UPDATE: Rec Pre problems with unbalanced live outs?

[CoG]

UPDATE: Apparently it's the pot and assembly used for the live outs. The part isn't off-the-shelf and has to come from Mesa; I took a quick peek at the guts of the replacement unit before I took it back, and the replacement pot in my unit appears to be different. My unit was still under warranty, so no idea if this is something they'd replace free or not.

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Rec Pre owners-- have you had a problem with unbalanced output from the live outputs?

I've now encountered this problem with two different units.

My Rec Pre has been sitting in a repair depot in Toronto "waiting for a part from Mesa" for ten weeks now, and the replacement unit the vendor gave me has the same problem, though not as bad. On mine the volume pot basically didn't work at all on the right channel, it seemed to be stuck at about 70 per cent volume; on the replacement I have, they both respond to the pot but the right channel is about 6Db quieter than the left. I hadn't noticed because I've only had the replacement for a week and had been using it mono into my MkIII instead of my stereo power amp. I noticed real quick because one side drives the 20/20 into clip and the other doesn't!

I've tried several different new and old balanced and unbalanced tubes, 12AX7 and 12AT7, in V6 and the problem's the same. The recording outs seem to work fine.

I'm going to call Mesa about this on Monday, but I'd like to know if anyone else has noticed it.

 

[TOOL_5150]

I had the same issue... turned out to be a jack that needed cleaning.

~Matt

 

[CoG]

thanks man. Yeah, I tried that on this replacement one.

On mine that wouldn't have been it-- the jack worked fine, the problem was that the signal was way loud and wasn't responding to the pot at all.

 

[123thefirst]

Have you tried swapping the cables to eliminate the possibility of a bad cable?

 

[CoG]

Yeah, seriously, I have tried everything including recording separate identical cabs to prove to myself that I wasn't off my nut, running the live outs directly into stereo channels on my DI and checking the levels, everything.

The best way to prove it was to y-split first one, then the other out into both sides of my 20/20; one out drives the tubes hard and the other doesn't.

I do wonder if maybe they didn't really test too hard for people using the live outs day after day. Like I said, the recording outs work fine-- but I use it DI maybe an hour a week. I probably put 400 hours on the live outs in the year I've had it and the replacement one is a floor model that's been racked with a 2:100 and seen some duty.

 

[again with this]

UPDATE: Apparently it's the pot and assembly used for the live outs. The part isn't off-the-shelf and has to come from Mesa; I took a quick peek at the guts of the replacement unit before I took it back, and the replacement pot in my unit appears to be different. My unit was still under warranty, so no idea if this is something they'd replace free or not.

****************************************************

Rec Pre owners-- have you had a problem with unbalanced output from the live outputs?

I've now encountered this problem with two different units.

My Rec Pre has been sitting in a repair depot in Toronto "waiting for a part from Mesa" for ten weeks now, and the replacement unit the vendor gave me has the same problem, though not as bad. On mine the volume pot basically didn't work at all on the right channel, it seemed to be stuck at about 70 per cent volume; on the replacement I have, they both respond to the pot but the right channel is about 6Db quieter than the left. I hadn't noticed because I've only had the replacement for a week and had been using it mono into my MkIII instead of my stereo power amp. I noticed real quick because one side drives the 20/20 into clip and the other doesn't!

I've tried several different new and old balanced and unbalanced tubes, 12AX7 and 12AT7, in V6 and the problem's the same. The recording outs seem to work fine.

I'm going to call Mesa about this on Monday, but I'd like to know if anyone else has noticed it.

I had a similar issue. When at Mesa, they told me that the potentiometer for the "master" live output is has two paddles one for each side, and sometimes they don't line up at the ends of the volume spectrum. The official fix from the Mesa factory? Turn up.

They did offer to sift through several potentiometer and find one that would be more balanced in my volume range. I said... I'll turn up.

 

[CoG]

that's hilarious considering how loud the record outs are already, past 9 o'clock they are too loud for every IO device I have ever tried that wasn't actually a mixer. I kind of wonder what gear they tested it with. The live outs are crazy hot as well, I can drive the initial input and PI 12AX7s on my 20/20 into clip at around 11:00.

Why on earth did they split the channels before the pot?? I assume it's so that they could give the option of running one channel "live out" and one channel "record out".... but then they put emulation on the record out, so it's not actually a dry signal anyway... and you have two channels on the live out, so run one of those as your "dry"... argh...

It's that 80s studio thinking they seem to be stuck with occasionally.

 

[again with this]

that's hilarious considering how loud the record outs are already, past 9 o'clock they are too loud for every IO device I have ever tried that wasn't actually a mixer. I kind of wonder what gear they tested it with. The live outs are crazy hot as well, I can drive the initial input and PI 12AX7s on my 20/20 into clip at around 11:00.

Why on earth did they split the channels before the pot?? I assume it's so that they could give the option of running one channel "live out" and one channel "record out".... but then they put emulation on the record out, so it's not actually a dry signal anyway... and you have two channels on the live out, so run one of those as your "dry"... argh...

It's that 80s studio thinking they seem to be stuck with occasionally.

They said the pot is that way because of the stereo output after theF/X loop.