I just spent about 90 minutes with each of these here in Hong Kong. Plugged into a Mesa 4x12 believe it or not. I thought they were toys. I was SOOOO wrong. Granted, most anything is gonna sound great and huge out of a Mesa 4x12. But even though these things weigh next to nothing and are all plastic in construction, they just sound frickin' great. All three have similar but very different gain profiles. Ain't technology great? Plus they got that RGB action.... :)
@@thomasraven OK. I care why? They're amusing and sound surprisingly decent. Ain't gonna replace my HK Grandmeister 40 or Mesa Lonestar head or even my Katana but the point of my comment was to offer potentially informative feedback after first hand sampling. It was not to discuss or excuse its construction. No skin off my back man...and not to be snarky, but you might be missing out on an amusing, possibly surprisingly useful device.
Great video! as always! I picked up the the "Spirit of Vintage" a week ago to use with my Epiphone Es339 and it works exactly as advertised. Beautiful clean tones when needed. I use a reverb pedal and delay just a little of each to sweeten the tones into a 12 inch Jenson from a 65 Fender Deluxe. Very loud indeed!
At that price, a stereo rig suddenly looks very affordable, maybe with two 1x12 cabs, and you'd have 100 watts. Hmmm..... The perfect thing would be these, with an effects loop, for £30 more.
Sorry Bea, but these amps don't "figure" out anything at all "inside", considering the one speaker out. It is a Class D powerstage. It has 4 Ohms as minimum impedance to run safely. It then produces arround 50 Watts. 25 Watts with an 8 Ohm Cabinet and 13 Watts with a 16 Ohm speaker. Like any other non valve powerstage does too ;) Don't make them smarter, then they are! But they sound really really good. Only downside is the missing FX Loop, dealbreaker for me. Allthough you could run the headphone out stereo into a delay or something and then into a Mixer. If I would need something like that for home use, I would not bother with a guitar cab, but use it as mentioned to improvise an FX loop.
Give Pete a school uniform and with this intro you could convince me that the video was about Andertons forming an ACDC tribute band. Those little amps are mighty. You could legitimately strap one to your pedal board and save yourself dragging around a full on tube head just sending the line out to any desk where you would be gigging. Get a cabinate with neodynium speakers installed to go with one and that is a back saver for a touring guitarist. With the 'Spirit of' line H&K should launch one based on Alex Lifeson's sound. After all, the name 'Spirit of Radio' shouts out to any Rush fan who sees this video.
Got a MV50 Rock a few years back when transitioning from digital Combo to Analog Head for gig convenience and tone, and it was a revelation! So much rock and feel (also through a 2x12 V30), and I expect them to be in that ballpark 👌🏻
If these had an effects loop, Hughes & Kettner would have a winner. Compare this to the Orange Micro Dark. It has an effects loop, which is what makes it a go-to amplifier. And when I would go to an open-mic, I could plug the Effects Send into the Effects Return on the venue's house amplifier, and instantly have a familiar sound. Without that,, you are stuck with what you get at the house amplifier, or lug your own cab.
I always see these things a year late😅😹, but yeah, I just purchased the Spirit of Metal...because why? _T.O.N.E._ I looove tone, and these lil babies have tone in great, steaming gobs! I've been acquiring guitars and now have 7...I think it's 7, maybe I should count...., and have been a happy Helix user since 2019. But since I write and record my music and play all instruments myself, I do not want to _ever_ need a certain tone or sound quality and not be capable of achieving it. To that end, the H&K Spirit of Metal. Even though I love my Helix, I still dig amps too. And now that playing live may be possible again, I do not want to move a shit ton of gear, not on a circuit where there are 3 or 4 bands per night. You gotta be in and on and set up and rock and then out. And believe this or not, I have all kinds of trouble with sound engineers in the clubs; they do not wanna let me use Helix straight to the house PA! They worry that it will blow up their sound system! Man, like what century are these guys in, anyway? Well, now I got a solution for what I call, Slightly Outdated Sound Engineer Syndrome, or SOSES for short. Sound engineers who suffer from SOSES are gonna get SAMAS! Sky's Awesome Micro Amp Solution! No matter what, I will never be robbed of good tone🤣😅😹🤜💥🤛
Why am i seen overdrive pedals on the floor? Since these amp heads only have one channel, does it work well with a boost overdrive pedal for the convenience of switching from a cleaner sound to a more driven sound? Do these amps sound good when the gain is set low and an overdrive pedal is use to boost the signal in front? Does it has a similar tubeamp saturation when a booster pedal is put in front. I would get one of these if i could manage to add more gain and less gain via a pedal without using the distortion of a pedal as such in order to use it for Live gigs while being able to go from cleaner to more saturated without having to reach for the knob.
Oh man, those sound great! I'm a metalhead, but I actually preferred the Vintage for some reason. I really wish it had an fx loop though, for running a looper AND a boost effectively. It would be a perfect travel amp. Well, it IS, but even more so...
The Vintage and Rock sound great. But huge oversight by H&K not to put an FX loop on these. They are gainy amps and most people who play with gain use delay. You can certainly run delay and verb into the front and tweak the pedals to sound O.K but they'll never be as clean as an FX loop using gain. Good opportunity for someone to come up with a decent FX loop mod for these and then they'd be really useful. They could have put a small jack of some kind and offer a breakout box or adapter for an FX loop as an accessory.
I never noticed before... Is Rabea a lefty who learned to play right handed, or is he one of the very few right handed persons who wear their watch on their right wrist? :-D Nice tones out of them there tiny boxes!
Just needs an effects loop for reverb or echo? No thinking about it I'll just keep my Katana with it's speaker, 4 amps, power soak, and lots of really usable effects. Thanks.😁
I love me some Hughes & Kettner. The vintage/cleans are incredible, but they're struggling with making the leap to a high gain sound up to the same standard.
I'm starting to pick up on the nutube sound I think, I hear a similarity in these vs the vox mv line, and tbh I love the flavor. I'm all for it and currently trying to swap over to analogue for reliability
The metal one sounds a bit messy, for what it propose it lacks a bit of definition IMO. Spirit of Rock immediately throws Rabbea into Nuno mode, which is awesome!
Are these just smaller more tailored sounds of the black spirit? Does the full blown black spirit cover all these tones? I don’t recall the blackbspirit sounding this good. May have to go rewatch some vids. Oh forgot to give you guys props for that killer intro jam. 👍🏻
