PRS HDRX 20 watter coming

[Hsb]

Heard about this a cpl weeks back that PRS was going to release a 20 watt version of their HDRX head next year.

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/prs-hdrx-20-1x12-cab

[GuitarStv]

Sounds like a slightly more mid-scooped hot rod deluxe.

[Ascension]

Hmm that one sounds interesting! I absolutely love my PRS amps sold off several Boogies after I bought the first one. With 5881's that amp should be really solid in the bottom. After Doug Sewell started doing the designs have become a real PRS amp fan! Looks like a beefed up version of the Sweet 16 and that little amp I have worked with a few times.
Here is my First gen US built Archon a few weeks back on a outdoor stage running only a Boss DD& and Strymon Blue Sky in the loop and a Wah up front playing my 17 Kiesel DC. Do NOT underestimate how good these PRS amps sound in the real world on stage!! There is a reason folk like Warren Hays abandoned his SLO's for PRS!

[jeremy]

warren still uses his slo for a ton of things. he switched to the prs amps, which are basically a flavor of marshall plexi, when he was back with the allman brothers band for more of that classic sound. he uses the diaz and slo with mule most of the time. the prs heads do sound good though

[NegativeEase]

Damn, cool amp -at least this is something Hendrix would actually approve of.

like Bob Marley's family -they are starting to license a lot of other stuff too

Jimmy Hendrix Tchotchkes and Microbrew in Target and Walmart in 3,2,1.....

[Ewizard]

I am not sold on the whole " touring circuit " bs. Never heard of it until only just recently. After nearly 40 years you would have thought there would be more folklore around this subject for it to just suddenly be a thing. Basically, it's a Marshall Superlead, with a couple of circuit tweaks, and all of a sudden it's magically Hendrix's touring rig circuit... Cough BS... Not a peep about it until roughly 2017, and then in 2021 the marketing blurb hits hard with " recently discovered ". I call BS. Even if Jimi did have a special circuit in his amp, it wasn't so far removed from the original circuit to make it a Bonafide novel idea that hasn't been done 1,000 other times by other builders on accident. He used SEVERAL amps during his career, and Marshall was the predominant name we associate with him. The 100JH Superlead is stated in history as being based on a Dickenson amp from that era. No magic, just a few components are swapped for different values and a slight variation in the power section. Supposedly it makes the amp a little more aggressive.

[Mincer]

His live sound was never my thing, so I couldn't imagine trying to sound like that.

[Ewizard]

In another 20 years from now, we are going to have some other magically discovered circuit tweak that was done to Jimi Page's amplifier... It never ceases to amaze me how companies will do anything to live off the back of another. Marketing lingo aside, it is just a crock of poop. I am waiting for a company to come along that stands on its own. No crap, just a simple hey, we built this amp and think you will like it. What's it based on? Does it matter, just try it and see what you think?

[Ascension]

In another 20 years from now, we are going to have some other magically discovered circuit tweak that was done to Jimi Page's amplifier... It never ceases to amaze me how companies will do anything to live off the back of another. Marketing lingo aside, it is just a crock of poop. I am waiting for a company to come along that stands on its own. No crap, just a simple hey, we built this amp and think you will like it. What's it based on? Does it matter, just try it and see what you think?

Might want to educate on the back story of the HDRX amps its not just hype!
Those amps aren't my thing but are very legit.

[jeremy]

legit as in modeled after one of hendrix's old marshalls? i dont think anyone is questioning that, or even that its gonna be a sweet amp. and $800 for a really nice amp isnt a bad deal in the grand scheme of things. the 100W and 50w models are like $3k or so which brings it into a different realm. cool that they internally jumped the channels, curious how they did it. its another modded marshall, cool but not ground breaking

[Ewizard]

It is just hype though. You can't convince me that PRS of all companies is the one who finds out about some secret JH circuit that existed in a Marshall amplifier... This secret circuit that has not been revealed until PRS is able to see it and analyze it, and then conveniently release several years later as the HDRX. No one else over the past 40 years has seen of it or heard of it, but it's suddenly a thing. And then when you do read up on it, it is based on an amplifier named Dickenson, which was basically a circuit very similar to the Marshall Superlead.

My understanding is that it is a few very basic value tweaks in the preamp, and a variation of the Marshall power supply of that series. I.E. nothing crazy, nothing ground breaking, just different. The PRS HDRX is supposedly a copy of an amp that JH supposedly copied by having his Marshall Superlead modified to be like the Dickenson.

So what is the PRS HDRX? It is a modified Marshall, plain and simple. Just like almost all Freidman amps, Bogner amps, and many other famous amps, they are modified Marshall circuits. Of which a Marshall circuit is a modified Fender Bassman circuit, which for the most part is taken straight from the RCA Tube Manual.

The reason I don't believe for one second that PRS is privy to this secret data, is that PRS has only been making amps for perhaps the past 13 years. It started off weird too, PRS met with " boutique " amp maker Doug Sewell in 2009. You're no longer boutique when you start designing for companies that make an amp in a factory. This automatically means that you know Doug Sewell isn't privy to the circuit tweak either, and he is known for making modified versions of many popular amps. So nearly 10 years into Doug's relationship with PRS, they are the ones to get this magic amp to analyze and recreate... BS. They found the story, they found an amp, and they sensationalized it into the HDRX. We don't know 100% for sure that it was done to all of JH amps, and we know that there was JH amp that was made that already had that circuit tweak in it. It was actually called the JH100.

My main point is this. Let's say you made a truly amazing amp that was lauded and sought after, but it was only because you sold it as an homage to some other famous sought-after design; that takes away a lot of the glory doesn't it? Where it would be more meaningful to me, is to have the same amp and see similar success with it, but the story is that it is a design that has no origin, no lineage, but is not novel either. It is not based on anything, it just is. Companies like Fuch's, Two Rock, Friedman, Bogner, Top Hat et all, are all living off the back of another. They are evident homages to amps that are sought after. While some of their designs are novel, most ALL popular companies are making modified variants of some other more novel designs. Divided by 13 is known for making Fender variants. Fuchs and Two Rock for Dumbles ( which is more or less a Fender variant ), so on and so on. This is why companies like Peavey, Engl, and Diezel are less popular. They are not really making copies or variants, they are making more novel designs that stand on their own. When I see an amp maker that says his stuff is just his stuff and not trying to use " some name you know " to sell it, I am much more interested in it. Dr. Z amps are not safe from borrowing either. When Ken Fischer made his amps, it was not based on anything, when Alexander Dumble made his amps, he didn't sell them on Fenders fame, when Bob Gjika sells his amps, they are very much his own thing and he doesn't ride on any ones back.

That is all, now aside from my mindset on it, I have no doubt that the PRS HDRX sounds just dandy, I just hate the marketing BS.

[Ascension]

It is just hype though. You can't convince me that PRS of all companies is the one who finds out about some secret JH circuit that existed in a Marshall amplifier... This secret circuit that has not been revealed until PRS is able to see it and analyze it, and then conveniently release several years later as the HDRX. No one else over the past 40 years has seen of it or heard of it, but it's suddenly a thing. And then when you do read up on it, it is based on an amplifier named Dickenson, which was basically a circuit very similar to the Marshall Superlead.

My understanding is that it is a few very basic value tweaks in the preamp, and a variation of the Marshall power supply of that series. I.E. nothing crazy, nothing ground breaking, just different. The PRS HDRX is supposedly a copy of an amp that JH supposedly copied by having his Marshall Superlead modified to be like the Dickenson.

So what is the PRS HDRX? It is a modified Marshall, plain and simple. Just like almost all Freidman amps, Bogner amps, and many other famous amps, they are modified Marshall circuits. Of which a Marshall circuit is a modified Fender Bassman circuit, which for the most part is taken straight from the RCA Tube Manual.

The reason I don't believe for one second that PRS is privy to this secret data, is that PRS has only been making amps for perhaps the past 13 years. It started off weird too, PRS met with " boutique " amp maker Doug Sewell in 2009. You're no longer boutique when you start designing for companies that make an amp in a factory. This automatically means that you know Doug Sewell isn't privy to the circuit tweak either, and he is known for making modified versions of many popular amps. So nearly 10 years into Doug's relationship with PRS, they are the ones to get this magic amp to analyze and recreate... BS. They found the story, they found an amp, and they sensationalized it into the HDRX. We don't know 100% for sure that it was done to all of JH amps, and we know that there was JH amp that was made that already had that circuit tweak in it. It was actually called the JH100.

My main point is this. Let's say you made a truly amazing amp that was lauded and sought after, but it was only because you sold it as an homage to some other famous sought-after design; that takes away a lot of the glory doesn't it? Where it would be more meaningful to me, is to have the same amp and see similar success with it, but the story is that it is a design that has no origin, no lineage, but is not novel either. It is not based on anything, it just is. Companies like Fuch's, Two Rock, Friedman, Bogner, Top Hat et all, are all living off the back of another. They are evident homages to amps that are sought after. While some of their designs are novel, most ALL popular companies are making modified variants of some other more novel designs. Divided by 13 is known for making Fender variants. Fuchs and Two Rock for Dumbles ( which is more or less a Fender variant ), so on and so on. This is why companies like Peavey, Engl, and Diezel are less popular. They are not really making copies or variants, they are making more novel designs that stand on their own. When I see an amp maker that says his stuff is just his stuff and not trying to use " some name you know " to sell it, I am much more interested in it. Dr. Z amps are not safe from borrowing either. When Ken Fischer made his amps, it was not based on anything, when Alexander Dumble made his amps, he didn't sell them on Fenders fame, when Bob Gjika sells his amps, they are very much his own thing and he doesn't ride on any ones back.

That is all, now aside from my mindset on it, I have no doubt that the PRS HDRX sounds just dandy, I just hate the marketing BS.

Early PRS amps were not impressive period before Doug Sewell. In particular the really early harmonic generators that the rep dropped off at our shop back in the late 80's for us to try were pretty dismal. I never gave them a second thought for amps until the last few years on the amp side. Now both my main gigging amps are PRS.
Bottom line don't just discount what PRS is doing with the amp line now that Sewell is running that side of things because of Paul and the guitar side . The first Sewell designed PRS amp I plugged into flat surprised the heck out of me . Reminds me a lot of what Bruce Zinky did at Fender.

[jeremy]

i dont think many of us would disagree with what you said, its the marketing bs that seems ridiculous. its a modded marshall, probably a good one, but the hendrix non-sense seems like a lame angle. let the awesome amp be the awesome amp without giving it some hokey story

[Ewizard]

I think Jeremy put it in the simplest terms as to what I meant. I have nothing against Doug Sewell, I'm very certain he makes damn good amps. His first amp with PRS was one of his personal models actually. The long and short of my point, is that Doug wasn't in the know of this " secret " mod, which means that this secret was magically exposed to him and PRS. It just seems odd that PRS is the one who got to it first, of all the companies out there. There are literally 20 other more well-known and ubiquitous amp makers who are more suited to bring to market ANY modded Marshall circuit.

[Ascension]

i dont think many of us would disagree with what you said, its the marketing bs that seems ridiculous. its a modded marshall, probably a good one, but the hendrix non-sense seems like a lame angle. let the awesome amp be the awesome amp without giving it some hokey story

I know several amp designers and can see Sewell being all over a chance to get into a real Hendrix touring amp. If for no other reason to see what had been done to the amp for the road. Sort of like Bruce Zinkys obsession with the old Supro designs when he was with Fender. Bruce later got control of the Supro brand resurrected the name then sold off the company becoming the chief designer.
I see what Paul and Sewell did with the real US HDRX as the same thing. What I do take issue with is this new HDRX 20 as it's a PC board import amp. At the least they should have introduced it as a HDRX SE line amp. Should have done the same thing with the current import Archon Series II line. My Archon is a first gen US amp and there was a reason the new one cost half as much as my head did new!