The Making of the Sonzera 20 PRS video

Seems a lot like a Deluxe Reverb but with reverb on both channels. Doug kind of admits that.

A Deluxe Reverb is my grab and go amp. Or a Princeton Reverb modified with a 12" Celestion. I prefer 12's.

6L6 tubes though in the PRS.

Deluxes and Princetons use 6V6 tubes. As Doug noted.

He sure seems to know what he's doing.
 
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Just for grins I spent some time and listened to several different video demos of the Sonzera in my studio before replying, however the real test can only be to play through one and turn the knobs to make it sound more to my own taste.

I also took another listen to demos of other really good 20W amps I'm familiar with to get my bearings.

A big caveat is that the way these amps are set up and miked makes a huge difference. Maybe I'd have done them differently. A video demo comparison has its drawbacks.

Bryan Ewald's demo on the PRS site was by far the best sounding of the Sonzera demos I could find online. I particularly liked the cleans with the 594. It was set up too brittle for my taste with the Silver Sky. But he had the presence cranked way up, and that always seems to bring out the harshness in an amp (speaking only for myself, YMMV).

However, it still sounds like a better buy clean than the Fender '65 Deluxe Reissue, though I preferred the handwired Fender '64 Deluxe reissue. However that one's three times the price. I liked the Sonzera's cleans almost as much as the Cali Tweed 20W, and with a Jensen Blackbird might like the Sonzera as much (the Blackbird is one of my favorite speakers) and preferred the Sonzera to the /13 small Tweed style combo.

I can't fairly comment on the dirty channel, it was set up so differently from the way I'd do it.
 
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Bryan Ewald's demo on the PRS site was by far the best sounding of the Sonzera demos I could find online. I particularly liked the cleans with the 594. It was set up too brittle for my taste with the Silver Sky. But he had the presence cranked way up, and that always seems to bring out the harshness in an amp (speaking only for myself, YMMV).
Agree with pretty much every part of your post. Yes, micing makes a big difference. Yes, Bryan's sounded best too me. Yes, a little too bright on the Silver Sky... I think he may have been trying to prove his point that they got the harshness out of the top end by cranking it up. Still, I'd pull that back a bit.
 
Perhaps. Kind of proved the opposite, to me, but I feel it's most likely how it was dialed in.
Yeah, I agree. Which emphasizes your point about the mic. He was standing in the room with the amp and felt he was proving they had dialed out the harshness. The mic'd tone had some.
 
I hope they’ve addressed some of the harshness and extreme amount of gain on the lead channel. The previous version had a lot of breakup going on even with the gain control very low on the lead channel. I’d like for it to start off in the milder breakup range, like the pushed zone of the clean mode of the Mesa Fillmore.

I heard some single coil players make the original Sonzera sound really great, but I could never get it to react that way. Maybe it’s because I play humbuckers mostly.
 
I hope they’ve addressed some of the harshness and extreme amount of gain on the lead channel. The previous version had a lot of breakup going on even with the gain control very low on the lead channel. I’d like for it to start off in the milder breakup range, like the pushed zone of the clean mode of the Mesa Fillmore.

I heard some single coil players make the original Sonzera sound really great, but I could never get it to react that way. Maybe it’s because I play humbuckers mostly.
I usually question the idea of a lead channel on a low power amp, since it's so easy to drive a single channel low power amp into clipping, or alternatively, to push it with a boost to do pretty much the same thing hitting the preamp section instead of the power tubes if volume is an issue.

But I'm that guy who runs his Mesas as single channel amps! :eek:
 
I heard some single coil players make the original Sonzera sound really great, but I could never get it to react that way. Maybe it’s because I play humbuckers mostly.
Our boy Boscoe makes it sound great with the opposite end of the spectrum. Hollowbody with humbuckers.

I'm with you on this one though. I've heard the clean channel sound good but rarely dug the gain channel unless Boscoe was playing it.
 
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