
For Rock Candy, Orianthi set out to write and record a song a day. Leaning into spontaneity to spark creativity, the result is as stylistically diverse as her impressive résumé, which includes performing with Steve Vai, Carlos Santana, Alice Cooper, Michael Jackson, and Prince.
As both a solo artist of the highest order and a session ace who has worked with the music world’s elite, Orianthi has succeeded not only because of her immense talent, but also because she knows how to get things done. When Orianthi (Penny Panagaris) was offered a guitarist role on the Alice Cooper tour, she learned 25 of his songs (many quite difficult) in a week—all during a time when she was in the middle of recording her own album.
After a performance at the 2009 Grammy awards with Carrie Underwood, she was scouted by Michael Jackson’s musical director, Michael Bearden, who contacted her on Myspace to audition for Jackson’s This Is It tour (which sadly never materialized due to Jackson’s untimely death). Orianthi got the call while she was in the studio with legendary songwriter Diane Warren, finishing up one last song for her album, Believe. By the next day, she arrived at the audition ready to play Jackson’s hits, like “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Dirty Diana,” and “Beat It.” The latter song featured the late Eddie Van Halen’s virtuosic solo, which she had to play onstage with the King of Pop at the audition. Talk about high pressure! That solo is hard enough to scuffle through in the comfort of your bedroom … imagine doing it while standing next to the greatest entertainer of all time, in a room full of scrutinizing eyes atop folded arms? And she got the gig!
“From a young age, I’ve been thrown into what people would say is like going from zero to 100 situations,” says Orianthi, who opened up for Steve Vai at only 15 (and later wrote and recorded “Highly Strung” with him). “And you go, ‘Okay, I’ve got to do this,’ and you just think positively and just have that enthusiasm. There’s no time or space for fear or doubt. I think that’s the best place to be.”
Orianthi - "Light It Up" - Official Music Video
While most artists are crippled by a double dose of writer’s block and the constant second-guessing of ideas, Orianthi’s latest release, Rock Candy, was written and recorded at warp speed (some songs were written in about 10 minutes). Producer Jacob Bunton joined Orianthi in the studio. “Wegot together and decided to make Rock Candy in 14 or 15 days. It was this project that we put upon ourselves to do it that way and we worked well under pressure,” Orianthi says. “It was pretty much a song a day, recorded each day, and then after I left, he would stay up late adding things and taking away things. We were both like workabees for that amount of time. We wrote the song, I laid down my vocals, put down my guitar and all that kind of stuff, on that day. He would build the basic tracks. After we did all of that, we got the band to play on it, like live drums and whatnot.”
“You go, ‘Okay, I’ve got to do this,’ and you just think positively and just have that enthusiasm. There’s no time or space for fear or doubt.”
This isn’t to say that Orianthi always just breezes through everything. In the past, she’s gotten caught up in that vicious cycle of obsessively laboring over material that, by all accounts, was already fine. “Sometimes when you force things, it doesn’t happen. Sometimes when you overthink, it destroys things,” she reveals, “because of your surroundings, too, you’re surrounded by people that are second guessing or adding to your paranoia. Sometimes it’s great when it’s constructive criticism and they make it better. Other times people don’t have the same idea, or the same energy feel, and that interferes. Sometimes it’s better to keep less cooks in the kitchen. Otherwise, it can turn into a five- or six-year project, or a two-year project, or a never-ending project. Or it will never get done, never get released. I’ve only had that happen a few times, but at the end of the day, the best records that I’ve made and had fun with were the ones I did really fast. When you make music for the moment and for yourself, you can experiment a lot.”
Orianthi fingerpicks her signature PRS Private Stock Custom 24 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, California, on January 26, 2023.
Photo by Brad Elligood
Recorded at the iconic Sunset Sound studio in Hollywood, Rock Candy is Orianthi’s most stylistically diverse effort to date. While there are many moments of heavy guitar, particularly on tracks like “Light It Up,” with its infectious boogie riff, and “Getting to Me,” “Fire Together,” and the album closer, “Illuminate, Pt. II,” where Orianthi’s guitar solos sizzle, the album offers more than just fretboard pyrotechnics. “That’s why it’s called Rock Candy,” says Orianthi. “Everyone thought I covered the Sammy Hagar song, which I love, mind you—it’s a great song. But it really sums up the whole record. There’s a little bit of rock, a little bit of pop, it’s kind of sugar-coated, then there’s like really heavy and weird and edgy. It’s a vibe that we went for. We wanted something that was in the moment and not overthought. Keeping that childlike outlook really helped sometimes.”
Orianthi was raised in a household where music was a religion. Her dad, a gigging guitarist, reveled in a mix of rock and blues with Hendrix, Clapton, and Santana in heavy rotation, while her mom put on the Top 40 every Sunday morning. Orianthi is often classified as a rock guitarist, but she’s also worked with a lot of pop artists from Jason Derulo to Anastacia, and that pop influence seeped heavily into this new album. Songs like “Where Did Your Heart Go” have a distinct commercial feel with Orianthi’s vocals belting out honest, heart-on-sleeve lyrical content inspired from diary entries, which were written during some trying times in her personal life. “I’m a fan of a great pop song. I started as a songwriter listening [to everyone from] Elvis Presley to Roy Orbison to the Beatles. The Beatles are incredible songwriters, but they wrote pop songs, too, you know? That’s where my love of just writing came from. I was like 6 years old, listening to that and my mom’s pop collection,” she says.
Orianthi’s Gear
For Orianthi’s signature Gibson SJ-200 acoustic, she requested the neck profile from an ES-345 and designed the custom pickup with LR Baggs.
Photo by Richie Sambora
Guitars
- PRS Private Stock Custom 24 Blooming Lotus Glow Signature Model
- Gibson SJ-200 Signature Model
- 1963 Fender Stratocaster
Amps
- Orange Signature Combo
Effects
- Boss Delay
- Nexi Octaver Signature Model
Strings and Picks
- Ernie Ball .010–.056
- Dunlop 1.0 mm
Which begs the question: If the powers that be elected to transform and market Orianthi as a pop star, say, in the Billie Eilish mold, would she forsake the guitar? “No, no [laughs]. I can’t leave my guitar alone. Guitar is always going to be part of the deal. That’s for sure. For myself right now, where I’m moving into, it’s a different sort of journey and who knows what could happen in the future. My heart’s open, my mind’s open all the time, you know? Having that single, ‘According to You,’ that was a multi-platinum pop hit for me in 2010 that reached around the world. That was awesome to have that success with a pop song. And then I go, ‘Okay, that was cool and I’ve done that, but moving forward….’”
Always looking for new inspiration, Orianthi has recently been exploring the sounds of jazz artists. “I’ve been listening to Coltrane and stuff like that that’s out of the box, because if you try to play those melodies on guitar, it’s weird and it’s cool,” she says. “You listen to any Hendrix live performance. It’s not perfect, it’s never completely perfect, but it is perfect because it takes you on this colorful journey. I find it to be like light energy, where you’re not completely grounded and thinking of stuff you’ve done before. It’s just like moving forward. For me, as a guitar player, I want every performance to be better in the sense of the choice of notes and the melodies I’m coming up with. More out-of-the-box stuff, that’s important to me.”
“My dad took me to a Santana show and I was like, ‘That’s it! I’m giving up classical, I’m done with it.’ He played ‘Europa’ and those opening notes just hit me like lightning.”
Tracks like “Living is Like Dying Without You” feature a recent addition to Orianthi’s gear arsenal—her new signature Gibson SJ-200 acoustic. She was drawn to the J-200 because of its connection to Elvis and Johnny Cash. “I love the sound of a J-200 because it’s like a grand piano, it fills the room. I had a choice of other guitars when I went to Montana to create my model. Like, ‘Why would you choose a J-200? It’s massive.’ But why wouldn’t I? It sounds so good,” says Orianthi, who loved the guitar but had some reservations about its boat-sized neck. Later, at the Gibson showroom in Hollywood, she picked up a guitar that turned out to be the ES-345 that Bradley Cooper used in A Star is Born. After trying out this easy-to-play instrument, she requested an unexpected modification from Gibson for her signature axe.
“I was like, ‘Could we put an electric guitar neck on it?’,” she recalls. “They were like, ‘Yeah, we can do that. This is probably the first hybrid acoustic-electric we’ve done at Gibson.’ I’m like, ‘Why not, let’s do something different.’” Gibson mated the neck from an ES-345 to the SJ-200, and the result is a rich-sounding acoustic with the playability of an electric.
A lot of back-and-forth also took place in designing the custom pickup for her signature SJ-200. “I wanted to have a guitar where if you had a DI, the soundman could be passed out, high, or drunk and you would still sound good,” says Orianthi. “I modified that with LR Baggs, so there’s more midrange and compression. We actually adjusted the sound of the pickup by going back and forth with an LR Baggs acoustic pedal, over FaceTime and Zoom saying, ‘Modify this or modify that.’ That’s how the whole pickup system was created.”
For electric guitars, Orianthi’s signature PRS is her main instrument. The meticulously crafted instrument carries a steep price tag, retailing around $11,700. But a more accessible version may be on the horizon soon. “We’re in talks right now. Probably an SE model coming of that one,” reveals Orianthi. “Because a lot of people wanted to buy it and they couldn’t afford it. It’s very expensive, but it’s very well made. That is a dream guitar that was brought to life by the PRS team. Paul has really dialed it in. He picks the right woods, and everything is quality. They’re like Porsches [laughs], you know what I mean?”
When it comes to electric guitars, Orianthi sticks to her “dream guitar,” her PRS Private Stock Custom 24 Blooming Lotus Glow signature model. “They’re like Porsches [laughs],” she says.
Photo by Richie Sambora
For both her acoustic and electric playing, an interesting aspect of Orianthi’s style is that she often eschews picks, opting instead to use her right-hand fingers to articulate single-note lines. This technique has its origins in Orianthi’s formative years.
“I started classical at TAFE University when I was 10 and that was really boring, but my dad was like, ‘You should probably do this, and learn theory.’ I learned theory and got past two or three, I think, and passed really well, but I got major headaches from that stuff. My teacher was weird, and it was just boring. I didn’t like it very much at all. Then my dad took me to a Santana show and I was like, ‘That’s it! I’m giving up classical, I’m done with it.’ He played ‘Europa’ and those opening notes just hit me like lightning and I went, ‘There’s something there.’ I learned probably every Santana song. I watched Carlos play a lot; he doesn’t always use a pick. Especially sometimes when you want the note to sound a little sweeter and have less attack. But then to be honest with you, I lose my picks so much that I learned to play without a pick because there’s like this vortex of socks and guitar picks somewhere, all of mine that go missing. I get bowls of guitar picks and they just go. I don’t know if my cat eats them [laughs].”
Orianthi's New Album "Rock Candy" is out now!!!
In a pared-down duo situation, Orianthi gets sweet sounds using her pick-hand fingers to articulate melodies on a PRS hollowbody.
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The ultimate hand-wired Tube Screamer from Ibanez is up for grabs! Enter the I Love Pedals giveaway today, and come back daily for extra entries!
Ibanez TS808HWv2 Tube Screamer Overdrive Pro Pedal
Ibanez has taken the iconic Tube Screamer and pushed it further by re-envisioning their flagship, hand-wired model. The company evaluated every component while aiming to stay true to the pedal’s transparent and mid-range-focused tone. After numerous prototypes, it was concluded the JRC NJM4558 op-amp was essential to achieve the Tube Screamer’s legendary sound. At the same time, this new design is capable of a wider range of sounds thanks to the addition of high-end components such as MOGAMI OFC cables, which further enhance the benefits of a hand-wired pedal. Additionally, a boost has been added to the final stage of the circuit, increasing the maximum output level by +6dB. Its look has also been revamped, giving it a high-end appearance while retaining the traditional shape.
The high priest of prog-metal guitar, John Petrucci, is still finding new territory on his instrument.
The legendary progressive-metal guitarist details the darkness—and the renewed camaraderie—that led to his band Dream Theater’s 16th full-length record, Parasomnia.
Some very important events happened in John Petrucci’s life in 2024. He celebrated an enormous milestone with his bandmates in prog-metal behemoth Dream Theater: They’ve been a band for 40 years. Many bands aren’t destined to last a single decade, let alone four. It’s a titanic personal and artistic achievement. And yet, that anniversary paled in significance next to another major development: The band wrote and created a new full-length record with founding drummer Mike Portnoy, who had been absent from Dream Theater since 2010.
The news of Portnoy’s reunion with Dream Theater rocked the metal world. Over the years, whiffs of acrimony and hurt feelings suggested Portnoy’s return to the band might be a pipe dream. But in October 2023, the band revealed that they had all independently reconciled with Portnoy, a process that culminated backstage at New York’s Beacon Theater in 2022. Portnoy attended Dream Theater’s show at the venue and met up with the band afterward. It was the first time he’d seen vocalist James Labrie in 10 years. Within seconds, 13 years melted away in the warmth of camaraderie.
“The gear was all set up and we sat there and started playing. It was magic. It was like we never missed a beat.”
A few months after the announcement of Portnoy’s return, he and bandmates Labrie, Petrucci, bassist John Myung, and keyboardist Jordan Rudess convened at the recently renovated Dream Theater HQ, their longtime creative hideout and recording studio in Long Island, to begin to create new music. Petrucci, speaking over the phone from Brazil during Dream Theater’s December 2024 tour, remembers that period fondly. “From the moment that we all stepped in the studio in February, the gear was all set up and we sat there and started playing,” he says. “It was magic. It was like we never missed a beat.”
After shaking off the cobwebs, the first song they wrote together was “Night Terror”—“if that gives you any indication of the energy and vibe and mood that we were in,” quips Petrucci. It’s heavy, riffy, aggressive, and progressive, a capsule of 13 years in just shy of 10 minutes. “We let that all out in the first couple of weeks of just being together,” Petrucci continues. “It was wonderful and the creative juices just flowed the way they always did. There was great brotherly chemistry between all of us.”
Last year, Dream Theater celebrated their ruby anniversary as a band. Four decades on, they’re still exploring the dark corners of what happens when we sleep.
The band continued to create together as they’d always done. They had some concrete ideas: They wanted to make a concept album, and it had to be heavy and riff-centric. Petrucci, who produced the record, was intrigued by parasomnia, a medical concept which refers broadly to any unusual sleep pattern, like sleepwalking, nightmares, insomnia, sleep paralysis, and more. He hadn’t experienced those nocturnal issues (the worst he deals with is snoring), but he began deep research into them. A path had opened up. “That creative part of me just wakes up, and then that turns into it also being musically creative, lyrically creative, visually creative,” says Petrucci.
This is how Parasomnia, Dream Theater’s 16th studio record, came to exist. Engineered and mixed by Andy Sneap, the concept album comprises a collection of suites and vignettes that center on various sleep disturbances, opening with “In the Arms of Morpheus,” a slowly building soundscape that sets the scene for all that follows. It soundtracks someone getting ready for bed and falling asleep, and just as they’re drifting into a dreamstate, a musical theme starts to creep in. It heightens and gets weird before exploding into the full chaos that gives way to “Night Terror,” the nine-minute-plus epic. Petrucci’s playing on this song alone is staggering: There’s the classic, open-string beginner riff, then vintage, hyper, ’80s-metal single-note melody work, then a truly brain-melting, lightning-fast solo that leaves your jaw open.
True to Dream Theater lineage, there are pieces of the record that feel ready to soundtrack alien drag races on Mars next to swanky sections of jazzy, hard-rocking funk-blues, like on “A Broken Man.” Petrucci slips in and out of modes and scales like a chameleon changing its colors, each sounding as lived-in and natural as the last. His fingers just seem to know where to go. His only reprieve is the funereal interlude “Are We Dreaming?” which prepares us for the power ballad “Bend the Clock” and the devastating, scorched earth closer: “The Shadow Man Incident.”
Parasomnia is Dream Theater’s 16th studio record, and their first since reuniting with founding drummer Mike Portnoy.
“It’s wacky,” says Petrucci about the phenomena behind that song’s title. If you’re not familiar, “the shadow man” is a colloquial name given to a figure that appears during some episodes of sleep paralysis. People around the world have reported a similar apparition visiting them while they’re experiencing sleep paralysis—but there’s no scientific consensus for what causes the similar visions.
“There’s something in the human brain that is unaccounted for or whatever that must be producing that, that repeated experience,” continues Petrucci. “You start doing all this research and going down rabbit holes online. You’re like, ‘Wow, for centuries, in every culture and civilization, the same thing has been happening. What is this?’ It definitely explores the depths of the human mind, but it reminds me of any sort of topic that holds your interest in a weird way, like UFOs. A song like ‘The Shadow Man Incident’ is a long, epic piece of music that gives you the backdrop and license to go into storytelling more.”
The goal was to take that storytelling beyond the normal confines of an LP—or, at least, what we think of as an LP in the streaming age. “What we decided to do was to make the album kind of like a Dark Side of the Moon listening experience,” explains Petrucci. “Our hope is that people will get this record, turn down the lights, get together with some friends for a drink or whatever you do, and just listen to the whole thing like you’re watching a movie. It’s supposed to be an experience.”Petrucci even studied the music of composers like John Williams to get a bead on how to create epic, cinematic feelings in music. He displayed his research to his bandmates in the form of creative direction for certain songs, likening the process to scoring a film. “The album or song topic presents certain imagery, and you want the music to match that imagery, so you have those tools in your toolbox, like, ‘Okay, I know what kind of chord movement or chordal sounds or modal things I can do that are going to make that,’ and it’s going to create that flavor as opposed to just going in and writing in the typical way that you would if you didn’t have that knowledge ahead of time.”
“With Mike rejoining the band, I wanted to lean into the nostalgic aspect in some of the recording process.”
A part of that soundscaping is what Petrucci describes as “ear candy”: spoken-word passages, or sound effects like clocks ticking and alarms ringing. These elements help build a more profound, immersive listen, but they only work if the songs are good, says Petrucci. “You can have all these sound connections and overdubs and voices, but if the songs suck, it’s not going to mean anything. No one’s going to want to listen to it.”
Knowing that the record would deal with all things eerie and creepy, Petrucci wanted to explore what types of tonalities could unsettle the listening experience. “For ‘Night Terror,’ I use the super Phrygian mode, which is like a mode of the Hungarian minor which has a very unresolved sound that creates a lot of tension,” he says. He also experimented with constructs like the Prometheus and Tristan chords. “That gives you that dreamy weird thing you hear in ‘In the Arms of Morpheus.’ That first 8-string chord is this crazy chord of all tritones that just makes it sound like you’re in a nightmare right away.”
Petrucci, pictured here shredding in November 1994, broke out plenty of classic gear for the recording of Parasomnia to mark the reunion with Portnoy.
Photo by Frank White
Petrucci called on a range of tools old and new to bring Parasomnia to life. “With Mike rejoining the band, I wanted to lean into the nostalgic aspect in some of the recording process,” he explains. He used his 6-, 7-, and 8-string Ernie Ball Music Man Majesty guitars, in a spread of different tunings. He used his Mesa/Boogie JP-2C on everything except the record’s solos. For those, he busted out his old Mesas—a Mark III, IV, and IIC+ among them—for a shootout and wound up choosing the IIC+ that he used on old Dream Theater records (plus his own solo release, Suspended Animation). A Roland Jazz Chorus even clocked in for some cleans—a page Petrucci took from James Hetfield’s book.
The nostalgia didn’t end there. The band reached out to recording engineer Doug Oberkircher, who engineered all of the band’s records from 1992’s Images and Words through 2003’s Train of Thought, to purchase the Neve preamp used on those albums. All the guitars on Parasomnia were recorded through that preamp.
In many ways, a production this grand and intricate is familiar territory for the band. Petrucci and Dream Theater obviously have a penchant for art that is narrative, theatrical, and grand. But Parasomnia is specially weighted with circumstance and time.John Petrucci's Gear
Petrucci and Dream Theater have managed an incredible feat: They’re just as excited about their music now as they were when they were teenagers.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
Guitars
- Various Ernie Ball Music Man The Majesty 6-, 7-, and 8-string guitars with DiMarzio Dreamcatcher and Rainmaker pickups
Amps
- Mesa/Boogie JP-2C (rhythm parts)
- Vintage Mesa/Boogie Mark II C+ Simul-Class (lead parts)
- Roland JC-120 (clean parts)
- Mesa/Boogie 4x12 Rectifier Traditional Straight cabinet
Effects
- MXR Bass Compressor
- Boss CE-2W
- Boss DC-2W
- TC Electronic Dreamscape
- TC Electronic TC 2290
- TC Electronic Corona Chorus+
- MXR Stereo Chorus
- Keeley Blues Disorder
- Dunlop JP95 John Petrucci Signature Cry Baby Wah
- MXR Custom Audio Electronics MC403 Power System
Recording
- Neve 1093 Pre/EQ
- API 3124MV
- Solid State Logic PURE DRIVE OCTO
- sE Electronics VR2 + Mojave Audio MA-D (rhythm parts)
- sE Electronics SE4400a + Royer Labs R-121 (lead parts)
- Royer Labs R-121 in stereo (clean parts)
- sE Electronics RNR1 (mid room)
- sE Electronics RNT in OMNI (far room)
- Waves H-Delay Analog Delay Plugin
- Soundtoys EchoBoy
- Soundtoys MicroShift
- Soundtoys Crystallizer
- D16 Group Audio Software Repeater
- Valhalla DSP VintageVerb Plugin
- Valhalla DSP ValhallaRoom Reverb Plugin
- Radial ProRMP
- Radial J48
- EBow
Strings & Picks
- John Petrucci signature Dunlops
- Ernie Ball .10 gauge electric sets
“John Myung and I met when we were in middle school, so we were like 12, and I remember everything about us playing together, going over to each other’s houses after school and playing every Iron Maiden song there ever was, going to Berklee and meeting Mike when we were 18, forming the band,” says Petrucci. “Here we are, it’s 40 years later. How the hell does that happen? But the great thing is to still be playing with my brothers and my buddies, and still making music together that we’re just as excited about as we were when we were 18. It’s all we ever wanted to do.”
All of this history isn’t just window dressing. It comes out in Petrucci’s playing, too: It’s all one, long story. “By the time I was 16 or 17, I had a handle on the kind of style of player I wanted to be, and those original elements are still there and will always be there,” says Petrucci. “But now, 40 years later, there’s still new things coming in. Even on the new album, there’s things I never did before. We’re playing these shows and I’m trying to master this stuff live in front of an audience and see if I can pull it off under pressure. The challenge of it is just as much as it was when I was a teenager. I love it.
“It’s a continuing experiment,” Petrucci continues. “As you develop new techniques and go down new roads of playing, all of a sudden you realize you abandoned some older techniques, then you go back and rediscover those things, and through the process of rediscovering the old things you used to do, all of a sudden you could do some stuff that you never were able to do before. It’s like something that’s living. It’s a living experiment of guitar playing. It’s just forever inspiring.”
YouTube It
Last year marked Dream Theater’s 40th anniversary as a band, and the official Dream Theater fan club caught up with the group before their gig in Oslo to see how they brought the milestone tour to life.
Fifteen watts that sits in a unique tone space and offers modern signal routing options.
A distinct alternative to the most popular 1x10 combos. Muscular and thick for a 1x10 at many settings. Pairs easily with single-coils and humbuckers. Cool looks.
Tone stack could be more rangeful.
$999
Supro Montauk
supro.com
When you imagine an ideal creative space, what do you see? A loft? A barn? A cabin far from distraction? Reveling in such visions is inspiration and a beautiful escape. Reality for most of us, though, is different. We’re lucky to have a corner in the kitchen or a converted closet to make music in. Still, there’s a romance and sense of possibility in these modest spaces, and the 15-watt, 1x10, all-tubeSupro Montauk is an amplifier well suited to this kind of place. It enlivens cramped corners with its classy, colorful appearance. It’s compact. It’s also potent enough to sound and respond like a bigger amp in a small room.
The Montauk works in tight quarters for reasons other than size, though—with three pre-power-section outputs that can route dry signal, all-wet signal from the amp’s spring reverb, or a mixture of both to a DAW or power amplifier.
Different Stripes and Spacious Places
Vintage Supro amps are modestly lovely things. The China-made Montauk doesn’t adhere toold Supro style motifs in the strictest sense. Its white skunk stripe is more commonly seen on black Supro combos from the late 1950s, while the blue “rhino hide” vinyl evokes Supros from the following decade. But the Montauk’s handsome looks make a cramped corner look a lot less dour. It looks pretty cool on a stage, too, but the Montauk attribute most likely to please performing guitarists is the small size (17.75" x 16.5" x 7.5") and light weight (29 pounds), which, if you tote your guitar in a gig bag and keep your other stuff to a minimum, facilitates magical one-trip load ins.
Keen-eyed Supro-spotters noting the Montauk’s weight and dimensions might spy the similarities to another 1x10 Supro combo,the Amulet. A casual comparison of the two amps might suggest that the Montauk is, more-or-less, an Amulet without tremolo and power scaling. They share the same tube complement, including a relatively uncommon 1x6L6 power section. But while the Montauk lacks the Amulet’s tremolo, the Montauk’s spring reverb features level and dwell controls rather than the Amulet’s single reverb-level knob.
“High reverb levels and low dwell settings evoke a small, reflective room with metallic overtones from the spring sprinkled on top—leaving ghostly ambience in the wake of strong, defined transient tones.”
If you use reverb a lot and in varying levels of intensity, you’ll appreciate the extra flexibility. High reverb levels and low dwell settings evoke a small, reflective room with metallic overtones from the spring sprinkled on top—leaving ghostly ambience in the wake of strong, defined transient tones. There are many shades of this subtle texture to explore, and it’s a great sound and solution for those who find the spring reverbs in Fender amps (which feature no dwell control) an all-or-nothing proposition. For those who like to get deep in the pipeline, though, the dwell offers room to roam. Mixing high level and dwell settings blunts the amp’s touch sensitivity a bit, and at 15 watts you trade headroom for natural compression, compounding the fogginess of these aggressive settings. A Twin Reverb it ain’t. But there is texture aplenty to play with.
A Long, Wide Strand
Admirably, the Montauk speaks in many voices when paired with a guitar alone. The EQ sits most naturally and alive with treble and bass in the noon-to-2-o’clock region, and a slight midrange lean adds welcome punch. Even the amp’s trebliest realms afford you a lot of expressive headroom if you have enough range and sensitivity in your guitar volume and tone pots. Interactions between the gain and master output controls yield scads of different tone color, too. Generally, I preferred high gain settings, which add a firecracker edge to maximum guitar volume settings and preserve touch and pick response at attenuated guitar volume and tone levels.
If working with the Montauk in this fashion feels natural, you’ll need very few pedals. But it’s a good fit for many effects. A Fuzz Face sounded nasty without collapsing into spitty junk, and the Klon-ish Electro-Harmonix Soul Food added muscle and character in its clean-boost guise and at grittier gain levels. There’s plenty of headroom for exploring nuance and complexity in delays and modulations. It also pairs happily with a wide range of guitars and pickups: Every time I thought a Telecaster was a perfect fit, I’d plug in an SG with PAFs and drift away in Mick Taylor/Stones bliss.
The Verdict
Because the gain, master, tone, and reverb controls are fairly interactive, it took me a minute to suss out the Montauk’s best and sweetest tones. But by the time I was through with this review, I found many sweet spots that fill the spaces between Vox and Fender templates. There’s also raunch in abundance when you turn it up. It’s tempting to view the Montauk as a competitor to the Fender Princeton and Vox AC15. At a thousand bucks, it’s $400 dollars less than the Mexico-made Princeton ’68 Custom and $170 more than the AC15, also made in China. In purely tone terms, though, it represents a real alternative to those stalwarts. I’d be more than happy to see one in a backline, provided I wasn’t trying to rise above a Geezer Butler/Bill Ward rhythm section. And with its capacity for routing to other amps and recording consoles in many intriguing configurations, it succeeds in being a genuinely interesting combination of vintage style and sound and home-studio utility—all without adding a single digital or solid-state component to the mix.
Watch the official video documenting the sold-out event at House of Blues in Anaheim. Join Paul Reed Smith and special guests as they toast to quality and excellence in guitar craftsmanship.
PRS Guitars today released the official video documenting the full night of performances at their 40th Anniversary celebration, held January 24th in conjunction with the 2025 NAMM (The National Association of Music Merchants) Show. The sold-out, private event took place at House of Blues in Anaheim, California and featured performances by PRS artists Randy Bowland, Curt Chambers, David Grissom, Jon Jourdan, Howard Leese, Mark Lettieri Group, Herman Li, John Mayer, Orianthi, Tim Pierce, Noah Robertson, Shantaia, Philip Sayce, and Dany Villarreal, along with Paul Reed Smith and his Eightlock band.
“What a night! Big thanks to everyone who came out to support us: retailers, distributors, vendors, content creators, industry friends, and especially the artists. I loved every second. We are so pleased to share the whole night now on this video,” said Paul Reed Smith, Founder & Managing General Partner of PRS Guitars. “I couldn’t be more proud to still be here 40 years later.”
With nearly 1,400 of the who’s who in the musical instrument industry in attendance, the night ended with a thoughtful toast from PRS Signature Artist John Mayer, who reflected on 40 years of PRS Guitars and the quality that sets the brand apart. “The guitars are great. You can’t last 40 years if the guitars aren’t great,” said Mayer. “Many of you started hearing about PRS the same way I did, which is you would talk about PRS and someone would say ‘They’re too nice.’ What’s too nice for a guitar? What, you want that special vibe that only tuning every song can give you on stage? You want that grit just like your heroes … bad intonation? The product is incredible.”