2017 PWE Event Horizon 3

Overview

After my overwhelmingly positive experience with the original Event Horizon, I spotted this Event Horizon 3 online at Guitar Center and snagged it. Sadly it does not have the original footswitch, but unlike the original EH, this one does allow me to select channels from the front panel.

This version of the amp is missing two preamp tubes, and to my ear has decidedly less gain than the original EH. It does have an extra channel, so rather than the small toggle switch changing from crunch/lead modes on the previous amp, this one has separate crunch and lead channels with separate EQ controls, a great addition. It does still have a toggle switch tied to the crunch channel that allows for more gain, but you’re not forced to choose now since you still have the Blow channel at full gain with its separate controls. The crunch channel does share its tone stack with the clean mode. From what I understand, these could be ordered with either a “Fender” or “Marshall” style clean channel, and I believe mine to be the latter based on its fullness and the ability to get some slight dirt on taht channel with the gain turned up.

This amp drops the Hyperon control, but keeps the Tachyon - now just titled “clean” or “crunch” on the far left, or “bright” for the Blow channel - a little confusingly named but these are the same beloved 4-way rotary bright switches from the previous amp and can be great for dialing in the tone you want. The rear panel still has the four controls of the previous model, presence, deep, decelerator, and a negative feedback control.

The tone is even further polished, with less gain than the original EH and very smooth sounding with great bounciness that makes notes seem to hold on forever if you want. Cleans are excellent and extremely full sounding, great for jazzy chords or dial up the bright control for some snappy rhythms. My only gripe about this iteration of the design is that the Blow channel is really not suited or designed for metal - I’d even say it’s borderline unusable for heavier styles unless boosted. It’s not about the amount of gain on tap, instead it’s the voicing - it seems no matter how I have the amp biased or what controls I adjust on the rear panel, the amp has this natural sag to it that, despite feeling great for leads, has an odd behavior, almost like a blocking distortion, for palm muted lower notes, even on an E standard guitar. It can be dialed to be even worse, especially on a lower tuning, but basically hitting a palm muted low E chord has this effect of drowning out the treble frequencies, then they fade back in as the chord fades, giving it almost a wah-like character. The original EH had this signature sound as well, but it was not nearly as pronounced as on the EH3, and while I think the amp sounds great this is just odd enough to cause me not to pick this one for anything beyond more classic or soft rock styles.