This may seem like a no brainer to you but check your axe first. Your tone starts there. You can definitely do death metal with a Dual provided you have the proper guitar for it. I remember one guy that tried to get a sound like Ozzie out of my dual with a Fender strat. The strat was running stock single coil pickups. Needless to say, the tone smacked a lot more of Blink 182 or GreenDay than it did of Ozzie. My Gibson Les Paul is a great guitar but it is completely useless for Metal. Any guitar like this, with passive low or medium output pickups simply sounds phat, crunchy, or chunky when running with a high gain head. It just doesn't have that metal bite to it and will get mushy and over gained when pushed harder.
If you want a screaming searing tone, you have to opt for something equipped with the proper pickups to make it work. You can run an army of pedals in front of your amp, but this is a waste of money when you can rectify the problem simply by buying an appropriate axe. I found Seymour Duncan's site very interesting. Listening through all the clips of humbucking pickups, they claim they leave the guitar the same as well as the settings on the amp. It really does sound like a Les Paul through a JCM 800 Marshall head. Anyway, it is interesting to note the massive chasm in tone between the Alnico II pro pickup and the Livewire Metal one. The Livewire Metal had such a huge overtone spectrum present that it just screamed by comparison.
In fact, if you equip your axe correctly, many amps can work for Metal. I've heard convincing metal tones out of an Orange Tiny Terror, provided the guitar pickups have enough output to tailor the sound this way. I wouldn't harp so much on the importance of your axe, but I spent a lot of hard earned money on gear before I finally realized that it was my guitar I was trying to remove from my amp. Once I figured this out, I have been much happier with my sound.
Ok, so if you have considered all this and you still want a Mesa recto series head, for a low level of BS get a Single or a 2 channel dual. If you like endless tweaking and options, get a Road King II or a Roadster. If you need an extra channel and a solo boost, get a 3 channel dual. You can mod it to cure a good portion of the channel 3 fizziness if you dislike it. If you have permanent hearing damage and only like playing music so loud that they can hear you a block away, get a Triple. I personally think a dual is a good no brainer amp because you can always yank out a pair of power tubes and a rectifier tube to get a hot sounding 50watt amp for lower volume situations. In retrospect, I'd probably like a Road King II more because I love to fiddle but having a hundred options definitely isn't for everyone.
So, just don't be afraid to dislike a recto. It may not be what you are looking for and that is fine, no matter what your friends say. Just try whatever with an open mind and you'll probably get farther ahead, hopefully finding your sound in the process.
