I Heart My Single Channel PRS Amps

[László]

Sure, two channel amps can be great and they do cool things. You'll get no argument from me, I've had plenty of 'em. Lots to love.

But I like single channel amps in general, and these PRS single channel amps in particular. I grew up in the late 60s and the 70s with single channel amps, and learned how to make them work. I find that they often have gobs of personality.

You get a single channel amp, and you don't worry about its clean tone vs its overdrive tone, or whatever else. It's not a combination of Fender cleans and Marshall overdrive. Or chuggy Mesa OD and a thick clean tone.

It's "a" tone, from which the volume controls vary and create colors. That's it. Control it from your guitar, and you've got a world of tone on your hands. The simple circuitry does something for your guitar's tone that's impossible to define but easy to hear and feel.

This is perhaps why some of the best session players I know, guys I hire to play on tracks, only play single channel amps. Whether it's vintage Vox, a Fender, or a Plexi, or something more modern like a PRS or a Matchless, there's a reason people go for them. I dunno, sound is a personal thing, but most of the session guys I use have a sound of their own, they're not trying to cop every tone out there.

Some of my favorite amps have been single channel dudes, but these PRS amps take the absolute cake. I've gone on and on about these things for the past few years, but dang, I was in the studio today working them out, and fell in love all over again.

This is the best picture of my current amps, sorry it's not just the amps. You've seen this pic before, but I wind up just staring at the amps because they mean a lot to me. That's because I'm both a very strange cat, and I love these amps.

 

[Boogie]

Someone needs to go in there and throw some papers around. Anything that well kept and tidy is almost annoying. :biggrin:

You're preaching to the choir, bud, but stating absolute truth.

 

[rugerpc]

Somewhere in Les's studio, I had his wife hide a dirty sock months ago.

You can tell it's still there because you can see the notch dropout on the scope at the sock's maximum absorptive frequency when you play one of Les's commercial soundtracks. The notch is so narrow, Les can't hear it either on his monitors or with cans. But it's a hefty notch - about 20 db down...

 

[AP515]

Somewhere in Les's studio, I had his wife hide a dirty sock months ago.

You can tell it's still there because you can see the notch dropout on the scope at the sock's maximum absorptive frequency when you play one of Les's commercial soundtracks. The notch is so narrow, Les can't hear it either on his monitors or with cans. But it's a hefty notch - about 20 db down...

It's taped to the bottom of his chair...

 

[László]

Someone needs to go in there and throw some papers around. Anything that well kept and tidy is almost annoying. :biggrin:.

Somewhere in Les's studio, I had his wife hide a dirty sock months ago.

No need for anxiety, Ladies. Have you ever seen clutter and disorganization in a Formula One car? Of course not.

That is because the speed at which decisions need to be made in a racing machine traveling at high speed require absolute concentration on the task at hand by brilliant drivers who must race without distraction.

My lightning-quick creative process cannot be slowed down for even a nanosecond by having to deal with out-of-place clutter of any kind, let alone having to search for something I need in the heat of a session.

Think of my studio as a Formula One car for creative genius.

 

[Danerada]

I agree with you Les....totally.

 

[WEDGE]

I like channel switchers but wanted to comment on your studio......I envy how clean and neat it is. Looks like you could eat off the floor in there. My space is so cluttered and a mess, I am such a head case....I HATE clutter but am a slob......

I dont see any cabinets though, do you do everything direct?

 

[László]

I dont see any cabinets though, do you do everything direct?

No, I run speaker cables to speaker cabinets that sit on the other side of the room about 20-25 feet away. If you've ever tried to adjust an amp with headphones on, with a guitar cab blaring away, you know it can be hard to hear the difference between what's in the headphones and what's coming in as bleed from the cab.

I need to operate the controls to my workstation, set levels, etc. At the same time, I need to hear what everything is going to sound like at the microphone, and I need to be able to adjust the amps as the track I'm playing to plays down.

Meantime, I'm sitting there attached to the equipment with a guitar strapped on, cable going to the amp, cable going to the headphones, and moving around in the room to adjust amps becomes a tangled trip hazard pretty quickly. But having the speaker cab too close while I'm working means I can't hear very well in the headphones without turning them up to ear splitting levels. So they really have to be separate. Ideally, I'd have a recording booth for the cabs, but right now I have to do it this way, and it does mean I can get up to adjust the mics if I have to without going back and forth into another room.

So my solution is to have the heads nearby so I don't have to leave my workstation area, and run long cables to the speaker cabs. Mostly, the setup lets me
record the cabs far enough away that I can actually hear the cans, and I have them angled so that I'm out of their direct line of fire, since guitar speakers are highly directional. I wish I could say I invented this, but it's pretty common for single-operator studios to employ a variation on this theme.

So I can roll my chair a couple of feet over to the heads, adjust them, and not have to get tangled up in cables, it solves the problem of cabs bleeding into the cans, and the only price to pay is a longer speaker cable that doesn't affect the tone at all (I've tested this to my satisfaction).



I also place gobos around the speaker cabs to further reduce bleed into my headphones. This is a picture taken before I put the heads near the workstation for recording:



If I need to be very, very loud, I just stick the cabs in my storage room, and run cables there, but I've only had to do that a couple of times.

 

[Pinch]

Hi Les. Compliments on the neatness of your studio, but back to your comments about single channel amps. Being 40 something I grew up during the time of 80's sound processors and multi-channel switching amps. I have however always been drawn to more simple amps and effects. The less knobs I have to turn the better. Even so, I never got used to using the volume knob on the guitar through a single channel amp. I always relied on pedals or at least two channel amps. It is only recently that I started appreciating the nuances that single channel amps can give. This journey started when I bought high quality single channel amps - Two-rock Studio Pro 35 and the Swart AST MK2 head and cab. I still use a dirt box or two, but more for different shades. I am still not comfortable with only a volume knob, cable and single channel amp, but I am starting to see where you are coming from. I am still on the journey.

 

[FJ4]

Great Stuff Les!!

 

[László]

Hi Les. Compliments on the neatness of your studio, but back to your comments about single channel amps. Being 40 something I grew up during the time of 80's sound processors and multi-channel switching amps. I have however always been drawn to more simple amps and effects. The less knobs I have to turn the better. Even so, I never got used to using the volume knob on the guitar through a single channel amp. I always relied on pedals or at least two channel amps. It is only recently that I started appreciating the nuances that single channel amps can give. This journey started when I bought high quality single channel amps - Two-rock Studio Pro 35 and the Swart AST MK2 head and cab. I still use a dirt box or two, but more for different shades. I am still not comfortable with only a volume knob, cable and single channel amp, but I am starting to see where you are coming from. I am still on the journey.

I'm not familiar with the Swart, but Two-Rocks are beautiful sounding amps, and I played Onyx Sigs for a long time, and later the Custom Reverb Sig models.

For me, the beauty of a single channel amp is the purity of the signal path, not having fewer knobs to turn. I kinda like knobs. You might say I'm big on knobs.

Incidentally, I play through my PRS amps with a lot of work on the volume knob, but I do use pedals to further color the tone as well, as the third picture posted above shows.

However, even the pedals respond to volume control from the guitar; it's one of my criteria when picking out a dirt or boost pedal.

 

[aristotle]

Out of curiosity Les, I haven't found an amp/guitar combination yet that takes well to the Plim Soul. It always sounds like I'm playing through a Walkman or something. I've gone through every permutation on that thing. What do you use it with?

As to the general gist of the thread, I agree. There is a magic to a single channel amp like the MDT. The range of junk I need to do live sometimes precludes that sort of setup sometimes, but when I can get away with it, it's great!

 

[László]

Out of curiosity Les, I haven't found an amp/guitar combination yet that takes well to the Plim Soul. It always sounds like I'm playing through a Walkman or something. I've gone through every permutation on that thing. What do you use it with?

I use the Plimsoul mostly to add gritty warmth or a bit of dirty compression, more like a tube EQ with some grit than the way most players use an OD pedal. I like its texture, and especially its soft clipping settings. One might call it my "lo-fi" pedal.

It's great post-wah, to take some of the spikiness out of the typical wah sound, and to add sustain and compression to the signal. But I also like it ahead of a tremolo, a combination I use a lot.

In addition, it works well to push the HXDA just a hair or two when I want a bluesy sound with a soft attack and a different timbre than just turning the gain up on the HXDA (I usually run the HXDA gain pretty low).

All this stuff is so entirely personal, it's just a matter of what you like in your paintbox.

 

[daveyisgreat]

I agree. I love single channel amps. When I was a teen I was a big VH fan so I got a Peavey 5150. But I just could not get a good balance between the channels (or a sound that completely pleased me, but that's another issue entirely). Then I discovered the volume knob on my guitar and I essentially bailed on the "clean" channel, dialed back the gain a little, and went to town on the simplicity and responsiveness of a one channel signal chain. I learned a bit about amp design, then I wanted to have my brother build me a single channel amp with only two knobs. He did not. But then I got my Original Sewell and it's quite the beast! It's right in my wheelhouse. One channel, lots of responsiveness, and all the changes happen with my hands.

Great post, I love reading these awesome insights.

 

[László]

But then I got my Original Sewell and it's quite the beast! It's right in my wheelhouse. One channel, lots of responsiveness, and all the changes happen with my hands.

A really great amp that one is, too! :top:

 

[8-)]

I so agree with Les.

Now, let me put on my bullet proof vest for a minute.

Just my opinion, but I do feel strongly about this: The fewer the watts, the better the tone.

Have at it.

 

[László]

Just my opinion, but I do feel strongly about this: The fewer the watts, the better the tone.

I recently made one of those "all things being equal" comparisons between my HXDA 30 and my HXDA 50, and I can't say that the 30 sounds better. The 50 may have sounded fuller, in fact, though I do love my 30.

I've always thought the AC30 sounded better to my ear than the AC15.

I had a Mesa Mark V and have compared it to the 25 watt version, and like the 85 watt version more. I liked the Fender Twin better than the Deluxe. I think the tone of a "big iron" transformer gives a more solid bottom end.

Then again, I do like low powered amps for certain things.

So I will, with the exception of the above caveats, remain neutral on this question.

 

[Texas_minor_blues]

This post cracks me up as I have started looking at single channel amps recently. This is rather odd as I have never given much thought to it till probably about the last year or so. I have been checking out amps when I can and so far I am finding myself really gassing for a Matchless Chieftain... I need to play more amps hehe

 

[Boogie]

... I am finding myself really gassing for a Matchless Chieftain...

I beat up a Matchless 30/15 in 15W mode and lived to tell the story last weekend. Through a '70s 1960A cab, too. Loud but especially with P-90s, WOW! I destroyed ears. Great amp.

However, with that said, I preferred the HXDA 30 thru a 1x12. It's more multi-dimensional.

 

[László]

The Chieftain (similar to the Bad Cat Hot Cat) does a great job with the "crushed glass" overtones at the point of breakup that so many people like about those amps. It's a completely different vibe from the PRS amps.

The HXDA throws off different harmonics at breakup, and is a more buttery sounding amp. The DG30 is also in an altogether different place.

All are superb amps, and they all do different things. If you get the Matchless, you'll still want the PRS, and vice-versa.