RatingsPros:Fine plexi-style tones at reasonable levels. Solid workmanship. Big-sounding low-wattage mode. Cons: A bit pricy for a small circuit-board combo. Street: $1,499
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It’s been 54 years since Pete Townshend persuaded Jim Marshall to create the first 100-watt guitar amp: the Model 1959 Super Lead. And for almost as long, guitarists have sought ways to replicate the thunder of that definitive “plexi” amp without having to contend with its daunting bulk and literally deafening levels.
Lighter Loads
For many years, the 18-watt Marshall Combo was one of the few ways to experience "Marshall-ness" in the 20-watt power range. This amp and its spinoffs provide unmistakable Marshall crunch at relatively reasonable levels. But with their open-back cabinets and dual EL84 power tubes, 18-watt Marshalls don’t entirely replicate the overdrive characteristics of their bigger EL34-based cousins, or the distinctive phase cancellation of their 4x12 cabinets. More recent solutions include Marshall-mimicking hardware and software modelers and “Marshall in a box” distortion pedals.
Enter Marshall’s new SV20C Studio Vintage, specifically designed to capture the 1959 sound in a compact 20-watt combo. (The amp is also available as the head-only SV20H.) It’s approximately as powerful as an 18-watt, but it employs a pair of EL34s—the same tubes used in the big plexis. This two-tube architecture means that the SV20C is actually closer kin to dual-EL34 50-watt plexis than to 4xEL34 100-watt plexis. Likewise, the single 10" speaker doesn’t replicate the spectral intricacies of a 4x12 cab.
Still, this U.K.-made combo gets closer to the plexi sound than an 18-watt. The EL84s in an 18-watt Marshall distort at relatively low levels and generate crackling, Vox-like highs, while the EL34s used here are more mid-focused and have higher headroom. Compared to an 18-watt, the SV20C also has beefier lows, more prominent mids, and warmer/darker treble response.
The SV20C has both normal and bright channels, each with a gain control and two input jacks. As on vintage plexis, there’s no master volume, but you can summon extra gain by linking the channels with a jumper wire.
Devastating Dynamics
Immediately after unboxing, I applied the super-lazy “Don’t Make Me Come Over There” test. I cranked the normal channel’s gain, parked the tone knobs at noon, and plugged in a DIY dual-humbucker guitar. Then I sat across the room from the amp, seeing how much tonal variation I could summon using only finger pressure and the guitar’s pickup selector and volume/tone controls. You can hear the results in Clip 1.
No question: The SV20C captures the extreme dynamic response for which plexis are famed. You can veer from clean to crunch to “Stand back!” using only your guitar’s volume knob. At the clip’s 1:13 point, I click on a homemade germanium treble booster similar to something a Marshall player might have used back when plexis were new-fangled. Even when slamming the amp’s input like this, there’s strong note definition and remarkably little noise.
While you won’t mistake the amp’s 10" speaker for a 4x12 cab, you’d never call it wimpy. It’s a 50-watt Celestion V-Type, which aims for a retro sound despite its modern ceramic magnet. It’s got an attractively craggy upper-mid presence that emphasizes the distortion’s “tooth” and keeps tones from sounding excessively compressed. (I miked it with a fat-sounding Royer R-121 ribbon mic.) Using a single smaller-format speaker with a ceramic magnet reduces the amp’s weight to a manageable 35 pounds.
Variations on Vintage
In the remaining audio clips, I demonstrate additional amp features by routing a single reamped passage through the SV20C while twiddling the amp’s settings. In Clip 2, you hear the excerpt at both full 20-watt power and 5-watt mode. Levels aside, the two tones are nearly identical. You can definitely get fire-breathing tones at this low-power setting!
Other non-vintage features include a mono effects loop and a 1/4" direct-out jack. This DI out(Clip 3) doesn’t produce a realistic speaker sound, though you could get convincing results using software impulse responses or a hardware speaker modeler such as the Universal Audio Ox.
In Clip 4, you hear the same performance four ways: through the normal channel, then the normal channel jumpered to the bright channel, then the bright channel alone, and then the bright channel jumpered to the normal channel again, but via different jacks. Finally, Clip 5 demonstrates the tone controls. I twist them throughout their ranges while the reamped passage plays.
The amp’s cosmetics are strictly traditional, from the gold piping to the salt-and-pepper grille cloth pattern. Inside, though, Marshall employs modern circuit boards rather than the traditional turrets. It’s solid work, employing heavy-gauge wire for the off-board connections.
The Verdict
Marshall’s SV20C Studio Vintage aces its primary mission: capturing authentic plexi tone in a compact, relatively low-wattage combo. Weighing 35 pounds and measuring approximately 20"x18"x10", it’s a practical gigging companion, with enough output to hold its own against all but the loudest drummers. An effects loop and low-power mode are welcome modern updates. The $1.5K price tag may seem steep for a small-format circuit-board model made with standard-issue parts, yet it’s a reassuringly solid build that should provide many years of service.
Watch the First Look:
Guitarists are used to coveting cranky, old gear, but if you’re not a rack user, the H3000 might not be for you! If you ever see one of these in a studio, be sure to take some time to check it out, and maybe give the plugin a try.When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
PRS Guitars today released the updated MT 15 and the new Archon Classic amplifiers, along with a larger Archon speaker cabinet. The 15-watt, two-channel Mark Tremonti signature amp MT 15 now features a lead channel overdrive control. An addition to the Archon series, not a replacement, the 50-watt Classic offers a fresh voice by producing retro rock “classic” tones reminiscent of sound permeating the radio four and five decades ago. Now twice the size of the first Archon cabinet, the Archon 4x12 boasts four Celestion V-Type speakers.
MT 15 Amplifier Head
Balancing aggression and articulation, this 15-watt amp supplies both heavy rhythms and clear lead tones. The MT 15 revision builds off the design of the MT 100, bringing the voice of the 100’s overdrive channel into its smaller-format sibling. Updating the model, the lead channel also features a push/pull overdrive control that removes two gain stages to produce vintage, crunchier “mid gain” tones. The clean channel still features a push/pull boost control that adds a touch of overdrive crunch. A half-power switch takes the MT to 7 watts.
“Seven years ago, we released my signature MT 15 amplifier, a compact powerhouse that quickly became a go-to for players seeking both pristine cleans and crushing high-gain tones. In 2023, we took things even further with the MT 100, delivering a full-scale amplifier that carried my signature sound to the next level. That inspired us to find a way to fit the 100's third channel into the 15's lunchbox size,” said Mark Tremonti.
“Today, I’m beyond excited to introduce the next evolution of the MT15, now featuring a push/pull overdrive control on the Lead channel and a half-power switch, giving players even more tonal flexibility to shape their sound with a compact amp. Can’t wait for you all to plug in and experience it!”
Archon Classic Amplifier Head
With a refined gain structure from the original Archon, the Archon Classic’s lead channel offers a wider range of tones colored with gain, especially in the midrange. The clean channel goes from pristine all the way to the edge of breakup. This additional Archon version was developed to be a go-to tool for playing classic rock or pushing the envelope into modern territory. The Archon Classic still features the original’s bright switch, presence and depth controls. PRS continues to stock the Archon in retailers worldwide.
“The Archon Classic is not a re-issue of the original Archon, but a newly voiced circuit with the lead channel excelling in '70s and '80s rock tones and a hotter clean channel able to go into breakup. This is the answer for those wanting an Archon with a hotrod vintage lead channel gain structure without changing preamp tube types, and a juiced- up clean channel without having to use a boost pedal, all wrapped up in a retro-inspired cabinet design,” said PRS Amp Designer Doug Sewell.
Archon 4x12 Cabinet
As in the Archon 1x12 and 2x12, the mega-sized PRS Archon 4x12 speaker cabinet features Celestion V-Type speakers and a closed-back design, delivering power, punch, and tight low end. Also like its smaller brethren, the 4x12 is wrapped in durable black vinyl and adorned with a British-style black knitted-weave grill cloth. The Archon 4x12 is only the second four-speaker cabinet in the PRS lineup, next to the HDRX 4x12.
PRS Guitars continues its schedule of launching new products each month in 2025. Stay tuned to see new gear and 40 th Anniversary limited-edition guitars throughout the year. For all of the latest news, click www.prsguitars.com/40 and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, X, and YouTube.
