aristotle
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2012
- Messages
- 771
So, it's not like there are a bunch of places where you can audition PRS amps locally. Around these parts (ironically, Maryland), Chuck Levin's is a dealer that has pretty good PRS selection, but not so much in the way of amps. Guitar Center doesn't have a ton of amps, so there isn't a convenient place to try these things out. I've been nothing but impressed with the HX/DA, the MDT, and most definitely the DG30. All super high end amps that I got on faith from non-local dealers that have a liberal return policy (well...the DG30 was picked up at Experience, and I was pretty certain that it was the bomb...and it is...)
But a local forum member was kind enough to come by one of our gigs a couple of days ago and drop off a 2-Channel C for me to play with. While it was a super act of kindness on his part (and I'll let him self-announce if he wishes) I hadn't really ever thought too much about channel switching PRS amps (they are often a compromise, PRS or otherwise.) I was definitely interested in checking it out, but more out of curiosity than anything else, and wasn't expecting much to be honest.
I took it home after the gig but was busy yesterday, so it wasn't until this evening that I set it up and played through it.
Plugged my vintage '54 goldtop straight into the amp. The amp was set to the dirty channel when I started, which was just fine. Really nice actually, and no complaints whatsoever. I was thinking to myself at that point that the amp was really quite good. You could definitely get a Santana creamy saturated vibe from it and the Master Volume was very nicely implemented.
Then I set it to clean and started monkeying around. That was where the real magic was. It happened to be set with the volume (gain) setting rather low, but after playing around with it, I tweaked the eq and cranked the volume (gain) to about 80%. Re-adjusted the master to something rather low (I was at home after all...) and it was a WOW moment. I don't know anything about the topology of this amp, but it comes closest to anything I've ever played through to my vintage Gibson GA-40 that I've ever experienced. A "3-D" sort of thing going on.
In the video above, it's guitar straight into the amp. Bridge pickup was full-on with tone backed off to about 3/4, and the neck pickup was set to about half, with tone full-on. The difference you hear in gain tone is simply from me switching from the neck to the bridge pickup. With this guitar at least (and the amp seems to like P90s best of all in my limited experimenting) the change in amp output volume and gain tone as a result of guitar volume changes is as near to perfect as you could ever want. I didn't do it in this quick clip, but it also responds super well to an overdrive pedal (Exotic BB in my case...) What a nice amp!
But a local forum member was kind enough to come by one of our gigs a couple of days ago and drop off a 2-Channel C for me to play with. While it was a super act of kindness on his part (and I'll let him self-announce if he wishes) I hadn't really ever thought too much about channel switching PRS amps (they are often a compromise, PRS or otherwise.) I was definitely interested in checking it out, but more out of curiosity than anything else, and wasn't expecting much to be honest.
I took it home after the gig but was busy yesterday, so it wasn't until this evening that I set it up and played through it.
Plugged my vintage '54 goldtop straight into the amp. The amp was set to the dirty channel when I started, which was just fine. Really nice actually, and no complaints whatsoever. I was thinking to myself at that point that the amp was really quite good. You could definitely get a Santana creamy saturated vibe from it and the Master Volume was very nicely implemented.
Then I set it to clean and started monkeying around. That was where the real magic was. It happened to be set with the volume (gain) setting rather low, but after playing around with it, I tweaked the eq and cranked the volume (gain) to about 80%. Re-adjusted the master to something rather low (I was at home after all...) and it was a WOW moment. I don't know anything about the topology of this amp, but it comes closest to anything I've ever played through to my vintage Gibson GA-40 that I've ever experienced. A "3-D" sort of thing going on.
In the video above, it's guitar straight into the amp. Bridge pickup was full-on with tone backed off to about 3/4, and the neck pickup was set to about half, with tone full-on. The difference you hear in gain tone is simply from me switching from the neck to the bridge pickup. With this guitar at least (and the amp seems to like P90s best of all in my limited experimenting) the change in amp output volume and gain tone as a result of guitar volume changes is as near to perfect as you could ever want. I didn't do it in this quick clip, but it also responds super well to an overdrive pedal (Exotic BB in my case...) What a nice amp!
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