After weeks of waiting, finally took my order of my first ever Mesa Boogie, the Rectoverb 25 combo. I wanted an all singing all dancing combo that would give me great cleans, great crunch and great lead tones, with onboard reverb, in a 1x12 combo, with a series FX loop and speaker out options, all at no more than 40W. Basically something I could use at home and rehearsal without the pfaff of all my pedals/cables, from time to time. This seemed to be the ticket, ahem, except for the price. Anyway, I ordered one knowing I could return it if i didn't like it.
After a good few hours playing with it today, I whipped up a brief demo of the lead channel, playing my own instrumental composition which I've called, the "Where you bin at? Boogie".
https://youtu.be/o1y7XbQJ27A Pros:
Awesome lead channel
Lush usable reverb
Nice clean channel
Perfect volume level
Really quiet even at full gain
Response picking dynamics
Great weight/size
Looks good
Cons:
Crunch channel ("Pushed" clean) is terrible, I just couldn't dial in a sound I liked
Lack of foot switching options means I only get crunch and lead, or clean and lead. Not really that usable.
Price
I decided that overall whilst it had a superb lead solo sound, and the reverb was lush and usable throughout the range, the lack of a decent rhythm crunch sound and the lack of foot switchable options meant it doesn't justify its price for me and it's going back sadly.
Next up, a Marshal DSL40C to test.
Comments
Michael Casswell RIP - demoing above - not a poor tone to be had IMHO
I have the mini rec 25 head and pushed for crunch works fine for me - but suppose one mans crunch is another mans dc/ac ?
Great demo though. Good luck with the marshall, i think it's a supersonic 22 for me when thomann stump up/ re-stock.
Maybe look at a 3 ch amp - I would say have a look at the Mesa TC50 combo, but i just checked the price and its £2500! Maybe not then.... haha
Surprised you couldn't get a decent sound out of CH.1 - however, I do find the Rectifier mode on my Stiletto to sound a little congested and does tend to have that Recto mids thing going on which you either get or don't..
Not sure what you are using FX wise (I use Helix in 4CM) but I tend to use CH1 on the Stiletto in Clean mode and hit it with a Valve Driver for my crunch sounds and then leave CH2 as my over the top gain/solo sounds - does the 25 have a solo boost feature?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Gt_YrKIUo#action=share
Bingo: 4 channels.
Any Marshall (at the DSL price point) will sound like arse compared to the mesa IMHO though.
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