Mesa Engineering Triple Rectifier Review

[ryanjonrage]

Mesa Engineering Triple Rectifier

The Facts
150 Watts
Class A/B Power
6x6L6 (Power Tubes)
3x5U4 (Rectifier Tubes)
5x12AX7(Pre-Amp Tubes)

The Triple Rec. has a bias select switch to let you switch between 6L6 and EL34 Power Tubes. It's a 3 channel amp with 8 different modes.
Channel 1: Clean or Pushed
Channel 2: Raw, Vintage High Gain, or Modern High Gain
Channel 3: Raw, Vintage High Gain, or Modern High Gain

Each channel has its own volume, gain, presence, low, mid, and hi controls. Like all amps, it has an effects loop. There is a main volume knob for control over the amps total output and also a solo knob to bump up the volume when needed during solos for the guitar to cut a hair more than normal.


Its Versatility
The wide range of this amp is eye opening. Any sound can be achieved, from blues and jazz to metal and alternative.. And everything inbetween.

My Experience With The Amp
After owning the amp for about 5 years now and playing in a decent range of bands with various music styles, I found this amp to be worth every penny I paid for it. I've played jazz, metal, alternative, funk, and blues with it.. And it easily shined in every aspect. The build of the amp is solid as well. I've seen quite a few that are drove into the ground and they still sound as great as they did from day one.


If anyone would have any questions about the amp, I would be more glad to help you out/send you pictures if you're curious.

[thegide]

I owned one of these for about a year. Great sounding amp, but I had one major beef with the design: The FX loop is designed such that 20% of the signal remains "dry". In other words, only 80% of the signal can be blended with anything in your FX loop signal chain. Mesa claims this helps preseve the original tone of the amp regardless of whatever outboard gear you're using. I agree, but...

...this is problematic for certain applications. For instance, my outboard effects unit (G-major) can be programmed to control volume (via MIDI-controlled expression pedal), but in this case, it's useless, because a "volume off" setting still produces some volume due to part of the signal bypassing the FX unit. Another problem would be trying to use the FX unit to pitch shift (part of the signal would be unshifted).

Just something to be aware of if you're using any effects inside the loop.

[aliengtr]

hey boys, round these parts we makin 5 dollars a day from running our stills, so can you include the price for this amp, I mean it aint no pawn shop special now is it.....would be useful to know...man having to change out them there tubes would give me wallet the red ass

[ryanjonrage]

The head and footswitch are $1,899.00.
The cab is $799.00.

[dangercityskyline]

The FX loop is designed such that 20% of the signal remains "dry". In other words, only 80% of the signal can be blended with anything in your FX loop signal chain.

Mesa's kind of dumb for doing that regardless of their reasons, but if you're really concerned, just put it in front of the amp in your chain.

[ryanjonrage]

Why would you want to even use effects when you have a triple rec.? JMO

[dangercityskyline]

Why would you want to even use effects when you have a triple rec.? JMO

haha good question buddy. i'd definitely stay away from any sort of distortion if i was running that rig.

course i don't use anything but delay and LFO pedals anyway.

[ryanjonrage]

Originally Posted by dangercityskyline

haha good question buddy. i'd definitely stay away from any sort of distortion if i was running that rig.

course i don't use anything but delay and LFO pedals anyway.

If you're talking distortion pedals, I totaly agree. The distortion in the amp is phenominal. The range of genres the amp can touch is wide, from Jazz to Metal. I've used it before in a Jazz Band situation.. And also a Metal situation. The amp has more balls than any Hughes&Kittener, Peavey, (New) Marshall, or anything in its range. I test drove a 5150(peavey) and a triple super lead (marshall) side by side with the triple rec. and they each have a strong point, but deffinately do not have the versatility of the mesa. The Hughes&Kittner, though a very pretty looking amp, didn't even come close to any of the three.

[dangercityskyline]

The distortion in the amp is phenominal.

Definitely. There's so many tones in those amps, it's unbelievable. One of the biggest new pop-punk names out there right now, All Time Low, uses two full stacks of these things for each of their guitarists and those things BEAST.

On the other hand, my current amp craze is Orange. Their amps don't have quite the same chunk that Mesas do, but it's got this little high end thing going on, especially with single coil pickups, that I like.

[ryanjonrage]

Originally Posted by dangercityskyline

Definitely. There's so many tones in those amps, it's unbelievable. One of the biggest new pop-punk names out there right now, All Time Low, uses two full stacks of these things for each of their guitarists and those things BEAST.

On the other hand, my current amp craze is Orange. Their amps don't have quite the same chunk that Mesas do, but it's got this little high end thing going on, especially with single coil pickups, that I like.

The Orange Amps are great amps too.. That's what I'm shooting for getting next. Great for a Brit. Rock tone.