I’ve been an avid Fractal user for about 6 or 7 years. It always sounds good. When I turn it on, I always get consistently great tones and feel inspired to play. Sometimes people write about buying real amps because they love the models so much and now I’m one of those people.
I love the PVH Block model and the 2-Channel Dual Rec, so out of curiosity and wanting to crank up the real thing, I ended up buying both. So over the past month I ended up getting an original 5150 signature head (same as block) and a ‘96 Mesa Rev G Dual Rec which cost around $2,500 for both. Immediately, I had to buy $350 worth of tubes (now costing me $2,850). The 5150 blew a fuse and fried a power tube two minutes after I put the new tubes in. Now it’s in the shop and probably gonna cost me another couple hundred bucks just to get it playable again along with ANOTHER set of tubes.
I did an A/B test of my ‘96 Dual Rec vs the Recto 1 Red model and couldn’t believe how close they were with a little tweaking (mainly the presence knob). It really is amazing how close the models are to the real thing and we forget how spoiled we are to have all of these amps at our fingertips. The accuracy of the models is truly mind-blowing.
So after it’s all said and done, I’ll probably have more than 3k invested in these amps that are only marginally different from the Fractal models and have to convince myself that it was worth it. Take a tip from uncle Justin... stick with your Fractal. It’ll save you a lot of money and maintain your sanity. Now I’m gonna go and enjoy playing my Fractal while I wait for the shop to tell me how much I owe them.
Question for Cliff: @FractalAudio The 5150’s “Normal Gain” input sounds meaner, deeper, clearer, and gives the gain knob a more usable range compared to the “High Gain” input. Do you know if setting the Input Trim to 0.5 on the PVH Block model is the same as using the Normal Gain input, or is there another difference in circuitry aside from just a lower input level that changes the tone so much?
I love the PVH Block model and the 2-Channel Dual Rec, so out of curiosity and wanting to crank up the real thing, I ended up buying both. So over the past month I ended up getting an original 5150 signature head (same as block) and a ‘96 Mesa Rev G Dual Rec which cost around $2,500 for both. Immediately, I had to buy $350 worth of tubes (now costing me $2,850). The 5150 blew a fuse and fried a power tube two minutes after I put the new tubes in. Now it’s in the shop and probably gonna cost me another couple hundred bucks just to get it playable again along with ANOTHER set of tubes.
I did an A/B test of my ‘96 Dual Rec vs the Recto 1 Red model and couldn’t believe how close they were with a little tweaking (mainly the presence knob). It really is amazing how close the models are to the real thing and we forget how spoiled we are to have all of these amps at our fingertips. The accuracy of the models is truly mind-blowing.
So after it’s all said and done, I’ll probably have more than 3k invested in these amps that are only marginally different from the Fractal models and have to convince myself that it was worth it. Take a tip from uncle Justin... stick with your Fractal. It’ll save you a lot of money and maintain your sanity. Now I’m gonna go and enjoy playing my Fractal while I wait for the shop to tell me how much I owe them.
Question for Cliff: @FractalAudio The 5150’s “Normal Gain” input sounds meaner, deeper, clearer, and gives the gain knob a more usable range compared to the “High Gain” input. Do you know if setting the Input Trim to 0.5 on the PVH Block model is the same as using the Normal Gain input, or is there another difference in circuitry aside from just a lower input level that changes the tone so much?