Devin Townsend meets GrandMeister Deluxe 40 | Hughes & Kettner 

Yep, fair to say we were pretty excited to hang out with Devin :) He's one of our absolute favorites! Glad you enjoyed the video!

I wouldn't say that, I'd say the most criminally underrated 'musician/composer' in the last 25. 'There are lots of guitarists that would eclipse him technically, but it's his choice and composition that make wanking solos unnecessary in his music. All the solo parts I've heard from him were very fitting and tasteful, even though he's got chops to be -much- waayy more. I love wailing melodic solos, but after hours of messing around with him as a background, I don't see much room for it, while still remaining tasteful. He's very 'lydian' due to the natural open C tuning he uses and the note patterns that present themselves, but lydian has almost been done to death as a solo thing (Vai, Satriani), but he uses little bits in his songs that make it very tasteful and never overused. Yes, there are those songs that are begging for it, but it's a little more than obvious he's thinking further and deeper.

macewindex lol brilliant reading into that

The impassioned look of a defeated man....

Check out the intro to Mountaintop. Absolutely gorgeous.

Akshit Jha0

Its not hard

Ha, next time ;)

Chairsfordavid

Then again, who wouldn't take a knee for DT?

@@HughesandKettneramps Would this amp head work well with a Schecter PT Special (P90/single coil)?

@@Sig721Tau Yes! We've tested it with a bunch of guitar types and pickups - P90s are awesome with it, and a Tele-style bridge single coil is our absolute favorite! We're sure the amp would match your PT Special very well :)

Thanks Bill! Glad you found us.

Thanks so much dude! We hope you like it when you get to play it for yourself.

I rememeber watching demos of this years ago when it was relevant, and it's still relevant.

I noticed that, too! Have you seen the teaser clips for 'Empath'?

Thanks Howard! It was awesome just to be there watching Devin dialing in and testing those tones. Hopefully there will be a lot more of that to come!

We're extremely happy to hear that! Welcome to the Meister Family, and we hope your TM40 give you many years of musical inspiration and great tones! Rock on, Team H&K

Awesome, enjoy the amp when you get it :)

He is indeed, thanks Nathan!

Hughes & Kettner so whats the deal yall giving him amps now or just a drop in? what cab is that underneath? v30s?

We just dropped in to see Dave Young (Devin's guitarist), who has been playing TubeMeister since forever. We wanted to show him the GM40, and Devin also fancied a go, and that's what you can see here! As for giving him amps in future, maybe... hopefully, let's see!

Hughes & Kettner what kind of cabinet underneath? devy is all about some blue led's so thats one thing you guys got going on, but mesa has bent over backwards for him for atleast a decade now. if u guys can come up with an amp that will stomp the crap out anything mesa, not only will devy be wanting amps but the rest of the world will be all over them. good luck and keep making those great amps. i may have to take a look at one soon myself. cheers. d

Cheers dude! This was just a spontaneous thing, but it went very well and who knows what's going to happen. About the cab, it's one of our 2x12s, the TM212: hughes-and-kettner.com/products/cabinets/tm212/ (These cabs were designed to fit perfectly with the Meister series amps...)

H&K seriously make the best stuff. I bought a Triamp a 25 years ago that I still use as my main recording rig. It blows away anything else I've ever played through (and that is a lot of stuff). Have been tempted to buy one of these just to have it.

H&K better than Friedman? :D

i like h&k more, my taste :-)

Hope you enjoy it when it arrives dude!

bluzmanintx 817 how do you like it now I'm stuck between what you have and a evh model. Also a Sweetwater customer

Thank you sir! And to Devin for making it sound awesome of course.

I'm now considering getting one based on this Demo. Cheers

Thanks for the kind words Tim! It was great fun and an honor to sit there with Devin and listen to him as he got to know the amp - and hopefully there's more to come soon ;)

Thank you for the reply and thank you for the ReTweets. I have been tweeting the BLOG of Tone articles. I also take care of the Aldious USA Twitter/Instagram. As you know the 'pink' Coreblade of Toki. ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶

We know - thank you very much for all the tweets! What we'd love to do at some point is a rig rundown with Toki - that pink Coreblade always gets a lot of attention, and there's a TriAmp in the setup too... that'd be a great one to do. Maybe if we're ever over that way, or the band tours Europe...

Thank you! I sent the message to Mr. Matamura on Facebook. I said he could contact you through Twitter or Facebook. (The Aldious girls make me laugh) and I like to help Mr. and Mrs. Bozzio try to get Marina to play overseas. Good Luck my facebook is facebook.com/jrock.usarock

Thanks a lot Tim, and let's see what happens :) Rock on!

Thanks dude!

@JMC4101994 I agreed

Yep, he's a total boss! Was great watching him do it and hearing it in the room :)

I'm jealous. I totally idolize this guy. Hard to believe that by talking to you I'm now only one handshake away from him!

It's a small world indeed ;) And more (even better!) Devin stuff to come from us too, as he and his guitarist Dave came to visit us a couple of weeks ago...

Surely looking forward to that!

Yep, great point - that's a massive part of it!

I'm always tuned in c standard. that's where my voice is.

Awesome to hear! We'd not actually heard of the B-52 amp, but it looks pretty cool! Shame it's gone :( But we reckon you'll be happy with the GM40. It was exactly like that with Devin: he'd never seen the amp before, and we just filmed what happened... turned out pretty well! Hope you love the amp when you get to play it for yourself :)

Very cool. I hate using pedals I personally feel that if you need a giant pedal board full of EQ's, overdrive, distortion and other preamps style sound modifiers then you bought the wrong amp. OR if you are going to use all of that then don't spend much on an amp because you are mostly using the power section and can get away with a considerably cheaper power amp. I am all about Guitar-Cable-Amp DONE! PS I am also NOT a fan of Mesa or Marshall, just sick of having those crammed down my throat all the time.

Yep, we agree! The good thing about GrandMeister is it gives you all the options in one box, so you can go guitar-cable-amp and still have all the sounds you need!

Sure helps with Devin playing it, cheers Marc!

@@HughesandKettneramps so true.

Hmm, off the top of our heads, start on the Lead channel, add the boost and adjust gain to taste, then tweak EQs as necessary, but start everything at 12 o' clock... like you said, every player is different, so just adapt your base tone from there and you might get close to Devin that way! He has a very specific guitar and technique too, as well as everything else ;)

Cheers for the kind words! If you're in the USA, it is indeed because they're selling out super fast each time a shipment comes in, but more are constantly on the way over so hopefully you'll have yours soon :) Hopefully it'll be worth the wait!

Sure does! That's Devin for you :)

@@HughesandKettneramps Is there a demo that could show how well the GM starts and stops, on palm muted low notes, compared to a Boogie Mark amp? For that Metallica dry sound without any low end flubbiness?

Hmm, we don't have a specific demo where you can see the difference between those two specific amps, no. There's some demos where you can hear the GM40 in that context from other channels (just search for it and try videos like the ones from Rabea Massaad, Ola Englund, John Browne and Sonic Drive Studio) but we're not aware of one where someone's A/Bing the GM40 againat a Boogie. Does anyone else know about this and can help?

@Cletus Anfernee Jackson What horror stories Cletus?! Here's the copy/paste anser from the other question, by the way, just in case anyone else sees this: Yep, sure is! Three years - once you buy one of our products, you just fill out this form (do it within 30 days!): hughes-and-kettner.com/support/warranty/ And you're good :) If anything ever does go wrong in that time, you just call the store where you got the amp and they'll look after you! Hope that helps, Team H&K

Thank you so much Enrique, this makes us very happy to hear :)

@Enrique Corona I have my Tubemeister 18 for almost 3 years now and I still can't say that I'm super satisfied. People on the internet really praise them, but for me it has been hit or miss so far. I really want to love my amp, but I can't. Maybe it's all my cheap cabinet's fault. What cab are you using?

@RevonFyll The Peavey 6505+ has been my main amp for a couple of years now, I got it based on all positive reviews and comparisons, but it was not what I expected, it has been a pain and struggle trying get to sound good, its a love hate thing, so I decided to switch to another brand after playing with en ENGL and a Mark IV in rehearsals. I wanted to mention this because I know what you are going thru. I bought the Tubemeiser just because it was on sale and because I dont really need a 120W amp. I have a Marshall 1960 cab that I barely use and a custom 2x12 cab that I build with V30s, its a copy of a oversize Mesa 2x12. I did not struggle to get a great sound on either channel except on the "Lead" channel, if the boost is not on it doesn sound good to me, short after I got the SD 805 OD pedal and wow sounds great on both channels. If you have a chance try it on a different CAB, go to your local guitar store and take your amp try different CABs, if still doesn't convince you then this is not the amp for you, I know people change the stock tubes to fit their playing that may be another way to go for you.

@Enrique Corona Thanks for the reply. For reference, my cab is a Kustom Defender (really low end stuff). I've tried my TM18 on a Fender Hot Rod Deville once (using the built-in speaker as a cab) and I remember it sounding a lot better, but still not quite there. I also think it sounds better with single coils. My guitar has EMG's on it, and I think they are killing a lot of the tone. If I can, I will try my amp with a Celestion Vintage 30. The matching cab for the Tubemeister is loaded with one, so I'm guessing it might be a good match.

ok just to clear things up, the tap tempo is calculated inside the h&k midi board not inside the amp, so if you already use another midi floor board, it will need to have a similar feature ,if you want to tap the delay time. for the fcb1010 there is a way, which I'm gonna try once I've got the amp. yes it's ordered! :) I dont need Red Box or Digital FX on Board, though I'm happy to have it at hand and I'll see how much of a use it will be for me. all the other features though are absolutely intriguing! like: the weight/portability, good sound and distinct sound characters on each channel, wattage control (+mute function), midi programmabilty. truly a well thought and designed product! seems also to be the ideal compagnion for ppl who want to use the same amp at home, studio and live scenarios. cant wait to try it!

Fluff will demo it very soon, no worries! It'll be out on his channel directly though, not ours. We hope he likes it too but he already got killer sounds out of it at the NAMM Show ;)

Excellent. To be honest, I'm gonna buy it anyway. I played a Tubemeister 40 at a Guitar Center, and I was blown away, I've never played a more responsive amp that was so easy to get a tone that was that organic, that raw, and that original. I'm just waiting to play the GMD40

Cool, and thanks! Yeah, might be worth waiting to try to GM40 if you want the extra versatility it brings through the built-in FX and the Ultra channel for more high-gain stuff too... Hearing Fluff's proper, produced demo is also going to be very, very cool.

Sounds like the first H&K Amp that i like :) Great Job Guys

but all of his tones are meh and his riffs are meh. He knows what he is talking about but my overall opinion is meh

Thanks for the kind words John! Not sure if you've seen them yet, but Ola Englund and Rabea Massaad (as well as others!) have also done some awesome reviews of the amp. Check them out here: Ola: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Mgc1TqoPZ10.html Rabea: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6Y6TuOfNFbk.html

No post processing whatsoever Barry. Well, we made sure the guitar/amp and the spoken stuff were the same volume, but that was literally it! Devin and his guitar (and those Fishman Fluence pickups) will have certainly played their part too, but we'd say you definitely need to try one of these to hear it for yourself. The GM40 can get as aggressive as you like!

Cheers Michael, and enjoy the GM40 when you try it for yourself! Yeah, that's a cool idea - consider it passed on to our R&D team ;)

Thanks guys! Its so cool to hear directly from you. You rock!

Almost, but the Black Spirit 200 beats it! Particularly on pure cleans, the BS200 is much louder there... That said, it's not ever really a question of the GM40 being too quiet - just the BS200 will go even further!

Hmm, have a look on out dealers list Matt, maybe there's one you didn't know: hughes-and-kettner.com/support/dealers/ Yeah, we hope you get the chance to try it soon! If you've already had a taste of H&K before you should love it! And no, nothing wrong with solid state either :) Rock on!

Yep, it's an H&K TM212. This one, to be precise: hughes-and-kettner.com/products/cabinets/tm212/