DrewPeterson7
Sage of the Order
I was down in VA over the weekend buying a Mesa Roadster head from a buddy of mine (more on that later, once I get to record some clips and take a picture or two), and he happened to have Rectifier #5 on loan from a buddy of his for tracking leads on the album they'd just finished up.
Long story short, the guy scored it for fairly cheap from some kid who wanted a 3-channel Recto for a more aggressive rhythm sound. We fired it up through a Splawn 4x12... Initially, I wasn't really impressed - it sounded closer tomy Rectoverb than I'd expected it to. The longer I played it, though, the more I liked it. In the span of about five minutes I went from "Hmm, this isn't too bad..." to "Goddamn, I like this."
Tough to explain the differences, exactly - I guess it's worth noting that George Lynch, at the time a Soldano SLO user, had a big hand in its development in the prototyping stage, and that it was originally conceived of as a lead amp for 80s rockers, before grunge blew up in the early 90s and Mesa decided to revoice it a bit to make it more contemporary sounding. The bottom end wasn't quite as huge, the mids were a little richer, and it was quite bright. The presence knob, also, had a massive impact on the tone - more so than any other control on the amp.
The real eye opening thing though was the note definition - the first moment my ears really began to pick up was when I started doing compound bends. Even with an OD and a fair amount of preamp gain, the note articulation was crystal clear. I'm simply not used to that sort of articulation from a high gain head, it was a little eerie, almost.
I had to stop playing it after 15 minutes, because I didn't want to risk buyer's remorse with the Roadster (and so far I don't - this thing owns). But it was pretty damned cool to play a peice of Mesa history; my only regret is I didn't get to open the thing up properly to stage volume.
It was pretty obvious it was an early Recto, even aside from the different sound and the serial # - the diamond tread faceplate had obviously been hand-cut and left a bit of a gap over the chassis, and most of the knobs on the back panel were clearly borrowed from a Mark-IV.
Long story short, the guy scored it for fairly cheap from some kid who wanted a 3-channel Recto for a more aggressive rhythm sound. We fired it up through a Splawn 4x12... Initially, I wasn't really impressed - it sounded closer tomy Rectoverb than I'd expected it to. The longer I played it, though, the more I liked it. In the span of about five minutes I went from "Hmm, this isn't too bad..." to "Goddamn, I like this."
Tough to explain the differences, exactly - I guess it's worth noting that George Lynch, at the time a Soldano SLO user, had a big hand in its development in the prototyping stage, and that it was originally conceived of as a lead amp for 80s rockers, before grunge blew up in the early 90s and Mesa decided to revoice it a bit to make it more contemporary sounding. The bottom end wasn't quite as huge, the mids were a little richer, and it was quite bright. The presence knob, also, had a massive impact on the tone - more so than any other control on the amp.
The real eye opening thing though was the note definition - the first moment my ears really began to pick up was when I started doing compound bends. Even with an OD and a fair amount of preamp gain, the note articulation was crystal clear. I'm simply not used to that sort of articulation from a high gain head, it was a little eerie, almost.
I had to stop playing it after 15 minutes, because I didn't want to risk buyer's remorse with the Roadster (and so far I don't - this thing owns). But it was pretty damned cool to play a peice of Mesa history; my only regret is I didn't get to open the thing up properly to stage volume.
It was pretty obvious it was an early Recto, even aside from the different sound and the serial # - the diamond tread faceplate had obviously been hand-cut and left a bit of a gap over the chassis, and most of the knobs on the back panel were clearly borrowed from a Mark-IV.
