The Boogie Board

Btw. I tried those settings in Roadster at some point and it was painfully dark tone... no way of cutting thru band with my gear... I got the feeling that I've missed something. (Hearing of course but that's another story )

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Urea Jacta Est

The JP settings I used were taken from live rig photos and came close to what you posted, but if I remember right they were more extreme. Sounding even darker...more gain more bass. Resulting in my doubts that he ever used that amp's preamp without heavy pre preamp fx or boosting at all.

Interesting! These settings sound good for me at lower volumes, but then again, a lot of things can sound good at lower volumes. Are there any other sources of knowledge concerning Petrucci using the Road King? The amount of information seems scarce.

Fun story: The first time I heard John Petrucci play live was on the 2001 G3 Tour. Considering he did not have a solo album yet made me, and I'm sure others, wonder "What is he going play?" Well, Petrucci opened the show with "Jaws of Life" and my life changed. The Road Kings sounded so good! They were loud, but it was an appropriate volume level, plus, the bassist and drummer (Portnoy) were easy to hear. So, when you go from "uncertainty about what Petrucci will play" to "Jaws of Life" through Road Kings, it has an impact on you. To this day, I have not heard either Petrucci, Vai, or Satriani play better sets than they played that night which suggests to me there was some serious "friendly" competition going on during that tour.

There are many fotos from him using the Roadking I head at shows and shop clinics as well as him speaking about it in interviews. If you look at the bonus DVDs on Dream Theaters Live in Budokan and Score he shows his Roadkings. Btw, what he not tells is that he used a custom build MarkII rack preamp with the Roadking as poweramp.

To your fun story: I had a similar boogie awakening at a dream theater show on the octavarium tour (I think that was the reason why I bought my dual recto in the first place). And it even got worse on two experiences (one of it first row) on the chaos in motion tour. The first row gig was pretty extreme, my first time wall of boogie in your face experience. I could never forget that.

I looked at the diagrams of the settings. That is close to what I use and I do not find it painfully dark at all. Trick is a change in V1 to a Tung Sol which has a different characteristic than the Mesa (JJ ECC83-s). Takes out most of the dark tone but yet still has plenty of bottom bite as well as adds a bit on the top.
The rest of the tubes are Mesa. I have compared the Roadster CH4 extreme to the JP-2C and they sound very close to each other (not identical but close enough that both would seem to complement each other if used together). With all stock tubes in the Roadster, it will not happen as it will be dark or muddy depending on where the bass control is set. Reason why I switched V1 as I could not remove enough bass on CH4 even with the bass control set to its lowest setting. Besides, there are no ill effects on the other channels with Tung Sol in V1. Clean channels still sound very much the same.

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TC-50, shares the same cab as the JP-2C below
JP-2C, Vertical Recto 212 (V30)
Roadster head, OS Recto slant 412 cab (EVM12L-BLACK LABEL)
Royal Atlantic head , Matching Mesa OS Recto slant 412 (V30)
Royal Atlantic Combo, black face (V30)
Mark V combo (MC90 )

The tung-sol is something I've had in mind for long time already. Maybe next time when I order poweramp tubes to Roadster I'll snatch one tungsol to same order... change of pickups made also huge difference in clarity and bite.

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Urea Jacta Est

It seems information is less scarce if you look for it! Although, I think I have seen the bonus material from Live in Budokan but probably not all of it. Perhaps there is some information on the internet I can read...