put a TungSol in V1 and it opened the amp up nicely

I have EL34's in my Lonestar too which is what made me think that doing the same in my Roadster was the right choice. Channel 2 sounds better, Channels 3 and 4, not so much. I think I have some more tweaking to do. I just found a Rock Crusher used and picked it up. Going to put that in the mix to push the tubes more to see what happens.

 

[knotts]

Just put the 6L6's back in my roadster. I like them better. It was a good experiment.

 

[Traumatized]

I put EL-34's in because I was having issues with getting some good channel 2 tones in Brit mode and took someone's advice. It did allow for some better tones on channel 2, but seemed to suck some life out of channels 3 & 4, so I went back to 6L6's and just use a drive pedal to push channel 2 a bit when I do use it.

 

[knotts]

I put EL-34's in because I was having issues with getting some good channel 2 tones in Brit mode and took someone's advice. It did allow for some better tones on channel 2, but seemed to suck some life out of channels 3 & 4, so I went back to 6L6's and just use a drive pedal to push channel 2 a bit when I do use it.

I don't mind ch2 without the OD. I have a darker sounding strat with some growl (courtesy of kinman avn blues pickups) so I get decent tones out of it. Honestly my 2 favorite channels are 2 & 3. Both sound good with out OD and just sing with it.

 

[user 85623]

I have a roadster that i got with all old ruby preamp tubes(rebranded jj's - and they look really old). i just switched them out last night finally with a tung sol in V1 and a marshall 12ax7 i had out of a jvm 410 i used to own (just because i thought it would be funny lol), and some 2003-ish jj 12ax7's in all the other spots. (a balanced tube for V6)
I also have 2 matched pairs of svetlana =C= el34's stashed away and went ahead and tried them also --
the difference i noticed with the el34's is that they just seemed to give the amp more mids and more treble, and less bottom end and less clarity in chording and playing multiple strings, ect... i think you could dial it in with the controls to compensate for that stuff and probably get some good tones with them, but i didn't want to totally change all my settings, so i just went ahead and put the mesa 6l6's back in and they just seem to sound better overall to me with this amp... so i'm gonna have to vote for sticking with 6l6's in the roadster lol

i will also say that the preamp tube changes made a noticeable improvement. i'm leaving the tung sol 12ax7 in V1 also.

and also - i recommend using the roadster in spongy with tube rectification all the time lol