It Has All Been Revealed - Horse - Course - Of Course

[sergiodeblanc]

 

[MA Pete]

Les, cool story with the different amps and guitars. I can relate.

My Jade Glow DC 245 Ted PS is a monster, in a Vintagy Les Paul sort of way. My DC 245 408 Signature PS is equally great, but SOOOO different.

The 408 245 is my #1 gigging guitar, sounds fantastic and weighs only six pounds (Obeche body), and those 408 pickups are so versatile in a band setting.

At home I go back and forth between the two, and my SC PS, and they are both great in their own right, but very different. I do not have a lot going on with amps these days, just have the Marshall JVM 410 Satriani, the JVM 1 50th Anniversary Head, and the 15W Laney Iommi Combo.

For me it is more about certain songs, and sounds/tones. One will sound great doing one thing, and sound not as great doing another, through the same amp. Tonight I was playing the Jade Glow doing some Free songs and Paul Kossoff leads, sounded great. Played some more modern stuff, and it sounded "tired". Plugged in the 408 Sig 245, and it was like "WOW", okay, here we go.

Nice to have those options!

I guess I am "back in the fold" here, ordered a new DC 245 Ted Trem PS this week, have my own HOTG coming tomorrow (thanks for the inspriation!), and now I am GAS'ing for some more PRS amps...

It's good to be back!

 

[László]

if it were me...and I had to choose only one PRS amp in order - I would choose the Recording Head...second would probably be the HXDA....then the Paul's....then the Super Dallas...then the 25th....then the Grissom....then the Dallas....etc....but again that's me....that is from a flexibility standpoint....oops forgot about the channel switchers....


( I have never played the Grissom...I've only heard Grissom up close at Experience play it...which sounded killer...this accounts for it's rank on my list...without playing it I can't really strongly comment on it)

The Grissom is truly different from the amps based on the original 50 watt designs. I mean, really different!

For starters, the EL84M tubes don't sound like regular EL84s with that typical glassy crunch. These were Russian military tubes, with thicker glass (so thick most EL84 amps don't have room for them) and they can take much higher plate voltages. So Doug and Grissom decided to set the plate voltages high enough that fans are needed in back of the amp to keep the tubes from getting too hot. They sound like no other power tube I've ever heard, at least set up the way they are. They're much firmer, with gobs of headroom that goes way past any other EL84.

Also, the power section's master volume is pre-phase inverter, so the master volume affects the volume (gain) control, and the two are interactive. On the one hand, this gives you a lot of flexibility because the distortion is mostly preamp tubes until you dime the amp, yet the tone of the amp definitely changes as you move the master higher. On the other hand, since the settings of both controls affect each other, you can't adjust one without adjusting the other to some degree.

The EQ also should be tweaked depending on the volume and master. In the back of the amp, you have a top cut and a boost control, plus a presence control. Flip the amp to the boost setting, and everything's different. The bright switch changes not just brightness but how the amp responds. The cut control smooths things out.

After you increase the gain about halfway, the amp's character changes from clean to gradually more and more distorted. But it's a different kind of distortion than you get with the HXDA, or any other amp I know of! I didn't really understand this distortion voicing until I started the Grissom TrueFire lessons within the last couple of weeks. As he was demonstrating his style of play a light bulb when on. This distortion is all about it not being like a fuzz box inside the amp. It's about the note staying clean with what sounds like a second distorted note behind and above the clean note. That's what allows Grissom to get that combination of bounce and definition along with his crunch!

So as you can see, it's a tweaker's amp, but it's also a professional's amp, in the sense that it's for someone who knows amps and understands what to do to get what one wants. It is not for someone who leaves the knobs at noon; you really can (and pretty much have to) experiment to find just the right tones and settings, and believe me, they need to be different from guitar model to guitar model.

Also, if you want gain from the amp, it gets loud. And by loud, I mean gig loud, very loud. And by gigs I don't mean wedding gigs or church gigs. I mean gigs where the band is the main attraction, big time club or stadium gigs. When I have the volume/gain up past noon, I can turn the amp to 8 o'clock (i.e. volume at 2 on a scale of 1 - 10) with the boost on, and it's still really loud. Earplug loud.

It's also an amp that's custom tailored for Grissom and his style of play. It's bouncy, it's gritty when you want, and it works extremely well for a rhythmic player, a fast picker, who wants a ton of single note definition and each individual note to jump out of the amp as opposed to turning mushy, even if you're playing low on the neck on the low E and A strings. Think about that fuzz box comparison I made a couple of paragraphs back - you play that stuff on even a great amp like a Plexi and the high notes will sustain, but the bottom notes aren't clear and bouncy either.

If you, like me, are the kind of player who likes a sustainy amp that holds a note while you work it into a scream, well, better bring a pedal. If you do, an OD pedal can then turn this into an amp that will indeed do HXDA type stuff -- but that depends on picking the right pedal. A Fulltone Secret freq, FD3, or Plimsoul sound great with it. I haven't tried any other ODs.

The amp has incredible headroom and dynamic range for its power output. It doesn't compress. Everything stays big and bouncy with no mush. Even the distortion rides on top of the note, you still don't get fuzzy notes as with most amps. This is what gives Grissom the ability to play all that plucky rhythmic chicken pickin' even on the low strings and get that tone he gets.

It doesn't have the clean headroom of a Twin, but on the other hand, it doesn't compress the notes like a Twin, and get glassy or two dimensional either. It stays very bouncy and the notes are huge.

So the amp is unique, it's wonderful to play, but it's definitely a handful, like a beautiful woman who is smart, headstrong, and knows exactly what she wants.

Also unlike, say, the HXDA, this is not a Brit sounding amp. It sounds like an American amp, bits of tweed Deluxe and brownface Concert-Amp here and there, pieces of old Gibson amps, maybe even a smidge of the weird stuff like Magnatones. In fact, I'd say the closest single amp to the tone when I run the amp clean is a '62 Concert-Amp a friend owns, but then everything changes when the amp's volume control is past noon.

See what I mean? It's a sonic treat, tons of character, but I also did a lot of head-scratching until I got things sorted out. The Grissom cab helps a lot, because then there is context for how to set it up. That plus listening to the most recent Grissom album and his lessons and it's...ah...I think I get what they were going for here.

There's one other thing about the amp: like that headstrong beautiful woman who's hard to handle, you want to come back for more. The basic tone of the amp is addictive.

I love it. Sometimes it gives me fits, but when I'm willing to accept its demands, there's nothing truly better, just different. So that's why I rank it with the HXDA, especially with the right guitar, though I'm really starting to be able to use it with the Singlecut, too, unlocking those secrets.

My amp came with NOS preamp tubes, and I think they make a very sweet combination with the amp's design. I also scored some NOS 80s Russian EL84Ms that I'l install when the originals need to be replaced. However, unlike most EL84s, these tubes are supposed to give a much, much longer life, and I've hardly broken the amp in, because mostly it sat while I saved up for the matching cab. I've really only gotten significant use out of it in the last few weeks.