# PRS MT15 in-depth demo/review! (w/pedal test: BE-OD Deluxe, VH4-2 etc.)



## Guitarjon (Jan 9, 2020)

I know this amp has only been out for a year or so but it seems like a very popular amp and for good reason! I love mind and I haven't regretted getting it .

The reasons for it's popularity are probably 1. That it's an affordable amp. It only costs around 550 euros here. 2. It sounds great! The cleans are good and the distortion sounds are pretty amazing! 3. It has 'big 6L6 tubes'. I'm personally not against small tubes, in fact I really love all my EL84 amps just as much as my big bottle amps but I know that other people aren't too fond of the smaller valves. So it's a smart move by PRS to put in 6L6's. 4. It's the signature amp by Mark Tremonti. 5. It's light and portable compared to most 50-100w amps. 5. It looks cool. Gotta love the blue and red lights for the different channels. It does look kind of industrial, so not as classy as a Marshall. If you're not into that I could see why you don't like the look of this amp. 6. It works pretty great with pedals. I've tried to demonstrate this in the demo by plugging in various pedals such as the Friedman BE-OD and Diezel VH4-2 into the clean channel. Sounds killer!

One cool feature that this amp has is the treble pull boost. It makes the clean channel quite a bit louder and it pushes the amp a little bit more into slight overdrive. Don't expect this channel (or amp) to do a good classic mid gain rock crunch well though. For that I would recommend adding a pedal to engage on the clean channel when such tones are needed. The clean tones are very balanced in general, perhaps a little sterile sounding but that does make it very pedal friendly. It would have been cool to have a little more gain on that channel and/or a bright switch to make it more versatile.

The distortion tones are great! This amp has plenty of gain on tap and the eq is very responsive. As can be seen in the demo I like to crank my mids and treble for more definition. If you leave those low the amp will feel looser and more soggy, which could work better for boosted high gain tones. I do recommend to try and raise the mids and treble for more midrange cut and bark. The low-end isn't as tight as an ENGL but it's also not as loose/flubby as a Recto. Boost pedals can make this amp VERY tight as I've also demonstrated in the video. It's great for rock, hard rock and metal but as I said earlier, not amazing for low gain classic rock tones. I imagine a Wampler Plexi Drive Deluxe would be a great pedal to add to this amp for more flexibility.

Who else has one? How do you like it? What are your favorite settings? I would love to know!

Here's the demo. I used 14 different guitars and various styles, just to see how versatile this amp is, also with some cool pedals:


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## LeftOurEyes (Jan 9, 2020)

Guitarjon said:


> 3. It has 'big 6L6 tubes'. I'm personally not against small tubes, in fact I really love all my EL84 amps just as much as my big bottle amps but I know that other people aren't too fond of the smaller valves. So it's a smart move by PRS to put in 6L6's.



I do like your reviews. You do a good job recording these demos and your songs sound really good. Do you jam any of these lunchbox amps with actual people though? I think that is where you will notice the EL84 amps don't hold up well. They are great for recording and jamming to tracks at home, but they don't hold up well for metal at band volumes. I have a few of them (some of the same ones as you) and liked them until I played with a drummer, now I record with them but wouldn't ever consider jamming in a band with one (unless going direct to monitors maybe). I don't plan on getting any more lunchbox sized amps from now on.


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## Wolfhorsky (Jan 9, 2020)

I got mine for over a year and still love it. It cured my GAS for amps for sometime. It is very loud. Much louder than my Dark Terror. I set bass on 3 o'clock, mids and treble on 12 to 1 o'clock. Gain at 2 to 3 o'clock. Prescence at 4 to 5 o'clock. And then I put Boss Eq pedal with a little cut around 800 Hz (400 Hz one step down, 800 Hz 1,5-2 steps down, 1,6kHz 1 step down on the scale). I use Suhr 112 cab with V30 (ported). Without EQ pedal it gets honky. Plus EQ pedal has got "Level" so I can set it low to accommodate the aggressive taper of "Master" pot.
And with BE-OD on clean channel it is just great for that 80s lead sound.


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## Guitarjon (Jan 9, 2020)

LeftOurEyes said:


> I do like your reviews. You do a good job recording these demos and your songs sound really good. Do you jam any of these lunchbox amps with actual people though? I think that is where you will notice the EL84 amps don't hold up well. They are great for recording and jamming to tracks at home, but they don't hold up well for metal at band volumes. I have a few of them (some of the same ones as you) and liked them until I played with a drummer, now I record with them but wouldn't ever consider jamming in a band with one (unless going direct to monitors maybe). I don't plan on getting any more lunchbox sized amps from now on.



Sure, you're absolutely right, the one drawback that I can totally understand would be headroom, for the small 15w EL84 amps. However my 25w+ EL84 amps do not have a problem in a band setting. My Grandmeister Deluxe 40 is pretty darn loud! But I could see why a 30w Dual Terror would work better live than a 15w Terror.

One thing that could be pretty useful for using small amps live is an attenuator with a built in solid state power amp like the boss tube expander. I also saw a similar attenuator from Fame at Musicstore.de. it had a 50w solid state power amp and it was only like 80 euros. Something like that could solve that problem.



Wolfhorsky said:


> I got mine for over a year and still love it. It cured my GAS for amps for sometime. It is very loud. Much louder than my Dark Terror. I set bass on 3 o'clock, midsized and treble on 12 to 1 o'clock. Gain at 2 to 3 o'clock. Prescence at 4 to 5 o'clock. And then I put Boss Eq pedal with a little cut around 800 Hz (400 Hz one step down, 800 Hz 1,5-2 steps down, 1,6kHz 1 step down on the scale). I use Suhr 112 cab with V30 (ported). Without EQ pedal it gets honky. Plus EQ pedal has got "Level" so I can set it low to accommodate the aggressive taper of "Master" pot.



That's not a bad idea, to use an eq to attenuate the signal. And I agree, it's really loud for a 15 watter.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jan 9, 2020)

I'm surprised at how great the VH4 pedal sounded there.


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## Guitarjon (Jan 9, 2020)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I'm surprised at how great the VH4 pedal sounded there.



It's so awesome! I just got it this week. I hadn't tried the MT15 with pre-amp pedals yet so it took me a little while to realise that the clean channel sounds better for drive pedals with the presence all the way off. Also, the VH4 pedal has an output especially to run directly into the power amp but when I did that with the MT15 the signal was way too hot even with the master on the pedal almost off. The master volume controls on the amp didn't do anything so those are in front of the loop. It sounded great through the clean channel though but I want to try it with a different amp soon, one with a more suitable loop. Perhaps my JVM.


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## Guitarjon (Jan 9, 2020)

Someone just shared this with me, it's pretty interesting. It's the designer of the amp and he talks about how they made it etc.


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## Guitarjon (Jan 10, 2020)

Woah, I just saw a recent instagram post by Mark Tremonti with a full frontal pic of the MT100 prototype! Apparently Sevendust has been using it on their record and loving it. There was a pretty clear full frontal pic of the amp. It still looked a little crude obviously since it's a prototype.
I didn't really see a whole lot of extra controls on the front but I couldn't really make out the lettering above the knobs. There looks to be either a reverb, presence, depth or master control all the way to the left but it's hard to make out... Likely a master volume for the entire amp? Perhaps tonally it won't be much different from the MT15. They did work on the MT15 for years to get it just right for Mark so I assume he is still happy with the sound of that one.


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## Wolfhorsky (Jan 10, 2020)

Some talking about new amp:


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## Guitarjon (Jan 10, 2020)

Wolfhorsky said:


> Some talking about new amp:




Yeah that was a cool watch! I bet it won't sell as good as the MT15 but we'll see! Maybe if it's not too expensive, like 750 euros or something.


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## primitiverebelworld (Jan 10, 2020)

Eehh!...At first I was expecting an amp demo but your excellent guitar selection, mega production and impressive playing totally made me to start an unforgottable journey to sonic oblivion tonight. A couple of cuba libres an here we go! Now I want an Eclipse and a Tele...


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jan 10, 2020)

Guitarjon said:


> Yeah that was a cool watch! I bet it won't sell as good as the MT15 but we'll see! Maybe if it's not too expensive, like 750 euros or something.



I imagine it'll be around $800 - $900. But that's an assumption.

But yeah, this is the amp I wanna go for if I want a proper head. Seems loud enough for small gigs while retaining head room. And if I need more loudness, just mic it up or get a loadbox.


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## myrtorp (Jan 10, 2020)

I've had GAS for this since I first saw it. Killer riffs man I really enjoy watching just for that alone


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## Wolfhorsky (Jan 10, 2020)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I imagine it'll be around $800 - $900. But that's an assumption.
> 
> But yeah, this is the amp I wanna go for if I want a proper head. Seems loud enough for small gigs while retaining head room. And if I need more loudness, just mic it up or get a loadbox.


On my gigs I use MT15 and the clean channel Vol is set on 50%. So its 15 ekhm 50 wts is loud enough. 100W is for the low end umphh.


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## wakjob (Jan 10, 2020)

Hope you got paid for that video...can't think of many other bases you could cover. Nice work dude.

P.S. the HX Stomp is great.


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## Guitarjon (Jan 10, 2020)

wakjob said:


> Hope you got paid for that video...can't think of many other bases you could cover. Nice work dude.
> 
> P.S. the HX Stomp is great.



Thanks! Glad you dig the stomp! Any favorite amps?


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## wakjob (Jan 10, 2020)

Guitarjon said:


> Thanks! Glad you dig the stomp! Any favorite amps?



Badonk, CaliIv, Placater...
Gonna spend the weekend with my tele and strats, unmetal myself, and get into the edge of breakup to medium gain stuff in there.


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## Guitarjon (Jan 11, 2020)

wakjob said:


> Badonk, CaliIv, Placater...
> Gonna spend the weekend with my tele and strats, unmetal myself, and get into the edge of breakup to medium gain stuff in there.



Great choices! There are a lot of good amps in there to discover. Enjoy


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## Vince (Jan 22, 2020)

Yo Guitarjon! I love this video. I'm a longtime Mesa player and picked up this amp about 6 months ago and have been blown away by it too. It's too bad the FX loop leaves a bit of noise when engaged, and I agree with you the clean channel is a bit sterile, but other than those two minor issues, the amp is absolutely amazing. To my ears, it has the bottom end of a rectifier with the top end of a 5150.

I dig this amp over the Mesa Mark V 25 and Mini Rectos I've had in the past, mainly because of the headroom and bottom-end. There's no doubt, the 6L6s are simply better for heavy guitar than EL84s. I'd love to see Mesa come out with an updated rectifier with 2 6L6s, but in a smaller head like this. They have the mini recs that have too much mids and not enough headroom, and they have the older single rectifier rectoverbs that are 50 watt, but are oversized. The PRS MT15 gets the headroom of the 50 watt amp (or pretty damn close) at a lower wattage and in a small headshell. It's a truly amazing little amp.

Once again I thought your demo was awesome and love your channel. Keep it up!


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## Guitarjon (Jan 23, 2020)

Vince said:


> Yo Guitarjon! I love this video. I'm a longtime Mesa player and picked up this amp about 6 months ago and have been blown away by it too. It's too bad the FX loop leaves a bit of noise when engaged, and I agree with you the clean channel is a bit sterile, but other than those two minor issues, the amp is absolutely amazing. To my ears, it has the bottom end of a rectifier with the top end of a 5150.
> 
> I dig this amp over the Mesa Mark V 25 and Mini Rectos I've had in the past, mainly because of the headroom and bottom-end. There's no doubt, the 6L6s are simply better for heavy guitar than EL84s. I'd love to see Mesa come out with an updated rectifier with 2 6L6s, but in a smaller head like this. They have the mini recs that have too much mids and not enough headroom, and they have the older single rectifier rectoverbs that are 50 watt, but are oversized. The PRS MT15 gets the headroom of the 50 watt amp (or pretty damn close) at a lower wattage and in a small headshell. It's a truly amazing little amp.
> 
> Once again I thought your demo was awesome and love your channel. Keep it up!



Thanks! I read somewhere that it should be an easy fix to make the loop less noisy. IIRC it's just a bunch of wires that are too close to a part inside the head. I don't remember where I read that though so don't take my word for it. My loop isn't noisy at all...

It's funny that you mention those Mesa amps as I'm currently making a comparison vid of my Mark V 35 and Mini Recto. They both sound so good! I don't mind EL84's myself since I mostly work in the studio, so it's easy for me to find the master volume sweetspot without having to worry about headroom etc. For tone they work just fine. But yeah, the MT15 is loud for sure and it has plenty of headroom, that's why it works great as a pedal platform.


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## Wolfhorsky (Jan 23, 2020)

I'll just drop it here:


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## Guitarjon (Jan 23, 2020)

Wolfhorsky said:


> I'll just drop it here:




I saw that, cool video as usual! Ola is great! I wish he would have messed with the EQ a bit more though because imho (personal taste) the amp really opens up once you add more mids and treble and carefully balance out the presence. It sounded great though!


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## Wolfhorsky (Jan 23, 2020)

It sounds much more honky on my Suhr 112 cab with v30 :-/


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jan 23, 2020)

I wish he tried his own Solar guitar for more vareity. The Tremonti Treble is like... The polar opposite of his Duncan Solars.  those pickups have a shiiit ton of output, mids, and treble.


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## Ola Englund (Jan 23, 2020)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I wish he tried his own Solar guitar for more vareity. The Tremonti Treble is like... The polar opposite of his Duncan Solars.  those pickups have a shiiit ton of output, mids, and treble.



but but but I did at the second half of the video :/


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jan 23, 2020)

Ola Englund said:


> but but but I did at the second half of the video :/



Stuck on my phone so I kinda skipped around so I must have missed it.

Edit: after seeing that I really want an Mt15 even more because holy shit that low B chug.


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## Wolfhorsky (Jan 23, 2020)

Ola Englund said:


> but but but I did at the second half of the video :/


Awesome vid. Thanks for Your work. I wish Solar made headless..


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## Apex1rg7x (Jan 23, 2020)

I'm probably gonna sell my MT15 but then I second guess myself, haha.


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## Guitarjon (Jan 23, 2020)

Apex1rg7x said:


> I'm probably gonna sell my MT15 but then I second guess myself, haha.



Don't do eeeeeetttt!


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## sevenfoxes (Jan 23, 2020)

The MT15 was a hit from the getgo. With it being a 15w version of the Archon (to a debatable degree), what's not to like?

I bet PRS has made a fortune off these things.


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## op1e (Jan 23, 2020)

I slightly bigger MT15 with a resonance would be sweet. It shifts to the part of the Recto I like over the part I don't like. The point where I've been eyeing single recs and been wanting to mod them for a Res control and put kt77 in one. I've always been a Peavey and Marshall type guy, but the bite is there in this one.


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## Ola Englund (Jan 24, 2020)

I might have to get one, great value for the money...


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## Guitarjon (Jan 24, 2020)

Ola Englund said:


> I might have to get one, great value for the money...



It's definitely worth the money and it holds up when compared to more expensive amps imho.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jan 24, 2020)

op1e said:


> I slightly bigger MT15 with a resonance would be sweet. It shifts to the part of the Recto I like over the part I don't like.



Given it's taking them a while and a half to release the full-sized MT50/MT100, I wonder if anyone has gotten their MT15 modded to full 50W? They made it sound like it's just a couple of component changes + a new transformer.


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## Wolfhorsky (Jan 24, 2020)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Given it's taking them a while and a half to release the full-sized MT50/MT100, I wonder if anyone has gotten their MT15 modded to full 50W? They made it sound like it's just a couple of component changes + a new transformer.


After over a year of owning MT15 I have no need for that mod. It is very loud and has enough umph.


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## Ola Englund (Jan 24, 2020)

I heard about a 100W version but I might be wrong


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## Guitarjon (Jan 24, 2020)

Ola Englund said:


> I heard about a 100W version but I might be wrong



That is correct and it has been confirmed by Tremonti himself. There are even pictures of the prototype on his IG. It does seem that it has more features that the 15w version but it's obviously bigger and louder. Mark has stated that he wants the volume to be able to go even lower than the MT15 as the minimum volume is quite high on that one.


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## Ola Englund (Jan 24, 2020)

There you go. Cheers, I still think the MT15 would be enough for what I do in the studio


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## Guitarjon (Jan 24, 2020)

Ola Englund said:


> There you go. Cheers, I still think the MT15 would be enough for what I do in the studio



Same here!


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