Settings for a good clean sound on Dual Rec?

Well, a good clean is subjective depending on the ears. But the dual rec gets pretty fendery when dialed in a certain way on the cleans.

The tricky thing with rectos is the interactive EQ. When you increase the mids and treble, you're also increasing the gain, so to get that snap in a nice clean tone can be a trick. I used to keep the gain down and increase the master, using the presence generously on the cleans, bass around 11:00, mids around 11:00 treble around 1:00, presence around 3:00.

I used less presence, more mids and more low end for single coils. The settings above were for gibsons with hot pickups.

Miles

 

I had a Dual Rect a while back and remembered having a hard time dialing a great clean tone I was really satisfied with.
So,
I understand what you are going through.

Miles made a great point about the EQ being very interactive with the over-all gain. You just have to tweek and tweek until you like what you are hearing.

 

It is not a good clean amp, to my ears. Depends what clean you're going for I guess, but the clean always seemed weighted down to me.

 

And just on a side note, the Mesa Roadking v2 addressed this issue (to the sound of another thousand dollars of course) and added the Lonestar's cleans to the 1st channel.

 

I find the Trem-o-verb (I know, it's not quite the same amp as even a 2-channel Dual Rectifier, but it's basically the same) has great cleans. OK, not BF Fender... but I always found them a bit too glassy and clinky anyway.

The problem with the original poster's requirement is that the best cleans by far are with the Bold setting IMO. The Spongy setting makes them muddy and slightly clangy (yes, at the same time), no matter what you do with the EQ. That's why I rarely run my T-verb in Spongy.

There's no way to switch between the two modes on a channel basis even with the Road King since it's what controls the voltage input to the entire amp.

 

I wouldn't take any EQ suggestions off of me. I used to use my Dual Rec in pushed mode for "cleans" 90% of the time.

I like sort of raw aggressive tones for melodic music. So my cleans off that amp were always midrangey and nasally to most people's ears. When I did put it in clean mode, I used the settings that I mentioned above.

 

Ch1 clean, bold, tube-rec
vol 11:00, gain 12:00, pres 1:30, bass 11:30, mid 10:00, treb 12:00

FWIW this is for a 3-ch Triple into Mesa cabs w/V30s, mahogany humbucker gtrs. A little delay in the loop can make the Recto cleans a bit more lively (~400ms, few repeats and only mixed in around 20%)