Cygnus Gain

Dare I say the only Rectos I like, and I’ve owned a couple, are the Fractal Recto2’s? I learned to dial them in on this forum and use the Mesa 5 band eq.
 
FractalAudio said:
I bought a Dual Rectifier some years ago from Guitar Center. Returned it two days later.
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Lol. Every time I mess with Dual Rectos, I find that the treadplate writes checks that the circuit can't really cash. I remember the first time time I plugged into a Dual Recto half stack in a music store in the mid 90's. I was beyond hyped after hearing about them. I walked away confused and disappointed. At the time I didn't know anything about boosts or EQ shaping or whatever, just that the amp was a flubby mess that sounded nothing like recordings I'd heard.

Now I know more about what the amp is and it's my belief that boosts, or at least bass cuts, are mandatory with Dual Recs. It almost feels like Mesa designed them specifically to be chameleons in that way, like there's minimal high pass filtering at the input because the player is meant to be able to specifically sculpt the texture of the distortion however they want with an input EQ. But, if this really was Mesa's idea, they definitely didn't market the amp that way.

Personally I think the Dual Recto would have been a much better (or at least more approachable) amp if Mesa had given it the Mark treatment and added a Mark-style tonestack before preamp distortion along with the current tonestack after it. If Mesa really did want people to sculpt their own sounds as an integral part of the amp, they should have included a built-in way to do it.
 
They said it was designed around the engine roar coming from the repair shop across the street.
If the stock settings are too muddy for some people then use a tube screamer like 99% of recto owners do. If that doesn't work, use the hpf on the input eq. Also, increase the bias which is the other most common mod and increase B+ to simulate the "Bold" switch.
If I recall the vintage mode removes negative feedback, so if modern is too spiky try messing with the negative feedback knob.
I like recto and recto 2 orange vintage with B+ turned down a little and increased sag. Maybe I'm too easy to please but it's the sound of a lot of my favorite records of that era. Also Meshuggah.
I prefer the Triple Crown overall but as of Cygnus I am in love with the Mark IV.
 
I played a recto for years, hundreds of gigs easy. When they're on, they're so good but if they're off you'd wish you'd played tuba. Its so room dependent you kind of never knew if you'd have a good night or not. Some nights the notes sang so beautifully, others it seems like they rolled out of the speaker like they had fetal alcohol syndrome and hit the floor and died slowly.
 
GreatGreen said:
Lol. Every time I mess with Dual Rectos, I find that the treadplate writes checks that the circuit can't really cash. I remember the first time time I plugged into a Dual Recto half stack in a music store in the mid 90's. I was beyond hyped after hearing about them. I walked away confused and disappointed. At the time I didn't know anything about boosts or EQ shaping or whatever, just that the amp was a flubby mess that sounded nothing like recordings I'd heard.

Now I know more about what the amp is and it's my belief that boosts, or at least bass cuts, are mandatory with Dual Recs. It almost feels like Mesa designed them specifically to be chameleons in that way, like there's minimal high pass filtering at the input because the player is meant to be able to specifically sculpt the texture of the distortion however they want with an input EQ. But, if this really was Mesa's idea, they definitely didn't market the amp that way.

Personally I think the Dual Recto would have been a much better (or at least more approachable) amp if Mesa had given it the Mark treatment and added a Mark-style tonestack before preamp distortion along with the current tonestack after it. If Mesa really did want people to sculpt their own sounds as an integral part of the amp, they should have included a built-in way to do it.
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Yeah it would have been nice if they had some sort of clean boost or adjustable high pass built-in but oh well. It is what is. Rectos are pretty much the sound of my teen years and everything else sounds inferior or wrong to me, IMO...much in the same way that half the people on this forum are forever in love with the Marshall Plexi. I think I'm probably always gonna gravitate towards guitar tones on albums I was listening to when I was 16 or 17 and I doubt I'm the only one here who feels that way.
 
Dual Rec was my first pro amp. Went from a solid state combo to that monster and boy did I have lessons to learn about presence and gain controls, and setting them so they are just "enough" o_O

From the dual rec I went to framus, bogner, highly modified 5150's, Diezel and nothing makes a speaker box jump like a recto. Palm mutes shook the earth. I'm glad to be away from the sizzle but man did that thing move a ton of air
 
The Dual Rectifier has always been my favorite amp. Owned about 4 or 5 different ones over the span of 20ish years. The first one I got in 99 was a Tremoverb and it sounded better to me than any of the others I had. They always reminded me of Gibson (fitting now I guess) in that you really had to play each one to find "the one" and even then they took a bit of finesse and tweaking to get them where you wanted.

I wish they would have done the Badlander years ago when I could still convince myself that I needed a rig that I could play the Shoreline Amphitheater with. The clips I have heard generate a little GAS.... NO!
 
Morphine said:
The Dual Rectifier has always been my favorite amp. Owned about 4 or 5 different ones over the span of 20ish years. The first one I got in 99 was a Tremoverb and it sounded better to me than any of the others I had. They always reminded me of Gibson (fitting now I guess) in that you really had to play each one to find "the one" and even then they took a bit of finesse and tweaking to get them where you wanted.

I wish they would have done the Badlander years ago when I could still convince myself that I needed a rig that I could play the Shoreline Amphitheater with. The clips I have heard generate a little GAS.... NO!
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I'm sure eventually Cliff will model the Badlander.
 
I love the sound of a properly mixed and recorded Recto. I hate playing them though. I've had four or five different versions of the real amp through the years and the only one I really enjoyed playing wasn't really a Recto anymore after Voodoo modded it.

But the Recto and first and second 5150's are the kings of recorded harder rock and metal tones starting from about 1994 to present. I can't think of any amp that would even come close to being featured on albums as much as those two, so there's obviously something there lol
 
IronSean said:
They might say that but it was actually designed around the SLO-100 circuit they lifted off Mike Soldano 😂
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It's funny how it's nearly identical but sounds essentially nothing like it. 5150 too, same basic idea with the super cold biased third stage.
I'm pretty sure the only reason they made the recto was to patent troll small builders, but I wouldn't want to speak out of turn. Patenting a switch is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.
I wonder if anyone used the RIAA handbook chapter on speaker damping in court.
 
johnnypig said:
It's funny how it's nearly identical but sounds essentially nothing like it. 5150 too, same basic idea with the super cold biased third stage.
I'm pretty sure the only reason they made the recto was to patent troll small builders, but I wouldn't want to speak out of turn. Patenting a switch is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.
I wonder if anyone used the RIAA handbook chapter on speaker damping in court.
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The primary reason for the very different sound is the R/C network hanging off the tone stack.
 
johnnypig said:
It's funny how it's nearly identical but sounds essentially nothing like it. 5150 too, same basic idea with the super cold biased third stage.
I'm pretty sure the only reason they made the recto was to patent troll small builders, but I wouldn't want to speak out of turn. Patenting a switch is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.
I wonder if anyone used the RIAA handbook chapter on speaker damping in court.
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There's some really interesting discussion about the whole thing on the sloclone forums, which probably has the most knowledgeable user
base when it comes to tube amps and how they function.

What I found interesting was that Bogner was right in the thick of things too with the negative feedback ripped from Mike Soldano. From my foggy memory about it, James Brown held the patent on an actual knob and R. Bogner and Randall Smith had to go with buttons/switches to circumvent it. There's even claims that EVH was using a verrrry early prototype Recto during this time too.E3BAD1E0-EFA4-4E30-A81E-B10DBC0A2712.pngEdit: Found an old screenshot that talks about it some.
 
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I love a good Dual Rec! It took me decades to get around to it but I landed a ‘94 2-channel a few years ago and that amp sounded SO friggin’ killer. I hated hated hated having to sell it. I’ve never heard one like that one.
 
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