PRS Enters the High Gain Game With the Archon Amp

Paul Reed Smith is primarily known for one thing: guitars that are classier than your grandma’s Hummel collection. Beautiful and shapely, their guitars have set the standard for attractive natural wood tops and sexy curves, and have been played by everyone from Santana to Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth.

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But now the company has upped it’s amplifier line, with the addition of the high-gain Archon (Greek for lord) head and cabinet, and according to Guitar World, have already gained the endorsement of the likes of Dustie Waring (Between the Buried and Me), Fredrik Ã…kesson (Opeth), Mark Tremonti (Alter Bridge and Creed), Emil Werstler (Chimaira) and Zach Myers (Shinedown). That’s a pretty impressive stamp of approval for a company that only entered the amplifier arms race in 2011 (which they immediately classed up with the addition of pieces of exposed flame maple).

The amp is switchable between 100 and 50 watts, and features five gain stages before the master volume. It uses 6 12ax7 and 4 6l6GC tubes to drive the sound. The target seems to be people who are looking for a great clean channel on a great high gain amp, as the above mentioned in the video below can attest. We’ll have to see if this thing sends people running to eBay to sell their 5150 breeds.

Check out this video of people you respect (and also the guy from Shinedown) making googly eyes for the thing:

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As Editor-in-Chief of Gear Gods, I've been feeding your sick instrument fetishism and trying unsuccessfully to hide my own since 2013. I studied music on both coasts (Berklee and SSU) and now I'm just trying to put my degree to some use. That's a music degree, not an English one. I'm sure you noticed.

Latest comments
  • “Check out this video of people you respect (and also the guy from Shinedown)”

    Very nice.

  • These guys are all already sponsored by PRS, so I wouldn’t be surprised if their sponsorship agreements actually required them to endorse any amp products PRS might release.

    At any rate, the under-the-hood specs on this head on the PRS website reveal that it’s mostly hand-wired, which always sounds better than circuit boards in my experience. Willing to bet it’ll sound pretty good for that reason alone.

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