Tremoverbs board revisions

I read an interest thread about Rectos board revisions.

Does this apply to Tremoverbs as well?
Thanks

Hello Daniel
I am trying to find more about the tremoverb and it's revisions, I have a post with some pictures of my amp with gut shots but I didn't get much feed back, if you happen to learn any thing please post it.
Thanks

+1

I have found this post by Vitor Gracie.

QUOTE
Since the Trem O Verb has only been touched on slightly...allow me to ellaborate. (this is gonna be LOONG!)

I own a fixed power cable, Trem O verb combo with the old pointer knobs. The extra mode on the "Lead" channel is called "Blues."

If I had one sound that I had to live with on a desert island it would be that channel...

I recently sold my two channel recto head with the detachable cable and the distortion and cleans truely are different. Dialing both amps exactly the same way with fresh Mesa tubes through the same cab (recto 4X12 trad cab) produced very different sounds.

The recto head was a little gravely and "chunkier" with lots of lows but where the older Trem O Verb kills the solo head is in the midrange. The T.O.V has a beautiful mid "hump." You can hear subtle similarities in the frequencies present to a Mark IV. I have A/B ed it to one and the tones are certainly not the same but the eq boost/cut seems to aim at some of the same frequencies. I also compared it to a Quad and you could hear that they had subtle similarities in the eq. The newer rectos are just as stated, METAL! Cold and almost what Mesa "thought" all the players wanted. Scooped mids, too much lows and nail scraping on a chalk board highs...YUCK!

...aaahh the blues mode. I believe Mesa was trying to attract MK players with this mode. It is loose and creamy and huge sounding...SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Much MIDS!!!! The first thing you notice is that the mode leaves no room to play at low volumes at all. Setting the lead channel to orange forces you to turn up the volume as the channel is drasticly quieter then the red or blues. However the blues mode is loud on 1/2 of where 1 would be so you are driving the power tube almost right away. If you play a MKIII, there is a drastic "sag" if you try to do anything percussive. (this can be dialed out) The blues mode on the TOV is almost as if they gave the channel all of the MkIII characteristics but made it not as flubby and tryed to mimic the effect of the 5 band eq but with the knobs instead. Think of playing and amp with 1meg pots. LOTS of effect on the tone. I think a MkIII is also smother sounding at higher levels of gain where as the blues mode breaks up in a pleasantly uglier way. I set the gain at about three o'clock and that is MORE then enough for sustainy solo work. There is still plenty of diction in your notes.

Overall the cleans are why I first purchased the amp from the store. I owned a 5150 and didn't care about the gain somuch as getting a REALLY good clean tone. To me back then as long as the amp had thuddd, I didn't care about the dirty. But the cleans are warmer then the solo head. I have read that there is a capacitor on the pots in the clean channel...I am not sure that this is true, however, if you set the lead channel to orange, the presence knob becomes almost non-functional. You have to use the presence knob on the clean channel to effect the lead. It says to do this in the manual.

One more thing on the cleans...there is a "secret" channel on these older rectos. The 1st channel can be cloned as we all know. You can have orangr/red, orange/orange or red/red. Well most players back then never heard anything like this amp so we all imediatly wanted two red channels with gain and then MORE gain!!!
Here is the secret. You can set channel 1 to clean and have them both be red. This creates the same eq curve as the dirty and majorly increases the highs and lows to produce a very scooped clean sound. If you use a Les Paul or another guitar that has humbuckers, it can get you pretty glassy sounds. It also sounds great with a P-90 as the hotter the single coil the more of those glassy highs you LOOSE. The low end thump on that red clean sound is almost too much....AWSOME...

Well thats my book on the Trem O Verb. I got it new WITH a discount ($1400.00 USD) The store just lost its Mesa Lisence due to lack of sales. It was my first Mesa and I soon got a PRS from the same store. Sounds great on top of the matching recto 2X12. Open back from the combo and closed from the bottom.

Good Luck bro!
UNQUOTE

Regards
Daniel

Hey Daniel
Cool find on the article, I wish we could find more detailed information on the lineage,
revisions, transformers ect. of the tov
Thanks

I also found this.

http://forum.grailtone.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18664&hilit=+tremoverb+board

Does anybody have any comments?
Thanks

Mike Bendinelli says that the sound is the same for all Tremoverb board revisions.
Mine is a '98 amp with power transformer # 561140, output transformer # 562105 and board RR-1E.

Hellaboogie

Did you get the closeup pics of the transformers I sent you??

Guys I was just thinking do the transformers in the tremoverb use teflon??

Hey Valve Power
I did get the pics you sent thanks man and as soon as I get a decent camera I'll shoot you the power amp section.

Hello igfraso
I find it hard to believe that the tremoverbs with different revisions all sound the same and that there is no difference between the various revisions, I have a tov made in 93 it has a hardwired power cord, serial effects loop and the power transformer 561136 that in it's self is a difference from the later revisions,
One would think that all of these known changes would have an impact on the sound.

Changing the output transformer will change the sound of the amp. As far as I know all tremoverbs utilized the same pcb board. The preamp of the tremoverb and revision g rectifier's are pretty close, the main difference is the 20pf capacitor to ground before the second gain stage is not installed on the tremoverb, while it is on the rectifiers. Also the blues mode is very similar to the orange channel clean mode with the exception that the blues mode has less negative feedback coming from the output transformer.

Hellaboogie said:

Hello igfraso
I find it hard to believe that the tremoverbs with different revisions all sound the same and that there is no difference between the various revisions, I have a tov made in 93 it has a hardwired power cord, serial effects loop and the power transformer 561136 that in it's self is a difference from the later revisions,
One would think that all of these known changes would have an impact on the sound.

Click to expand...

Hi Hellaboogie,
I understand what you say and I would think the same as you.

All I can say is that Mike told me that the different board revisions don't have an effect on sound. I am just quoting him. Believe me, he loves these amps.
Now, whether he meant that there is no difference or that differences are so small that you can disregard them, I don't know.

Maybe we are more used to the Mark series , where amps were more sensitive to little changes? I, honestly, don't know. It was a surprise to me to hear that the code of the power tubes don't have nearly as much influence on the sound of the Tremover as it has on the Mark series.

By the way, my board is the RR-1E. What does RR mean? What are the initials on the Rectifier or Roadster boards?

For comparison, my Blue Angel has a BA-1D board and my Maverick has a MAV-2A board (there were some prototypes and probably that could be the reason why the revision starts with a number 2... again, I can only guess.

Hi Daniel
My guess is that the RR- RF- signify the amp model for example the RR- is for the tremoverb and RF- is for the dual rectifier, tripple rectifier ect. the 1C or 1E that comes after the RR-on are tremoverb pcb is just a way of tracking and identifing the revisions of the amplifier again this is a guess on my part.

I just acquired a Tremoverb combo with the following:

- S/N: R-0025XX
- attached power cord
- Serial FX loop
- PT: 561138 EIA606-322
- OT: 562105 EIA606-324
- Choke: 550381 EIA606-316
- PCB: RR-1D