some mesa dual rec 3 ch issues, bass and clearity

[Misery Signals]

heyz,

besides a mesa pre-503 recto (#0162) I also own a 3 channel dual recto.
today i was busy tweaking it. some things stroke me:

- the 2nd channel seems to have more bass than the 3rd channel.

- when switching the clean channel from clean to pushed and the 2nd and 3rd channel from modern to vintage and then raw, the amp loses lots of clearity.

are those things normal? do they also appear by other mesa dual rec 3 ch owners?

thanx!

 

[Elpelotero]

very normal.

the loss of clairity as you go from modern to vintage to raw is caused by a lack of presence. Each mode is wired for less presence than the other.

Channel 2 is the same as Channel 3, but it has less presence overall. You have to crank the presence on channel 2 to get it to sound like the low levels of ch3.

 

[noodles]

^ What he said. As you add gain stages, you also add compression, which decreases the effectiveness of the presence knob. Lower gain settings help, but the modern mode is never going to have the spank of the vintage mode. It's more about saturation at that point.

You're not scooping out the mids are you? A sure way to lose clarity in the modern mode is to drop the mid knob below 11 o'clock.

 

[Misery Signals]

more compression/gain on channel 3... so it's normal that channel 2 has more bass punch then?

like a built-in tube screamer in ch 3 to make a comparison?

 

[noodles]

No, more compression/gain on modern, versus raw or vintage. The presence knob on ch3 is far more aggressive than ch2, with the full range of ch2 by 12 o'clock.

 

[ToneAddictJon]

Channel 2 on my 3 channel feels looser than the 3rd channel, but I've always used the 2nd channel as my lead channel and 3 as my rhythm. I usually run my bass between 0-2 on both gain channels and never turn my mids up over 5 (noon), because my guitars and pickups have a huge mid range output already (my IV gets a big dip in the mids as well).