If this is the case are his sig amps extensions of those or entirely different animals?
I think the Super Dallas sounds a lot like the 25th Anniversary amp, and its progeny, the HX/DA. Makes sense, since it has the same power tubes, same wattage, and Cinemag transformer. Obviously, there are differences, but they sound like they're in the same family, based loosely on the warm, vintage tones of a great Plexi Marshall. These amps break up early, have a beautiful sag and compression, and are very forgiving to play through. The leading edges of a plucked note are more searing than the DG30.
The DG30 has a
very different sonic palette. While it isn't exactly like any particular amp model, its heritage is very American, and I honestly hear some Fender Brownface, and some old 50s Gibson amps. It isn't very compressed, there's quite a lot of clean headroom, and there's very powerful dynamic range, where plucked notes seem to pop out of the speakers with a lot of energy in a different way than the others I mentioned.
The DG30 uses the EL84M military tube. It's more robust physically than the EL84, the glass is thicker, the tube itself is a bit larger, and the tube can take lots more energy before it breaks up. So if you're thinking, "Oh, EL84, crushed glass, lots of crunch, soft breakup to clipping," you're in for a shock, because the EL84M isn't that kind of beast.
For someone that refuses to even tweak an amp this is overkill for my needs. I just thought it might be fun...somehow...haha.
I don't grok the refusal to turn knobs on an amp! Here's why:
Let's assume that you can eventually get an amp set to get the sounds you like.
But no amp sounds the same with every guitar, or in every room. In fact, amps don't even sound the same in every spot in a room! So it needs some tweaking for those two reasons alone. Second, amps don't sound the same new out of the box as they do after being played in for a few weeks, and they sound different after a few months, too. So even if you could just dial in one tone and leave it, the controls need to be adjusted to cope with the amp breaking in. And if you're running new speakers, they break in, too, and their tone changes (generally, it becomes less strident and ice-picky as the speaker breaks in, and you might be adding treble or presence to adjust for this as it mellows).
If you use pedals, the controls on the pedal and the controls on the amp need to be balanced out against one another.
You might think I'm being picky, but this is stuff most good players take for granted and just do as a matter of course.
Re: PRS amps.
These amps do an awful lot on their own and in combination with the guitar's knobs. I don't know how you feel about guitar controls, but the CAD amps are definitely designed for the player who understands how to use the guitar controls to adjust gain and tone.
The DG amp rewards this; it's really designed to help a player like Grissom, who definitely uses his guitar controls a LOT, get a variety of expressiveness and tones. On the other hand, the DG amp isn't as simple to get a tone out of as the 50 watt Plexi style amps. You definitely have to work it a little more. For example, it's a completely different amp with volume (gain) and Master set above 5. It's a different amp with the bright switch on, and it also responds differently with the boost switch on.
Each of these different settings asks the player for more adjustments, but rewards the player who has the ear for using it to its potential.
My best advice is this: Grissom is a tweaker, a guy whose pedalboard changes from time to time with different interesting pedals, etc. If you have a Grissom-like rig in mind, you have to be willing to do what he does to get his sounds, namely, to turn lots of knobs, often.
