Well, the new price of a Mini Rectifier was too steep for me. I wanted to try a 6505MH, but couldn't locate one in a shop.
Since I have some Mesa Boogie cabinets already and I liked the Mini Rectifier in a shop test I did, I decided to get one secondhand.
I was a slightly worried about this because Eric Hellstyle, who gives good advice here, felt there could be some reliability question marks.
However, in the shop I tried the mini rec, the guys reckoned their mini rec had no problems in three years of ownership.
My particular mini rec is four years old, has been gigged, and still has all the original valves.
The previous owner had customised the amp with some official Mesa blue LEDs, which I think look alot better than the standard red ones.
Of course, the amp sounded a bit different with my guitars and cabs as it had in the shop. I can't turn it up as much at home - even though I felt I tried home levels in the shop, this turned out not to be the case(!)
The first annoyance was there was only 4 and 8ohm outputs from the head, so I can only run it with one of my cabs for now. I will make up a lead to parallel run my cabs as 4 ohms.
The clean and pushed settings sound absolutely great for jazz and blues. Even with pickups that don't normally sound good clean its all very sparkly and hifi.
The vintage setting is a little bit touchy with the guitar thats supplied to it. The mids can sound a little boxy/weird. Nevertheless, with a number of particular guitars it sounded great at high gain and very usable. In particular I liked my Aftermath loaded Hamer. The EQ controls are much more sensitive than my Marshalls and greater control can be achieved.
The modern setting sounds alot louder than the vintage setting. This was also the case in the shop though. The treble and attack were very very pronounced at home levels. Too much really, even turning treble and presence all the way down. I did notice theres some treble bleed through at very low levels from some gain stage which probably isn't helping.
Since the modern mode sounded amazing in my shop test, my feeling is that I need to turn up the wick abit. So I have ordered a cheap attenuator, from Jet City, and will report further when this arrives. I hope this will allow that modern mode to be usable.
The low end I can hear is alot tighter and tracks much faster than my Marshalls. Also the cleans are better and there is a load more gain. Having an effects loop and channel switching seems really futuristic to me :)
I must say the amp gives me a completely different palette of sounds to my Marshall. I am extremely happy with the clean and pushed modes. The vintage mode isn't bad either and is very easy to play - get harmonics, tapping, fast shredding etc all need less work. But it will all be for nothing if the modern mode can't be made to sound like it did in the shop test.
Fingers crossed.
