Posts about Guitar amps

After years of rumours, PRS finally unveiled the MT 100, the 100 watt version of Mark Tremonti’s signature amp. I’ve heard some of the rumours and have been excited to see it get unveiled. Mark is one of the best working guitar players in rock music.

The MT 100 is a three-channel beast: a clean channel, an overdrive channel, and a lead channel. Mark gives a great breakdown of the amp in a 16-minute Youtube video that’s well worth your time, if you’re into this sort of thing.

This a very versatile, well-considered amp. The clean channel goes from pristine cleans with no breakup, to a nice edge-of-breakup sound. The overdrive channel picks up from there and goes from the edge-of-breakup channel to a supercharged Plexi. Mark is a huge amp nerd and compares the overdrive channel to a Dumble he owns, which probably isn’t the best comparison, since every Dumble is unique and only a few hundred were ever made. But I definitely hear the Plexi sound in this channel. Mark’s demo demonstrates how touch-sensitive this channel is. I’m a huge fan.

The lead channel is a different beast. I would describe the clean and overdrive channels as mid-rich, but the lead channel is extremely scooped, even with the Middle knob in roughly the same position. There’s a good chance the sound was EQ’d to death after the video was recorded, so the jury is still out until more people get their hands on this thing, but it sounds like the channels are voiced very differently. I can’t say I’m surprised by this, considering how scooped Mark likes to be¹, but to me it makes the amp a little less versatile than it could be otherwise. I can easily take away mids if I don’t want them, but I can’t add them in after the fact. 

Fluff’s fantastic demo did a good job of highlighting that it might be other way around: the MT 100’s overdrive channel might be too honky. I’d like to play one of these when they start showing up in stores and see for myself.

Generally though, I love the versatility of the MT 100. I think this is a great studio amp in particular. I also love the price. In Canada, it retails for $2500. Its biggest competition might be something like the Mesa Boogie Mark VII, which retails for $4800 — nearly twice the price. Even Marshall’s JVM210H is $3200 now. Tube amps have never been cheap, but their prices recently have hovered somewhere between eye-watering and impossible. PRS isn’t known for being inexpensive, but the MT 100 packs a lot of value into a small package.

I nearly fell off my chair when I saw the news earlier this week. Marshall has been a big part of Slash’s sound since the Appetite for Destruction days, and Slash arguably played a huge role in making the Les Paul and JCM800 combination the sound of rock and roll. They’ve been a part of his sound for 36 years. This is the end of an era.

I’m not a big fan of Slash as a person, and I don’t love a lot of his music either, but I think he’s got great taste in gear. I spent most of 2022 looking for a great Les Paul, and ended up with his signature model, which has some of the best-sounding pickups I’ve ever heard (and is shockingly close to a 1959 reissue in general spec). Similarly, his signature Marshall amp is one of Marshall’s best amps. 

As far as Magnatone goes, they make killer boutique amplifiers that sound more than a little inspired by the classic Marshall Plexi sound. In this British amp shootout, Magnatone’s M80 amp is, to my ears, the obvious winner, absolutely smoking Friedman’s Dirty Shirley. Slash is collaborating with Magnatone on a 100-watt version of this amp. I’m looking forward to hearing it

Fender has announced the Tone Master Pro — a Fender-made amp and effects modeller that competes with Line 6’s Helix and the Fractal Axe-FX.

This feels like a big deal. Off the top of my head, I think this is the first modeller from an amp manufacturer. (Mesa doesn’t have a modeller. Marshall doesn’t have a modeller. Soldano doesn’t. Etc.) The modeller includes a ton of Fender amps, but it also includes standbys like the Boogie IIC+, the JCM800, the 5150, and more. 

Leon Todd, one of Youtube’s modeller masters, put up a forty-five minute demo of the product. The UX looks pretty good — turning the foot switches into twisty knobs is smart. I think the screens above each switch could be larger, but that’s a small quibble.

The most important thing is how it sounds, and it sounds fine. Comparing it to my Axe-FX seems almost unfair, but when I compare the two, the Tone Master Pro sounds like there’s a weight blanket over it. 

Listen to Leon’s demo of the JCM800. I’m not a huge JCM800 fan, but even I can tell you that’s not how a JCM800 sounds. This is how a JCM800 sounds if you threw a weighted blanket over top of it and mic’d it poorly.

Fender has a promo video you can check out too, and Mary Spender also made a video. I use my Axe-FX 99.9% of the time I play guitar now, and if anything, these demos have made its place in my rig even more permanent.

I just read Darran Charles’ review of Marshall’s JTM45 reissue, the ST20H. It sounds to me like it’s pretty close to an exact clone of the Marshall’s first amp, with a couple minor improvements:

• There’s a real effects loop now, which is a must-have for most players, but doesn’t hurt anybody who prefers not to have one. That’s great.
• Instead of 45 watts of power like the original, the ST20H includes a 5 watt mode and a 20 watt mode.

The 5W and 20W modes had me a little curious, but here’s Darran:

There isn’t a great deal of difference in tone between the 5W and 20W settings, aside from the obvious increased headroom. We have to say though that even the 5W mode is barely usable at home volume levels, especially as we begin to push it into break-up. This amp is loud!

Truthfully, power wattage in a tube guitar amp doesn’t correlate to volume in a linear fashion, so this doesn’t surprise me. I prefer an amp with higher wattage because I find it makes the ramp-up from clean to dirty a little cleaner, so it’s a bit of a pity this doesn’t have a 45W mode.

The JTM45 is my favourite amp that Marshall ever made. I prefer it to Fender’s amps from the same time period too. If I were shopping around for a vintage-style amp today, I’d absolutely buy one of these.

Darran complains about the price of the ST20H in his piece, but I didn’t see it mentioned in the body of the article. In Canada, the ST20H is $1900 at our major retailers. In the US, it’s $1749, which is perhaps too close to our pricing, considering the exchange rate. Despite that, I think that’s a fair price for a boutique amp in 2023, considering how over-inflated prices are across the entire guitar industry.