PRS Sweet 16 Combo Quick Preview
(Chris Bereznay | Posted 2009-11-27)
Whether you've had an opportunity to try one yourself, or not, there's no question that there is a lot of excitement generating about the Sweet 16 combo from Paul Reed Smith. This amp combines the Sweet 16 head from PRS with a 12 inch driver in one combo package providing 16 watts of tube power through a pair of 6V6 cathodes, combined with on board reverb, full TMB tone stack and the fan favorite PRS master volume circuit. PRS claims all amps are hand wired in their Maryland facility using "hybrid circuitry" for consistency and durability.
As noted above the amp features 6V6 tubes, a reverb, and a bright switch. The combo comes stock with a Celestion G12H-30 to ensure those tones are faitfully reproduced. As is standard for PRS gear, the Sweet 16 Combo comes with a 5 year warranty bumper to bumper, with 90 days on the tubes and one year on the Celestion speaker.
There's a lot of interesting feedback going around the web on this one. Many players love the look and the way the cathode tubes are set-up to play off each other (bias). The tone stays pretty clean up to past the mid-range point, but the first hints of distortion are pretty sweet which shouldn't be a surprise given the 6V6's running inline.
A few players have commented that the reverb isn't very big and bold, but not everyone likes it like that.
From a power perspective, it seems a lot of folks are quite surprised how robust the volume and tone are from this amp, given the smaller size of the package. Additionally, everyone is raving about the buttery clean tones it's able to produce. For a boutique amp, the unit seems to have a range of funtionality, but most say nothing sounds finer through it than a McCarty.
For more information on this exciting new guitar amplifier from PRS, click on the link below:
PRS Sweet 16 Combo
For reviews and more information on the amp head version of this unit, please click here:
