Wah in front sounds really bad on red channel

[erectifier]

Im using a morley bad horsie wah in front of my single recto which sound awesome when i play clean but when im playing with distortion it sounds more like a volume pedal until you reach the highs (pedal all the way down, the peak of the wah??). Are some wahs better suited to high gain amps? My setup is guitar - tuner - wah - amp - fx in loop - cab. Could it be the way im eq-ing the channel?

 

[94Tremoverb]

Are you cutting the mids on the Red channel? If so, you may need a wah with a boost function, like the Dunlop 535 series. I found a big loss of volume to be a problem on heavier sounds until I got one of these. Boost off for wah on clean and mid-overdrive sounds, boost on for scooped heavy distortion.

 

[erectifier]

Im just gonna ****** save for a DR cos i cant put up with 2 channels. Having the extra one to dial in a nice mid heavy lead tone to run beside the chunk and bass rhythm sound. Im literally gathering together **** to sell with my single head.

 

[ElectricTurkey4369]

Im just gonna f%&# save for a DR cos i cant put up with 2 channels. Having the extra one to dial in a nice mid heavy lead tone to run beside the chunk and bass rhythm sound. Im literally gathering together sh!t to sell with my single head.

Same here, it's a weird amp. It's so hard to work with. Im buying a mark IV instead.

 

[Silverwulf]

I've never cared for that Morley wah with my Rectos. I used a Fulltone Clyde Deluxe and love it, though.

 

[Neptical]

Im just gonna f%&# save for a DR cos i cant put up with 2 channels. Having the extra one to dial in a nice mid heavy lead tone to run beside the chunk and bass rhythm sound. Im literally gathering together sh!t to sell with my single head.

Good move. I owned a Single Rec Solo 50 for 10 years and it was the worst experience I ever had with an amp. Way too much frustration. I was trying to do something with the amp that it was never going to do. The Mark series is where it's at.

~Nep~

 

[erectifier]

I got a much better tone increasing my mids on the red channel now its about B-11 M-12 H-2 Gain-12. It makes so much difference when using the wah pedal.

Are you cutting the mids on the Red channel? If so, you may need a wah with a boost function, like the Dunlop 535 series. I found a big loss of volume to be a problem on heavier sounds until I got one of these. Boost off for wah on clean and mid-overdrive sounds, boost on for scooped heavy distortion.

Thanks for that 94trem. I still think i like the sound of scooping the mids down to 9oclockish for playing dropped rhythms etc but i was reading that this is actually a trick our ears play on us and scooping the mids is bad. I can understand the benefit of mids when recording but can anyone shed some light on the scooping situation?

 

[erectifier]

Good move. I owned a Single Rec Solo 50 for 10 years and it was the worst experience I ever had with an amp. Way too much frustration. I was trying to do something with the amp that it was never going to do. The Mark series is where it's at.

Lol i still love my single rec but i just think having the extra channel would ease a lot of my troubles. I'm hoping to A/B the single against a dual next weekend.

 

[94Tremoverb]

Scooping the mids is not bad as such if you like that sound (which I do as well, I often run my Tremoverb with the mids *off*!) but it can cause other problems with mix levels and interaction with some effects, because it's the mids that really control the perceived volume, being where the human ear is most sensitive.

One of the reasons us scoop-mid guys need a lot of power and channel switching is because of this - the single-channel guys who use a lot of mids and go clean to dirty from the guitar volume can't understand why anyone would need more than 20 watts , but if you like a really heavy distortion sound with less mids you need to be able to set the volume much higher than for the clean sound or it will actually seem quieter, and you need a lot of power behind it to get the headroom and frequency range for band volume - 100W is not too much, even if you don't apparently play that loud. The small-amp guys don't understand why anyone would need that much power and think that we must all be playing stadiums at nuclear-bomb volume... (which is what a 100W amp will do if you dime the mids and turn it right up, of course).

The wah is basically a sweepable band-pass filter, which cuts out everything except a narrow range of mid frequencies. Most wahs have a small amount of boost built-in anyway since this tends to cut the apparent volume even with a clean midrangy sound, but it then ends up not being enough if you scoop the mids at the amp, because the two things cancel out. It's only when you get the wah fully down and the frequency center moves up above the mid scoop that you suddenly get volume. So to fix this you need to add more boost in the wah.

If you don't want to change the wah, three channels will help exactly as said because you can set a heavy rhythm sound with no mids and a lead sound with lots, then the wah won't kill the volume for leads. A 3-channel Rectifier will give you that. I think you'll find it's a much better amp than the Single in several ways - not that the Single is bad, it just has limitations that the Dual doesn't. You'll also get an inherently bigger, deeper sound with the Dual and you may not actually need to cut the mids quite as much.

For what it's worth, when I'm playing live with the Tremoverb I normally only use it as a clean and crunch amp with the two onboard channels - I use a pedal for leads, which gives a lot more midrange and a tighter sound... you'll find a lot of the 2-channel Dual Rectifier guys do this. Recording is another thing entirely, you can set the amp in different ways for the different sounds.

 

[erectifier]

Wow very knowledgeable response dude that taught me heaps! I knew how wah pedals worked but guess i figured the highs would be enough for the wah to bite into. I've spent the day in and out of my music room trying different settings then coming back an hour later and tweaking it again etc etc and i think i have found something which still sounds good enough for rhythm and when soloing. I have a gig early october which will be a good test. I still think ill test drive a dual cos i didnt know any of that stuff about amp power this single rec is my first all tube amp. If i fall in love i can auction off some ****.