Well lets start off by saying, the recto's will orignaly designed for 80's shred metal, then redesigned for grundge, while most grundge artists where using marshall's not many switched over to the recto till later on.
Yes nu-metal thrusted the recto into the spotlight, but that is not what it was designed for originally and once again I have seen it excel in all types of music, but yes it is mostly a hard rock to metal amp.
I too have also played every recto made, right now sitting in my room i have a pre-500 recto, which is the fifth recto ever made, a rackmount recto, a roadking V1 and a tremoverb and a voodoo moded 3 channel dual recto. I have also owned 3 channel dual rec, a single rectoverb VII and have a two channel triple on its way.
I have had so many different recto's, all the revisions,I have also played my friends roadster and I have a friend that plays a 3 channel triple and neither sound buzzy and are very versitile.
So you dont think I am biased, i also own a Mark IVA, Stiletto Stage II, bogner XTC and a bogner Uber, a peavey Ultra 1x12 combo, two marshall JMP-1 Preamps, one modified by voodoo and the other stock.
In the past I have owned pretty much every marshall I could get my hands on, Jub's, JCM800's, JCM900's, JCM2000's, plexi's, you name it i have owned every variation of these amps.
I have also owned 3 different slo's, and one hod rod 50+, a splawn moded Marshall 1987X and many many other amps.
With that being said, I have no problem making my recto sing, yes it will never sing as good as the Mark IV, but it is **** close
I have no trouble getting a great ac/dc tone to almost any rock tone, I just use the red channel and roll back the volume on my guitar.
I will admit, Mostly i use it for harder rock, but it does nail regular rock.
As to wanting to go from Clean to dirty with your volume knob, i cant seem to understand why you would want too, maybe slighlty dirty to massive gain, but it is a multi channel amp, use them. Mostly the roll back of the knob to clean was used on those one channel one trick ponies.
If you are that picky about your cleans get another amp or get the roadking as it does both very well.
Honestly, you sound like just another left back from the 70's and 80's that likes to bash the recto line, yes it is not your marshalls of old, but it is a great rythem amp, with the ability to solo. As to the fizzy top end, well I never seem to have trouble getting rid of it!
Where I agree with you, is the recto's are a bit mid cut, and because of that you need to keep the mid's and presense up, I also find using a traditional recto cab helps alot with the mid's. But even though it is a mid cut amp, Of over 100 bands I have seen using a recto, I never saw one that had trouble cutting through, even with the oversized cabs.
On a personal note, if you are more of a Mark IV guy, check out the voodoo modded recto, they make it a mix between the Mark IV and a recto, I think it is right up your ally.
Tonestack said:
siggy14 said:
And which music genre are you referring too? Because most people are mis-informed about the recto.
That bottom-heavy, buzzy stuff that passes for hard rock and metal today.
siggy14 said:
By the way, I have seen recto's used in pop, rock, jazz, funk, metal, hardcore, country, and everytime it sounded **** good no matter what sound it was going for.
I have played almost all of the amps in the Rectifier line in "real world" settings and hated them all. Whereas the Mark-series are mid-heavy, the Rectos are severely wanting in the upper-mid frequencies (plus, they all have this top-end sizzle that I cannot stand). It is darn near impossible to get a Recto to break into violin-like sustain without that darn top-end sizzle ruining things. It is also almost impossible to set a Recto up such that one can go from clean to mean by riding the volume control on one's guitar. The clean that one gets when set up this way is constricted sounding with zero spank, even in tube rectifier mode. The Recto is a nightmare for the player who uses technique and the volume control on his/her guitar to create a thousand shades of distortion.
