Roots Of The Recto?

[afu]

FWIW, I like the tube on Modern. It feels less stark; less like a monolith and more like a mudslide.

 

[screamingdaisy]

I agree with you on all those points. This is why I posited my question/ interpretation on what was being said. The tube rectifier along with the spongy mode, acts somewhat as a built in variac as mentioned earlier. Seeing how this amp was designed originally and targeted towards the Hair Metal scene and those guitarists really sought the VH1 sound and were trying to emulate that by using the Van Halen lie of using a variac to get his Brown Sound (actually had more to do with unmatched tubes than anything early on). The inclusion of these two items would probably work best using them with the Raw and Pushed channel modes to get the most out of that feature.

Keep in mind that the amp was originally designed with only Vintage and Modern in mind. Pushed/Raw came out 8 years later. There's a lot of people who like the tube rectifiers with both vintage and/or modern. Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure Kim Thayil had his set to tube when I seen the back of his amp.

In the end it depends on what you're going for. Someone who wants a percussive sound is going to set the amp up differently than someone who wants a bit more sludge.

(I'm on the sludge side)

 

[vick1000]

I play with my 8th string tuned to F#, and I prefer tube rectification. It's what makes a tube amp so great, that squishy feeling on palm mutes. For a tighter attack, I just move my hand a little further from the bridge. Plus tube rectifiers are quieter.

 

[Jorn218]

Tube vs Diode on Pushed or Raw is Led Zeppelin I vs Back In Black. Soft/Crisp.

Spongy/Tube gets really dark on mine and it mushes up. That works for things on Raw and Ch. 1. I turn the bass waaaaaaaaaaay down to compensate for what sounds like a light film on the trebly bits. Vintage can work, as long as the gain is kept in the "bright" area before 11:00, but pushing Raw is more fun for me.

Im right with you and those have been my observations as well.

Keep in mind that the amp was originally designed with only Vintage and Modern in mind. Pushed/Raw came out 8 years later. There's a lot of people who like the tube rectifiers with both vintage and/or modern. Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure Kim Thayil had his set to tube when I seen the back of his amp.

In the end it depends on what you're going for. Someone who wants a percussive sound is going to set the amp up differently than someone who wants a bit more sludge.

(I'm on the sludge side)

Yes you are correct. I am just laying an idea on the table regarding the origin of maybe not necessarily the switchable rectifier's origin, but rather the Bold/Spongy portion of the circuit. I am positing that when the amp was originally in design stages, Was Mesa trying to incorporate a built in Variac so it would allow players to achieve something of a Mesa interpretation of the "Brown Sound"? It was stated earlier that the amp was originally designed to be geared to the whole Hair Metal type player, who there were droves trying to cop that Van Halen sound and one of his many statements was that he used a Variac, to lower the voltage going into his amp to help give him his sound (Which was one of his many blinds he threw out to the public to confuse others from copping his sound. Another being the Jose Arredondo modification of his preamp in his Marshall). I could see Mesa adding a feature like this from a marketing perspective. Was the Dual Rectifier originally supposed to be as high gain an amp it turned out to be? We are talking about the Genesis of this amp in this thread.

I asked about using the Tube Rectification along with the Voltage drop switch in the Raw and Pushed modes as it seems to my ears more at home there when both are used. I don't mind using the Tube rectifier in Modern or Vintage modes as that aspect lends to a cool chewy feel to chords and slower chugging stuff. The stuff my band plays, Tube rectification isn't fast enough tracking as the diodes and usually leaves me with more white noise in fast tremolo picking.

I have not found any personal use for the Voltage Drop switch, except in Pushed mode when setting that channel up for minimal breakup playing some blues type stuff. But then I haven't set the amp up to drive enough volume to see if the power section can be brought into clipping like a Variac would on a wide open Marshall like what Van Halen claims he did(a 12XX-series Super Lead, un-matched tubes, his potted E-335 pickup and picking style attributed more to this than anything. Listen to the Halloween demo recordings to hear what his amp really sounded like out of the studio which was closer to VH2, and Fair Warning than the debut).

My thought in this matter is that the amp's origin may not have been something that is as high gain as we know it today. This idea probably never got further than breadboard stages. The ideas of the switchable rectifier and built in Variac were kept. Maybe this amp was designed originally to be the be all end all everything a Hair Metal player could want amp. I have never heard early revisions of a Dual Rectifier. I have heard several two channel Duals and Triples, but never an A-C revision. It is neat to speculate though.

 

[afu]

Based on feedback and observation:

I know EVH lied about some of the things he did to get his tone, but for the purposes of the discussion, we can assume Mesa wanted to enable a Brown Sound. I think it's pretty much a given, now, that Spongy was meant for this and the silicon diode would be closest to that sound.

The tube rec with spongy is too low in voltage and loses definition for EVH. Spongy/tube is great for 50s and early 60s sounds. Perhaps for Blues or Clean on the 2 Ch and Raw/Clean/Pushed on the 3 Ch. The Blues had a resurgence thanks to SRV. BB King, Clapton, Buddy Guy and others were also doing well by 1990. A fuzz on this setting is awesome, btw.

The Bold settings would have covered the harder stuff. The tube rec for rock/hard rock/glam*. Silicon for the extreme styles. Even though Metallica was their biggest, hippest, client at the time, I don't see Mesa throwing in completely with Thrash (or Death Metal), since their love for re-shaping classic sounds continues to this day. Silicon/Bold was to sell to the hardest styles, but the love seems to have been mostly given to the more traditional bands. There are no rules, though. Anyone can bend or break conventions to suit their needs.

Vintage with the feedback to the PI is just like most amps that were popular in the era and would have suited the modded-Marshall crowd. Modern doesn't clean up well with guitar volume changes and cuts through better at massive distortion settings. That would have definitely been geared toward the sans-hairspray, long-hairs.

What do you think?

*The media and PR people labeled a lot of Rock and Glam as Metal in the same way they did it with AC/DC and Zeppelin who are definitely not Metal, but it helped the Rock/Glam bands sell records to lump them in with Metal.

 

[Silverwulf]

I use both Spongy and the tube rectifiers quite often. Depends on what sound I'm going for. And screamingdaisy is right above - Soundgarden always used the tube rectifiers.

 

[afu]

I use both Spongy and the tube rectifiers quite often. Depends on what sound I'm going for. And screamingdaisy is right above - Soundgarden always used the tube rectifiers.

Back in the day, when I found out Soundgarden used the tube rec, I switched over and spent some quality time with it. I never really got back to silicon on a full time basis.

What kinds of tones are you getting with spongy/tube?

 

[Jorn218]

Based on feedback and observation:

I know EVH lied about some of the things he did to get his tone, but for the purposes of the discussion, we can assume Mesa wanted to enable a Brown Sound. I think it's pretty much a given, now, that Spongy was meant for this and the silicon diode would be closest to that sound.

True, but as it stands, is the amp as released able to cop this sound? EVH used a 12xxx serial# era 1959 head. Unless you are jumping the channels, or add in a cascaded preamp section(like Randy Rhoads' Super Lead), the 1959/87 heads act pretty much like the Bassman it was based off. To get distortion, you have to bring in the power section to clipping. I haven't tried ramping up the output on the DR to bring in power amp distortion. The closest I have gotten to cop a Super Lead emulation is channel 1 in pushed mode. That feature didn't exist until the 3 channel amps. I still think that there was a possibility that the Spongy/bold switch may have been utilized for a circuit that was based on an amp that would have been more akin to one that did not include a master volume type circuit, but that idea was tossed very early on

The tube rec with spongy is too low in voltage and loses definition for EVH. Spongy/tube is great for 50s and early 60s sounds. Perhaps for Blues or Clean on the 2 Ch and Raw/Clean/Pushed on the 3 Ch. The Blues had a resurgence thanks to SRV. BB King, Clapton, Buddy Guy and others were also doing well by 1990. A fuzz on this setting is awesome, btw.

This sounds more feasible than using it with the gainier channels.

The Bold settings would have covered the harder stuff. The tube rec for rock/hard rock/glam*. Silicon for the extreme styles. Even though Metallica was their biggest, hippest, client at the time, I don't see Mesa throwing in completely with Thrash (or Death Metal), since their love for re-shaping classic sounds continues to this day. Silicon/Bold was to sell to the hardest styles, but the love seems to have been mostly given to the more traditional bands. There are no rules, though. Anyone can bend or break conventions to suit their needs.

Remember there were other metal bands popular around the time that weren't thrash or early death metal. silicon/bold works great for Accept, Maiden, or other harder non extreme bands.

Vintage with the feedback to the PI is just like most amps that were popular in the era and would have suited the modded-Marshall crowd. Modern doesn't clean up well with guitar volume changes and cuts through better at massive distortion settings. That would have definitely been geared toward the sans-hairspray, long-hairs.

What do you think?

I have not heard an old two channel recently to be able to hear what the different modes sound like compared to my 3 channel. I will take your word for this. I still have a hard time even switching to vintage ever due to the perceived volume drop I get with it. I have to really crank the master output to be able to use it within a band context for rock or metal.

*The media and PR people labeled a lot of Rock and Glam as Metal in the same way they did it with AC/DC and Zeppelin who are definitely not Metal, but it helped the Rock/Glam bands sell records to lump them in with Metal.

 

[afu]

I had a hard time with Vintage for a couple of years and didn't use it. In my experience, it requires less gain, less, bass, and more treble. For a mid-70s Zep to early 80s Rock tone, I imagine 1:00 Gain is the max. If the gain is increased beyond that, the bass is sitting between 9:00 and off. An EQ like that for The Rover or The Ocean by Zep or VH Running With The Devil sounds pretty good.

Before a level where clipping occurs in the power amp, the negative feedback is reducing power amp harmonic distortion, filtering the frequency response to make it flatter (reduce high and low peaks), and is less responsive to the speaker (damping), by comparison to Modern. When clipping occurs, the negative feedback does those things less effectively, but is still trying to do its job of improving linearity. This linearity creates a drop in voltage gain, regardless of the level of clipping. Increasing the clipping is like making the preamp and the power amp fight in a caged deathmatch for supremacy; one is attempting to do things opposite of the other. It can be glorious, but it is pretty ugly at times.

The people who prefer Vintage sometimes refer to Modern as having too loose a bass response and have complaints about the clipping/distortion/harmonics. With Modern, the lack of NF has the effect of allowing all the harmonic distortion, allowing the frequency peaks, and creates a looser speaker response, since the damping factor is decreased.

These are just things to keep in mind going between the modes, because it can be difficult to navigate the amp and get the modes to work nicely together without realizing what is going on.

 

[stephen sawall]

When Mike Soldano moved here in Seattle in the 90's I went down and talked to him at his shop..... He told me to my face that he had borrowed from the Mark when he built his amps. I don't think he was making this up.