Wiring In PRS Amp Lines

[Boogie]

...I swapped the stock JJ for an NOS Mullard in the V1 position. It made a difference I liked, and improved the tone over the stock tube, though changing a single tube isn't going to result in a night/day difference the way changing the whole set might.

In my experience, in certain amps, with certain preamp tube changes (yes, that's my massive disclaimer), it can make a huge difference. And in this instance, I'd call it night and day difference. Going from a new Tung Sol 12ax7 to an NOS RFT in V1 of my Boogie MkIII, for example. HUGE personality change. So much so, I went back to stock MB tubes. Those RFTs do something very dark and very unique.

My NOS Mullard 12ax7 went into V1 of the Super Dallas and I can attribute some of my satisfaction with this decision. It helps tame the top end in a very Marshall way, and IMO, is one of the Marshall tone secrets...much like the RFT is one of Diesel Amps' secrets on some of their amps. You can't discount the tone sculpting capabilities of tube swapping.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

those are some beautiful amps!

 

[Prina]

I think PRS's approach is interesting. The components are actually all mounted on PCB with the exception of the components soldered directly onto the sockets. You can't see them, but the traces on the underside of the board connect the top mounted components according to whatever the schematic is.

Em7 once said that somebody at PRS told him that the philosophy was to improve on the ease of maintenance associated with turret board construction which typically involves individual wires soldered between turrets on the underside of the board to make the necessary component connections. If you need to swap out a component on the top side, wires attached to the turret underneath often come undone when you de-solder the component (if you're ham handed with the iron anyway...) Sounds like a good philosophy to me. The wires associated with switches and front panel controls and whatnot always have seemed a bit haphazard in terms of routing and organization to me, but that's just a cosmetic thing.

I'm not one that believes that there is a tonal difference between "hand wired" in whatever flavor and PCB amps, in whatever flavor. It's sure easier to maintain or mod with the type of construction that PRS uses.

Bumping an old, interesting thread. Besides, gutshots never get old.

That construction philosophy makes sense and was a key reason to get a 2019 Archon 25 combo two months ago. The amount of quality for USA built, nearly hand wired amp is amazing for the current prices. It's almost worth it just for that chassis mounted (to use the chassis as a heat sink) gold 25W 120 ohm resistor. Too bad, for me anyway, that half of the six preamp tubes weren't used to put in an HXDA preamp instead of the Gain channel. Would have been interesting to hear the difference resulting from the different power amp stage (tubes, transformer) between a real HXDA and a HXDA/Archon chimera. Seems like it could have been really close.