Mark Tremonti and the gang from Annapolis swing big with a 100-watt, 3-channel blast machine that spans clean and ferocious extremes.
Incredible sounds across all three channels—ranging from pretty and clean to hot and aggressive. Reasonably priced.
No onboard attenuation or reverb.
$1,849
PRS MT 100
prsguitars.com
Mark Tremonti’s relationship with PRS Guitars began in 2000 with his first signature guitar. Eight years later, he had his first signature amp, theMT 15, a successful lunchbox amp that received a Best in Show award at the NAMM show that year. The new 100-watt, 3-channelMT 100 takes Tremonti’s tone concepts to higher and louder heights.
Three Corners of a Colossus
The MT 100 is designed by amp guru Doug Sewell, who built much-revered amps under his name before Paul Reed Smith recruited him. The tube layout includes four 6L6GC power amp tubes—typical enough for a 100-watt amp. But there are eight 12AX7 preamp tubes because each channel has its own preamp section. The clean channel uses one preamp tube (V1) and the overdrive and lead channels each use two. And while the MT 100’s many knobs suggest a complicated affair, the amp is actually pretty straightforward. Each channel has its own controls for presence, master, bass, middle, treble, and gain—that’s it. On the back panel is a tube-driven, series effects loop, where you can patch in reverb or delay as desired. There’s also a very handy panel of bias jacks. A 3-button footswitch is included and there are corresponding LED lights on the switch and the amp’s faceplate (blue for clean, orange for overdrive, and red for lead), so you know which channel is engaged.
Five Years in the Making
f you only know Mark Tremonti from Alter Bridge and Creed, you’d probably assume the MT 100 is a high-gain flamethrower. It’s much more than that, though. Tremonti is an amp fanatic, and his stage setup has traditionally been pretty complex, ranging from Dual Rectifiers for dirty sounds to Twin Reverbs for clean ones. The MT 100 impressively covers much of that turf via a single amplifier.Initially the MT 100 was going to have a 2-channel design like the MT 15, but Tremonti wanted to add an overdrive channel. When Iinterviewed Tremonti in 2012, he talked of his love of Dumbles. The MT 100’s middle channel is inspired by his favorite Dumble, and took five years of back and forth before the design was finalized. Dumble-style amps are typically extra expensive, so the MT 100’s $1,849 price feels like a bargain for an amp that does Dumble and then some.
With Ears Wide Open
I plugged a couple of guitars into an MT 100, including a semi-hollow and a dual-humbucker solid-body with split-coil options, with the amp hooked up to a Celestion-equipped cabinet. It was easy to find sweet spots for each instrument I tried. With the clean channel’s tone controls at noon and the presence a touch lower than that, the MT 100 sounds bright and a lot like a Fender Twin, with more warmth and copious bottom end. The clean channel brings small details to life. Fingerpicked open chords laced with hammer-on and pull-off embellishments, for example, sound especially pretty. And while the clean sounds are full-bodied, they leave a lot of space for effects like delay and reverb. I do wish that the MT 100 had built-in reverb. Almost all of us have loads of effects at the ready, but it’s also nice when an amp—and clean channel—this fundamentally good enables you to plug and play with a reverb option.
The overdrive channel is a delight, particularly when I use my semi-hollow. With the tone controls all around noon, the presence at 9 o’clock, and the gain at 2 o’clock, I could cop Robben Ford and Larry Carlton fusion sounds in a jiffy. But the overdrive channel isn’t just smooth and heavy. With a bridge-position humbucker and the gain control all the way up, it was easy to tap Brit-style metal and hard rock tones.
For Tremonti fans, the lead channel is probably the MT 100’s main attraction, and it definitely lives up to expectations. Lead sounds bloom with sustain, and notes would ring forever whether humbuckers or split-coils drove the front end. Palm-muted rhythm figures felt massive—floor-shakingly massive. And though you could fairly categorize the lead channel as dark and heavy at times, it’s far from muddy. You’ll hear a lot of detail in these zones. What’s also cool is that the tone foundation of the lead channel is distinctly different than that you hear on the overdrive channel. It really comes across as two different amps rather than the same basic sound with different gain variations on each of the two heavy channels. Factor in the use of effects and you’re looking at a lot of tone possibilities. Switching between channels, incidentally, is smooth, organic, and free from the jarring pops that some channel-switching amps exhibit.The Verdict
In a lot of ways, PRS was brave to build the MT 100. One hundred watts is a lot of power to wrangle, and to get the amp to really move air it needs to be cooking at a volume level that may not be practical in a lot of gigging situations. Obviously, an attenuation option might have been a nice touch (though you can argue that’s what the lunchbox-sized MT 15 is for), and if you use a load box/speaker simulator like UA’s OX, you can still get in on the fun. In larger environments that can handle it with a big cab, though, it is at its most beastly.
PRS and Tremonti should be commended for choosing a streamlined design path, too. Sure, it has three channels, but it forgoes power-scaling capabilities, graphic EQ, the option to use different types of power tubes, a foot-switchable effects loop, or direct recording/speaker cabinet cloning outputs like so many modern amps. And while it eschews bells and whistles, the MT 100 dominates in terms of tone—each of the MT 100’s three channels is dripping with it. If an amp that offers delicious Fender Twin Reverb-meets-Bruno Underground clean tones, a dead-on Dumble-sounding overdrive channel, and a hellacious lead channel that can stand head-to-toe with the Dual Rectifiers, Uberschalls, and 5150s of the world sounds cool to you, you’re probably not going to think once about the lack of gimmicks.
Mark Tremonti's New 100W Amps! The PRS MT 100 Mark Tremonti Signature Amp Demo | First Look
Envelope control, cool, unusual waveforms, and deep, interactive controls add up to an impressive, expansive dynamic tremolo at a fair price.
A huge range of trad’ to trippy modulation textures. Cool interactivity between controls. Many useful applications of envelope control.
Controls can be less than intuitive at times.
$199
Dreadbox Treminator
dreadbox-fx.com
Few effects are as beautifully moody as tremolo. But the essence of the effect—modulating volume—generally leaves less room for picking dynamics. The beauty of Dreadbox’s smartly designed Treminator is that its functionality spans intense, smothering modulations and those that can be shaped with precision using envelope control. The Treminator isn’t the only dynamic tremolo out there. But its many waveform options, and the wide range and interactivity in its controls, can lead to many unusual or tastefully subdued tremolo variations.
The Treminator’s basic voice is satisfying and, at times, quite intoxicating and enveloping. The waveforms include very nice triangle and square shapes that yield pretty traditional tremolo sounds. There are also ramp-up and ramp-down forms that lend a slippery, mysterious air and suggest reverse tape effects. A random waveform evokes fractured, distant radio broadcasts and tape warble at some settings. The fade control unlocks even more textures by fading modulations in and out or enabling envelope-controlled speed ramping capabilities. And the super-useful LFO waveform reset mode restarts a waveform when the envelope reaches its threshold—eliminating the tug of war between irregular strumming patterns and wave pulses that creates messy rhythmic tangles.
The breadth of Treminator’s possible sounds goes well beyond those described here. Surprises abound. And its ability to reshape a tired riff—or guide you down unexpected musical paths—gives the Treminator immense potential as a compositional device.
The octave fuzz section from the Atreides Weirding Module gets its own star turn in a buzzing bruiser that can be absurd and beautiful.
Unusually flexible and sustain-rich octave fuzz. Fat, rubbery synth-like sounds. White-hot fuzz. Versatile tone and fuzz and sub octave levels.
Can’t entirely remove fuzz or octave signal.
$169
Way Huge Stone Burner
jimdunlop.com
Way Huge’s Atreides Weirding Module is one of Jeorge Tripps’ great gifts to the world. It’s a gift that keeps giving, too. The Attack Vector phaser and envelope was its first offspring. But the newest, the Stone Burner Sub Atomic octave fuzz is a killer, maybe the coolest, and probably the most practical pedal from the Atreides family. It’s an unusually useful and forgiving octave fuzz that will generate up to two sub octaves, which feature more or less prominently depending on the sub level.
This sub octave filter works in concert with the fuzz, which you can’t remove entirely from the mix, but which ranges in intensity from nasty and spitty to double-nasty and surprisingly capable of sustain. Various mixes of the sub and fuzz levels yield tonalities that stretch from synthy elasticity and fuzz bass to fractured, tectonic-scale Earth rumblings, and fuzz that sounds like a banshee gargling gravel and rusty nails. (I mean this in the most complimentary possible sense.)
The wide-ranging tone knob, meanwhile, has a profound effect on a given mix’s glitchiness, sustain, and overtone profile. The Stone Burner also responds in fascinating ways to guitar volume and tone input—sometimes emphasizing tight fundamentals and octaves in more concise and equal parts, or enhancing the more synth-like qualities of the filter. Variations in pitch from finger vibrato and whammy bars activate many ghostly responses and overtones, too. Needless to say, it is a fairly confrontational effect, but the Stone Burner is also malleable, sweet, bratty, and beautiful.