D
Deleted member 27494
Guest
Update:
Since there's a lot of talk going on about a "tube shortage" I thought it would be fun to revisit this amp with some high gain rock and metal tones in mind. Can this solid state amp do those tones just fine, or not? Let me know!
Hey everyone,
I got a Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 last week! I'm really enjoying it and I thought I'd share some thoughts as well as my in-depth demo.
I've been intrigued by this amp ever since it was released. A solid state amp that can sound like a tube amp with all of the features that the Grandmeister Deluxe 40 (or 36) has? It just sounded interesting to me. It's always fascinating when people try to emulate what tube amps do, especially with analog hardware as opposed to digital. Pre-amp pedals have also become very good at this so it sounded promising.
The idea of the sagging control is very cool. This allows you to dial in your power-amp compression/saturation at ANY level and since the amp is fully programmable (via midi, an app or the foot controller). When you crank it up high it really feels and sounds similar to a cranked tube-amp. The entire amp is solid state so the actual power amp is very clean. This means you can also run the amp direct without a load so you can use it with IR's as I do or use the built-in red box DI. I'm currently in the process of programming the amp to be my practice-amp and I'm controlling it via midi with my Line 6 HX Effects.
The overall sound of the amp is very good in my opinion? Can it sound the same as an actual tube amp? I'm not a 100% sure if it nails every single tone in that regard but a lot of times it does indeed act like a tube-amp! It's really hard to answer that question because we probably all listen very critically and biased to this amp with preconceived notions such as: "solid state can never sound as good as tubes etc." All I can say is that I really love the tone of this amp, so I guess that means something. I'm probably going to make a Black Spirit 200 vs Grandmeister Deluxe 40 video soon so that should also be fun!
I can talk about the amp for quite a bit but this post might get too long. I made some sound demos to see how this amp performs in various styles and with various settings/effects. If you have any more questions after this demo I'd be happy to talk about it
Since there's a lot of talk going on about a "tube shortage" I thought it would be fun to revisit this amp with some high gain rock and metal tones in mind. Can this solid state amp do those tones just fine, or not? Let me know!
Hey everyone,
I got a Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 last week! I'm really enjoying it and I thought I'd share some thoughts as well as my in-depth demo.
I've been intrigued by this amp ever since it was released. A solid state amp that can sound like a tube amp with all of the features that the Grandmeister Deluxe 40 (or 36) has? It just sounded interesting to me. It's always fascinating when people try to emulate what tube amps do, especially with analog hardware as opposed to digital. Pre-amp pedals have also become very good at this so it sounded promising.
The idea of the sagging control is very cool. This allows you to dial in your power-amp compression/saturation at ANY level and since the amp is fully programmable (via midi, an app or the foot controller). When you crank it up high it really feels and sounds similar to a cranked tube-amp. The entire amp is solid state so the actual power amp is very clean. This means you can also run the amp direct without a load so you can use it with IR's as I do or use the built-in red box DI. I'm currently in the process of programming the amp to be my practice-amp and I'm controlling it via midi with my Line 6 HX Effects.
The overall sound of the amp is very good in my opinion? Can it sound the same as an actual tube amp? I'm not a 100% sure if it nails every single tone in that regard but a lot of times it does indeed act like a tube-amp! It's really hard to answer that question because we probably all listen very critically and biased to this amp with preconceived notions such as: "solid state can never sound as good as tubes etc." All I can say is that I really love the tone of this amp, so I guess that means something. I'm probably going to make a Black Spirit 200 vs Grandmeister Deluxe 40 video soon so that should also be fun!
I can talk about the amp for quite a bit but this post might get too long. I made some sound demos to see how this amp performs in various styles and with various settings/effects. If you have any more questions after this demo I'd be happy to talk about it
Last edited by a moderator:
