Plexi inspiration makes this tiny 50-watt amp a clean-to-crunchy overachiever.
RatingsPros:Excellent high and high-mid detail and note definition in low- to mid-gain settings. Crazy light. Super-small footprint. Intuitive controls. Cons: High-gain tones can be sizzly. Still needs a nice cabinet or cabinet emulation to extract the best sounds. Street: $239 Hughes & Kettner Spirit Nano—Spirit of Vintage hughes-and-kettner.com | Tones: Ease of Use: Build/Design: Value: |
If you’re an open-minded player, it’s hard to not appreciate micro amps like the 50-watt Hughes & Kettner Spirit Nano—Spirit of Vintage. Some old-school dogmatists scoff at these light, compact, solid-state wonders. But while they don’t deliver all the depth and nuance of the best tube amps, they are capable of great sounds, and an appealing, affordable, and practical alternative for apartment dwellers, city folk, or musicians for whom guitar is a single ingredient in a wider musical expression.
The Spirit of Vintage is part of H&K’s Nano series, which also includes the higher-gain Spirit of Rock and the even more aggressive Spirit of Metal. But after spending time with the plexi-inspired Spirit of Vintage, it’s easy to hear how its wide range of clean-to-filthy sounds could make it the most widely appealing amp of the bunch—particularly at just $239.
Bask in the Glow
H&K is tight lipped about the makeup of the Tone Spirit Generator—the visibly glowing, 20-pin, sealed PCB that is home to the amp’s primary tone-shaping components. But essentially it recreates the topology of a tube amp with solid-state circuitry. That’s not a new idea, but H&K claims to have more effectively replicated the liquid, irregular, give-and-take qualities that make tube amps appealing.
The control set, which consists of master output, tone, gain and a “sagging” knob, is intuitive. The sagging control is perhaps the most beguiling of the bunch. It’s designed to emulate the saturation, compression, and dynamic qualities of tubes at their limit. It accomplishes that to an extent, though it also seems to work a little like a presence control, adding high-mid content as you go. I tended to use it judiciously to let the amp’s appealing high-end breathe a little more readily.
The Spirit of Sass
The Spirit of Vintage impresses most in near-clean and mid-gain settings. The former is a ticket to power-pop and roots-rock heaven, with a Fender bridge-position single-coil in the mix. Here the amp sounds sassy, lively, and exciting. High strings and notes ring with detail and percolate with high harmonics that can be less pronounced in compressed tube amps. If there’s a setting on the H&K that might make you indifferent to the tube versus solid-state question, this is certainly one of them. The mid-gain output is similarly alive. And here again, the amp’s capacity for detailed highs and high-mids really shines.
If there is a shortcoming in the Spirit of Vintage’s performance envelope—and a most-perceptible difference between it and vintage tube amps—it’s that the H&K can sound sizzly at the highest gain and sagging settings. These spikes in the high-mids and high-end can add energy to lead runs, but they tend to render chords pretty messy. Heavy fuzz, like the Sovtek Big Muff used for this evaluation, can also sound a little less silky at high gain settings. That’s hardly surprising coming from a $239 amp that you can hide in a winter coat pocket, but it is surely not a deal breaker.
The Verdict
For such a little amp, the Spirit of Vintage manages to sound both tough and quite cultivated. It can be the amplifier foundation for a small home or apartment studio. You can use it to record with an interface and the appropriate cabinet emulation tools. And with the right cabinet, it’s powerful enough to gig with just about anyone.
The issue of a cabinet, however, is a real consideration that can blunt your enthusiasm for the very nice $239 price—largely because you’ll want one (or a good cabinet emulation) to get the very best sounds out of it. H&K’s own TM 110 is the least expensive of the company’s cabinet options, which, at $349, is 100 bucks more than the head itself. And while there are less expensive options from competitors, it would be a shame to waste the Spirit of Vintage’s virtues on a cheap speaker. What’s undeniable about the Spirit of Vintage is its versatility. It sounds superb in many common applications. And in some settings and arrangements, its liveliness and clarity may, in fact, make it a preferable option to a tube amp.
Be sure to check out our First Look demo of the full range of Hughes & Kettner's Nano—Rock, Metal, and Vintage:
Three mighty miniature amps that crank out three flavors of crunch and up to 50 watts of clobber.
H&K announces the successor to the popular Switchblade TSC, the metal-minded Coreblade
Metal-meister Jeff Waters, mastermind of the metal legend Annihilator, sums up his enthusiasm about Coreblade as follows: “This amp has everything a studio and touring metal guitarist needs. And I had always loved the programming aspect being introduced into analog tube guitar amps. But no one had ever perfected it; until now.”
Coreblade is equipped with four channels, two of them voiced to offer completely different high-gain alternatives. Beyond that, the amp sports a versatile drive channel and a clean channel with plenty of headroom. For sound refinement Coreblade features three first-class effect modules, covering a wide range of standards from authentic spring reverb to chorus and delay. As all effects are added using Hughes & Kettner's unique “Inversed Parallel Modulation“, the guitar signal always stays in the analog domain.
Noise gates are the secret weapons in modern metal sounds. Therefore Coreblade is the first amp to take advantage of the newly developed IDB (Intelligent Dual Breakpoint) noise gate. This device simultaneously measures the gain at the input jack and after the preamp, thus being able to react perfectly in any given situation, be it as a radical tool for sound design on stage or as a delicate noise suppressor in the studio.
Hughes & Kettner uses maintenance-free PRN potentiometers (PRN = programmable resistor network), which are completely analog rotary knobs with 256 resistor settings that can be digitally accessed. Employing this proprietary technology, each of Coreblade's channels can be set up entirely independently with all parameters such as EQ, gain or presence saved and recalled in an instance, with the push of a single button, all with no digital components in the signal path. Management of the 128 user presets is simple and intuitive with the included MIDI floorboard.
The TSC (Tube Safety Control) power amp management, introduced with Switchlade earlier this year, automatically adjusts the bias, takes care of defective valves (emergency switch-off) and displays the tubes' characteristics at the rear of the amplifier. TSC accepts EL34 and 6L6 tubes, even in mixed operation – which means personal tube customizing without limits!
The MC412CL is a new 4x12“ cabinet, especially crafted for the Coreblade. Oversized and made of even stronger wood, it is loaded with Celestion Classic Leads and handles 320 watts at 8 ohms, thus converting the amp's primal power into massive sound pressure.
Coreblade is exclusively manufactured in Germany in Hughes & Kettner's Custom Shop, certified to the strict regulations of ISO9001 to guarantee utmost reliability and longest service life.
Specs:
• four channels: 2 x high-gain (independently voiced), versatile drive channel, clean channel with outstanding headroomFor more information:
• optimal adjustment of power amp feedback for each channel
• three parallel fx modules: reverb, delay, modulation
• groundbreaking, ultra high-precision IDB™ noise gate
• completely analog, programmable and maintenance free PRN potentiometers
• all rotary knob settings storeable in 128 presets
• perfect control over all presets via included MIDI floorboard
• backup presets directly to a standard USB stick
• 100-watt TSC power amp; preamp: 3 x 12AX7
• automatic bias adjustment, display for characteristics facilitates tube selection
• emergency switch-off of defective valves, hassle-free replacement of tubes
• power amp customizing with EL34 and 6L6GC, even in mixed operation
Hughes & Kettner