Help me pick a new PRS amp
- Thread starter DM426
- Start date
HX/DA just arrived.
Played around with it for about twenty minutes and it sounded very harmonic with a Huber Orca '59. Very, very touch sensitive with tons of little layers and nuanced detail in the tone. The neck pickup sounds a little dark and muddy on the Huber with all switches on HX, but rolling back the volume gave it a creamy, fat, clean sound with just just a hint of bad attitude. After switching pickups, pushing the gain up to about 3/4 on both knobs manifested a pleasing blend of questionable filth and defilement, and my first impression is that there is quite a range of tones in there. Even at relatively low volumes the gain sounds satisfyingly raunchy, however, when I pushed everything all the way up things sort of went all flabby. All in all, great stuff.
One thing I love about this amp is how easy it is to use right out of the box, which is an entirely welcome change from my last amp which was more complicated than a 747. My Mesa Mark V has now been banished into the darkest reaches of the netherworld, never to be heard from or seen again.
Goodbye Mark V, Hello HX/DA.
Played around with it for about twenty minutes and it sounded very harmonic with a Huber Orca '59. Very, very touch sensitive with tons of little layers and nuanced detail in the tone. The neck pickup sounds a little dark and muddy on the Huber with all switches on HX, but rolling back the volume gave it a creamy, fat, clean sound with just just a hint of bad attitude. After switching pickups, pushing the gain up to about 3/4 on both knobs manifested a pleasing blend of questionable filth and defilement, and my first impression is that there is quite a range of tones in there. Even at relatively low volumes the gain sounds satisfyingly raunchy, however, when I pushed everything all the way up things sort of went all flabby. All in all, great stuff.
One thing I love about this amp is how easy it is to use right out of the box, which is an entirely welcome change from my last amp which was more complicated than a 747. My Mesa Mark V has now been banished into the darkest reaches of the netherworld, never to be heard from or seen again.
Goodbye Mark V, Hello HX/DA.
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daveyisgreat
Incompetent Hack
Awesome setup!
John Price
New Member
Anyone here go from relying on a 2 channel clean/distortion amp setup to just using a one channel amp to get both sounds? I'm looking into the HX/DA but I'm concerned that I'll need that dedicated clean channel to go along with the drive channel.
JP
JP
Hi John, you probably haven't read my posts about this amp.
I'm that guy who went from a 2 channel amp setup for the last umpteen years to an HXDA. I won't bother to rehash everything, I've said it a million times before.
You control this amp from clean to mean with the guitar volume. Check out some of my earlier threads.
John Price
New Member
Actually, I've read a bunch of your posts and found them very informative. I don't doubt the amp, I've played quite a few. My question would be to you, how much of an adjustment was it to get comfortable with this style of playing? I've tried it with some of my current amps that I've recently owned and I find the amp not cleaning up that well, leaving me with just an ok clean vibe.
I started playing in the late 60s, and this is how everyone played back then, because there weren't channel switchers.
So I had no adjustment period. It was instantaneous.
There are many of us converts here. And honestly, it took some coaxing from some very convincing artists (like David Grissom) to make the leap. Yes, there was a leap of faith in the end, but I'm so happy with the results. Heck, the technique also works well with multichannel amps! It's more of a mindset. Though I don't play an HXDA (yet!), my Super Dallas yields tonal variance and depth of character that I've never experienced...and I'm also from the hard core Boogie camp.
In my application, the use of dirt boxes worked best to leverage the most out of the single channel system. Being in a classic rock cover band calls for that flexibility. And though we only play about 30 times a year, it's enough for me to say the system works well in a 'working environment'. I highly recommend reviewing those Grissom demo videos from Exp 2012.
FYI, I started playing in the late 70s in the height of the master volume era and it only took a little mental rewiring to make it work.
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