1997 Mesa Triple Rectifier 2ch Rev. G

Overview

I picked up this amp after having the 3-channel Triple Rectifier for a while. I thought that amp sounded really great but I always wanted to check out the earlier versions of the amp and see how it compared. This particular Triple Rectifier is a Revision G, about halfway through the run (3ch started around R-16xxx). It’s hard to understate how popular these amps were in recordings at the time, with many high profile bands using them for the high gain rhythm sounds on their albums. It became a big hit with nu-metal bands and punk rockers alike and its trade mark “wall of sound” made the rounds on tracks from Korn, Incubus, Limp Bizkit, Blink-182, Sum 41 and more.

This amp uses a very advanced for the time LDR switching system, which is how it is able to jump between a few different use cases. Essentially, the amp has 3 different “modes” - a clean, “variable” high gain, and modern high gain. Each channel can use the variable high gain mode, so you can set the amp up to do say, clean+variable, or variable+modern, or variable+variable, clean+modern, or even modern+modern using the switches on the rear panel. The most popular configuration was probably clean+modern, but it’s pretty cool to be able to set it up vintage+modern and use the Orange channel as a crunch, and Red as your solo tone. It gives the amp a lot of flexibility and even though its appearance and red/modern tone paints a kind of specific picture, it can do a lot more than just that.

Of course, the red/modern channel is likely the main reason to buy an amp like this and it does not disappoint. The bass is thick and full without being too boomy (a problem my 3ch has), the treble is ever present and aggressive without taking your head off, and it plays a little more like an old-school amp to me since you can run the gain all the way up to maximum and still get a great tone out of it. The 3ch rectifier in contrast feels like it has more gain on tap, theoretically, but you can’t really use it because it just becomes too muddy and feedback prone after about 3/4 on the gain control on that amp, at least in my sample. This channel sounds best a little scooped to me, with relatively smooth mids, but I may be just trying to copy the famous tones of recordings there. With the mids turned up, it gets more cutting and growling, but it starts to accentuate the inherit looseness of this design. That’s where boost pedals come in though, and pushing the mids up a little while reducing the gain, then adding a tubescreamer in front is a quick way to metal tone heaven.