Hughes and Kettner Black Spirit 200

Nige458

Just had this pop up in my Youtube recommendations.



http://hughes-and-kettner.com/products/spirit/black-spirit-200/

Thoughts........

StefB

I was looking into this yesterday.  Initial summaries are that it is a solid state Grandmeister, and that H&K's marketing spiel is more nonsensical even than Blackstar's, and I'm a big H&K fan.

I'm waiting with bated amusement to hear what the UK pricing will be, but upwards of £1k I predict.

Guitarist will give it 10/10 and it will be dropped from H&K's catalogue within 3 years as usual...

StefB

StefB said:

I'm waiting with bated amusement to hear what the UK pricing will be, but upwards of £1k I predict.

Correction, £750 - https://www.thomann.de/gb/hugheskettner_blackspirit_200.htm?ref=search_prv_3

Legionreturns

The big thing I've taken from that video is that H&K are being super secretive about the circuitry.

Put another way, if it breaks, you're boned because nobody local will be able to fix it, and once out of warranty you're double boned. 

€799 is not a small amount of money to kiss goodbye to 

digitalscream

Legionreturns said:

The big thing I've taken from that video is that H&K are being super secretive about the circuitry.

Put another way, if it breaks, you're boned because nobody local will be able to fix it, and once out of warranty you're double boned. 

€799 is not a small amount of money to kiss goodbye to 

...and also significantly more than the Blackstar ID series and the Katana amps, when it does almost exactly the same thing.

Nige458

digitalscream said:

Legionreturns said:

The big thing I've taken from that video is that H&K are being super secretive about the circuitry.

Put another way, if it breaks, you're boned because nobody local will be able to fix it, and once out of warranty you're double boned. 

€799 is not a small amount of money to kiss goodbye to 

...and also significantly more than the Blackstar ID series and the Katana amps, when it does almost exactly the same thing.

My thoughts exactly...

GrahamG

probably best not to give it a chance & just slag it off then 

StefB

GrahamG said:

probably best not to give it a chance & just slag it off then 

True.  H&K must have identified a significant gap in the market for something like this I guess.

jeztone2

I think it's really clever. You can either plug into a cab, or a monitor. That's handy. Size wise it looks good. I just hate the H&K footswitch. But I'm gonna check it out. My only concern is I don't like the Tubemeister type amps. The one I tried sounded more transistor than valve. So not sure a lack of valves means much now?

JayGee

It looks to me a bit like an attempt at a bigger better Katana (or at least like they’ve seen the buzz which the Katanas have generated and decided that the moment is right for another crack at the Swiss Army Guitar Amp thing), and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.Lets see (hear) how it sounds.

Personally I’m biased (perhaps unreasonably so) against anything with multi-purpose knobs, I think that the absence of same, and it’s general “What You See Is What You Get” simplicity in operation is as much a factor in the Katana’s appeal as anything else and this immediately reduces the appeal of this beast for me but, as ever Your Mileage May Vary...

timmysoft

Back in the 90s the H&K Attax amps were brilliant. Solid state but packed full of quality tones.

Fortheloveofguitar

From the demos it actually sounds very good 

Musicman20

About 1000 demos today. Overkill.

GrahamG

Can never have too many demos

monquixote

I think it sounds pretty good from the demos, but like all these super complicated, do it all boxes if they blow up you are totally screwed.

I think they are trying to do for guitar what Mark Bass did for bass players though arguably Yamaha did the same thing already in a simpler and cheaper package.

sjo89

Just got mine the other day. It's an awesome bit of kit, sounds amazing and unlike a tube amp (even with a decent attenuator) retains its tone even when at low volume. The fact that I can control and customise it with a bluetooth connected ipad is awesome. It kind of reminds me of the likes of GT1000 and Helix in that you can connect a midi footpedal unit and have 128 presets saved. Granted it doesnt have the scope of those units tonally, but what it does do it does extremely well. And 200w of power?! Even if its only half as loud as advertised thats still screamingly loud. The reverb is spring and a bit meh, but the delay and modulation fx are pretty decent sounding, certainly decent enough for function band work which is what I'll be mainly using it for. I'll be able to greatly reduce the size of the pedalboard I take. In fact all I need is the midi footswitch and a clip on tuner and I've pretty much got 99% of every function band song ever covered within the amp. The gain range is also insane, every channel can go from sparkly clean/mild crunch to crazy distorted. In fact I've yet to take the gain past 11 o'clock on lead and ultra channels as its just too intense for me. The best feature (after the great sound) has to be the much improved DI box and cab sims. Some of the cabs sims are absolutely incredibly good, so much so I think this amp sounds better when I DI into a FRFR PA speaker. I'd say its a bit too pricey but as I have zero regrets or complaints I dont think I can.

olafgarten

sjo89 said:

Just got mine the other day. It's an awesome bit of kit, sounds amazing and unlike a tube amp (even with a decent attenuator) retains its tone even when at low volume. The fact that I can control and customise it with a bluetooth connected ipad is awesome. It kind of reminds me of the likes of GT1000 and Helix in that you can connect a midi footpedal unit and have 128 presets saved. Granted it doesnt have the scope of those units tonally, but what it does do it does extremely well. And 200w of power?! Even if its only half as loud as advertised thats still screamingly loud. The reverb is spring and a bit meh, but the delay and modulation fx are pretty decent sounding, certainly decent enough for function band work which is what I'll be mainly using it for. I'll be able to greatly reduce the size of the pedalboard I take. In fact all I need is the midi footswitch and a clip on tuner and I've pretty much got 99% of every function band song ever covered within the amp. The gain range is also insane, every channel can go from sparkly clean/mild crunch to crazy distorted. In fact I've yet to take the gain past 11 o'clock on lead and ultra channels as its just too intense for me. The best feature (after the great sound) has to be the much improved DI box and cab sims. Some of the cabs sims are absolutely incredibly good, so much so I think this amp sounds better when I DI into a FRFR PA speaker. I'd say its a bit too pricey but as I have zero regrets or complaints I dont think I can.

200 watts isn't that much louder than 100. A doubling in wattage is around a 3 dB increase and you need around 10 decibels to double the perceived volume. 

To work out the increase in loudness you need to work out the ratio of wattage to the power of log(2) (approx 0.3)

So a doubling of wattage increases volume by around 1.2.

bermudianbrit

reviving this thread to see if anyone else has any experience with these. Just for metal guys?

drwiddly

timmysoft said:

Back in the 90s the H&K Attax amps were brilliant. Solid state but packed full of quality tones.

I have an old Attax preamp that I've had for years. It has a solid state clean channel but the crunch and lead channels are both valve. Full midi and it holds up very well against a JMP-1. Cost me £80 on e-Bay when there were still bargains to be had.

lysander

Any more reviews on this ?
I thought I was going to go software only for a while but have got GAS for this amp, love the sounds in the demos I’ve heard ( no shops anywhere close have them so can’t try it for myself).
The preset management coupled with one knob per parameter on the front panel are very attractive too.

ennspek

Yeah I am gassing as well.