Re: Rectifier Guitar Amp
How about I make it easier? I like Hetfields black album sound, the low end crunch with the razor-like high. That is my ideal 'starter' sound, from there i'll tweak it to my own liking. What low watt (<50) low cost (<$500) amp HEAD should I look into?
Mark IIIs can generally be found for fairly cheap and the earlier ones retain a lot of what made the Mark IIC+ famous. The Dual Caliber series is also a good choice. DCs were Mesa's stripped down "budge" amp and tonally they sit somewhere between a Mark and a Recto.
The sound on the black album is anything but a "starter" sound.
The black album was a mixture of a MK2C+ into a marshall and a MKIV each with their on aphex semi parametric programmable eq's ran into 4 different Marshall cabs with an 8 mic array
Probably the reason I've always found it easier to get a black album tone out of a Rectifier than a Mark.
So does each rectifier tube correspond to each 50W erm... something? Follow me if you will, Duals have 2 rectifier tubes and you can remove one of those and two of the power tubes to be operated in 50w mode. So each 5u4G goes to a pair of power tubes in a Triple?
Mesa is a master at marketing and has generally done a pretty good job of bringing features to people attention when naming their amps.
The name Dual Rectifier was a marketing gimmick to bring attention to the fact that the amps in the series had two (i.e., dual) rectifiers that you could switch between. The entire series consisted of the Blue Angel, Maverick and Solo Head.
A lot of people think the Dual Rectifier thing came from the number of rectifier tubes but not all amps in the Dual Rectifier series had two rectifier tubes. The Dual Rectifier Blue Angel for instance is a 38w amp with a single 5AR4 rectifier tube while the Dual Rectifier Maverick is a 35w amp with a single 5AR4.
Eventually the Dual Rectifier Solo is the sound that became associated with the term "Dual Rectifier" while the Blue Angel and Maverick are now known by their respective sub-names. Mesa has since reserved the "Rectifier" title for amps that retain the basic "Dual Rectifier Solo" sound, i.e., the Triple Rectifier Solo, Dual Rectifier Trem-o-verb, Single Rectifier Solo, Single Rectifier Rect-o-verb, Dual Rectifier Road King, Dual Rectifier Roadster and Mini Rectifier Twenty-Five
The Triple and Single Rectifiers were developed after the Dual Rectifiers and were a play on the Dual Rectifier's name. The Triple Rectifier had triple rectifier tubes, so that one is kind of obvious, while the Single Rectifier had a single rectifier (diode). It was also convenient that Single/Dual/Triple lined up with their 50w/100w/150w power outputs.
The marketing gimmicks continued when Mesa made a Dual Rectifier combo gave it tremolo and reverb... and stuck it in your face by naming the amp a Trem-o-Verb. A the name twisting continued when they produced the reverb equipped Single Rectifier Rect-o-Verb.
They then equipped an amp with all kinds of features meant to make a touring guitarists life easier... and called it the Road King.
When they developed a sharper, more cutting amp than the Rectifier they called it the Stiletto.
They then created a streamlined, less cumbersome version of their Road King and called a Roadster.
Like I said... masters of marketing.
