The Roadsters are very nice heads. They have more options and sounds in them than the new Duals have, with the fourth channel and the tweed and brit modes on the cleans. The voicing is a little more aggressive than the older 3 channel heads, but I think the new Duals are very aggressive as well. I was going to get the Roadster/Mark V heads as my new rig, but when I played the new Dual Rec alongside both the Roadster and Mk V, I chose to get the new Dual Rec because it suited the sound that I was
looking for better.
The new Dual Recs have a good clean, and the voicing of channels 2 and 3 are a little smoother than on the older 3 channels. I don't know for sure, but I would assume the re-voicing of these new heads were done after the circuitry of the Roadsters were completed, so, their sound might be more different now than it was before. When I played the Multi-watt dual alongside the Roadster, I liked overdriven sounds of ch2 and ch 3 on the Dual Rec better than the Roadster's CH3 and Ch4 when set up the same way. If you want a little more flexibility then I would say go for the Roadster. If you don't need all of the extra features, the new Dual Rec has some of the Roadster's options like Tube Tracking and 50/100 watt modes on each channel, and is even more flexible than the older heads were. Either one would be a nice addition to your arsenal, it's just a matter of preference and what you need as far as channels and sounds. On a side note, with Winter NAMM around the corner, I do wonder if a Roadster 2.0 is in the works with the re-voiced gain structure of the Reborn Rectos. That would be cool.
-AJH
