Tweaking one of the Mesa Recto models to emulate the Trem-o-verb?

CenturyBreak

Inspired
The Trem-o-verb (or Tremoverb :D) has been mentioned a few times in the forum over the years, but I'm wondering if anyone has worked with one of the Recto models to get closer to the sound and feel of the ToV?

I've never had the opportunity to play one, as they're rarer than hen's teeth these days, so all I know is that "they're different from any other Recto!"

Thanks in advance! :)
 
I'd love to know this, too! The only amp I regret selling out of the dozen or so high end amps I've owned is the Trem-o-verb. I mostly used the clean channel on it, and stacked gain pedals in front. It was truly glorious. I haven't found any other amp that I like using pedals with the same way. I don't miss carrying that beast, though!
 
The Red channel presence on the TOV is a 100k pot where on the DR it's a 25k pot. This gives the presence control on the TOV a wider range. There is also a 20pf cap on the DR's V2a input that is not there on the actual production TOV's (even though the schematic shows it). This gives the TOV more pronounced mids.
 
The Red channel presence on the TOV is a 100k pot where on the DR it's a 25k pot. This gives the presence control on the TOV a wider range. There is also a 20pf cap on the DR's V2a input that is not there on the actual production TOV's (even though the schematic shows it). This gives the TOV more pronounced mids.

That's it?
 
There’s a 1990s DR tremoverb head for sale on Facebook. Join the Northeast Ohio Gear swap and you can dial one in and compare.
Guy is asking $1200.

Just thought I’d share. I don’t think they’re very rare. At least not around here.
 
I think between all the advanced parameters you could get Recto 1 or Recto 2 to BE a Roadster or Roadking or Tremoverb. If you just tweak the Xformer match up a little (overmatch) it makes the breakup feel a little softer, the presence control is probably already way wider than the dual rec reference amp, and if it's not enough you could probably open up some other high freq preamp parameters. I haven't even dug into preamp bias yet, but putting variac about 90%, power amp sag up to 6 (tube recto), Xformer drive a little overmatched (because they probably put better transformers in back in the day), and bringing down Xformer high freq a little, you can finagle any "holy grail" amp attribute you want. Tremoverb extra mids, there's some voodoo in the tone stack knobs that could put that back in. Creator is wise. We should be satisfied. ...I'm off to variac and neuter a IIC+ into a studio preamp.
 
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