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.
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 Åkesson (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:
CyberneticOrganism / December 20, 2013 12:00 pm
“Check out this video of people you respect (and also the guy from Shinedown)”
Very nice.
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The Devil / December 20, 2013 4:43 pm
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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