Hughes & Kettner Spirit of Vintage Head guitar amp

Hughes & Kettner Spirit of Vintage Head

Sparkling clean tone that chimes like a glockenspiel. Smoky blues tones with the snarl of a junkyard dog. Lead sounds that wail as seductively as Siren’s song. Expansive, enveloping arena rock tones. The malevolent grind of a chainsaw gnawing on heavy metal: Iconic sounds such as these have been giving voice to new modes of musical expression and shaping the sound of entire genres for more than 60 years now. The new Spirit Nano Heads from Hughes & Kettner capture the spirit of each era of legendary guitar sounds in three amps with distinctive personalities.

LEGENDARY VINTAGE TONE

Single-channel amps with no master knob are the holy grail of tone for some, reigning supreme in many guitarists’ amp pantheon. No other circuit creates such a direct connection between human and machine. And no other amp responds with such immediacy, feels as alive, or serves up such a sensuous experience in sound. This type of amp was the wellspring from which all those iconic sounds of the ‘60s and early ‘70s flowed; the weapon of choice for the rebels who created the blueprint for rockin’ tone.

The Spirit of Vintage is the rightful heir to those amps in terms of sound design with its sweeping dynamic range and touch-sensitive response to your phrasing. Best of all, it delivers those goods even with the Master rolled back. The Sagging control lets you wail with wanton abandon, ripping it up with raw but beguilingly beautiful tone, albeit without alienating the neighborhood. Turn it up and you’ll have no choice but to dig in!

Rolling back the Gain and Sagging knobs cleans up the Spirit of Vintage’s sound when you pick with a light touch. Then, when you hit the strings harder, it breaks up just like the tube amps of yore to crank out warm, wooly distortion oozing with overtones. Higher Gain settings put a touch more grit at your fingertips with kind of distortion you need to play single-note lines with bluesy authenticity. Anything from sweet to snarling goes.

The Tone knob is your all-access ticket to the entire spectrum of less feral tone from early Californian clean to classic British crunch. It’s all right there for you to enjoy at the nudge of a knob.

SMALL BOX, MIGHTY PUNCH

Don’t be fooled by the miniature format. The Spirit Nano belies its diminutive dimensions with the impressive power of full-fledged power amp rated for up to 50 watts. That’s enough to rock even a 4×12″ cab. Developed specifically for the Spirit line, the Ultra Response power amp behaves exactly like its tube-based cousins. It always sounds great at every volume and never grates at level, even at full tilt. Waste not, want not: This little beastie sends every single watt to the speaker. All those delicious dynamics remain intact and every watt is translated into impressive sound pressure. These petit powerhouses pack a punch as mighty as any tube power amp with a similar output.

SPIRIT: THE BIONIC TONE GENERATOR

At the heart of the Spirit Nano amps is the Spirit Tone Generator, a novel bionic design developed by Hughes & Kettner to replicate the analog processes of a tube circuit. This miniature masterpiece distills the essence of tube amps’ magical physics and incomparable tone into a compact, strictly analog circuit that promises unbridled playing pleasure.

The Spirit Tone Generator is made in Germany to uncompromising standards and sealed in a protective housing. We’re talking about a soulful circuit imbued with the spirit of great amp sounds here, so we simply had to call this tech “Spirit.

SAGGING: FOR UNBRIDLED PLAYING PLEASURE

You have to drive a conventional output stage very hard for the sound to acquire that magical energy that can not only be heard, but also felt. The Spirit Tone Generator lets you dial in that oh-so-sweet power amp saturation as easily and effectively as on a classic tube amp, but in a far more manageable way. That makes this a creative sound-shaping tool to rival any gain knob.

Twist it to dial in the tone and feel of classic power amps driven to saturation at extremely high volume levels. The Sagging knob on the Spirit Nano Heads gives you total control over power amp saturation regardless of volume. Sagging Spirit-style delivers that the awesome sound of a vintage power amp driven to the point of meltdown. A very sensitive tool, it dials in everything from the hair-trigger response you need for lean, mean rhythm tone to the powerful compression you need to broadcast your musical statements out into the world with in-your-face attitude.

RECORDING WITH GOOSEBUMP GUARANTEE

These petite powerhouses never fail to impress. Paired with any speaker, they always deliver sensational performance. But Spirit Nano Heads are also real tone-sculpting tools that produce big studio sound even with the smallest recording setup – no speaker or microphone required.

This is where the inconspicuous Line Out on the back of the amps enters the picture. They feed the Spirit Tone Generator’s unfiltered, purely analog signal to the audio interface’s line input via a standard instrument cable to take full advantage of all the speaker emulations, microphone modeling, room simulation and effects the digital world has on offer. All that adds up to inspiring sound with a built-in guarantee to raise goosebumps and tingle spines.

JAMMING WITH HEADPHONES

The Aux In jack is your friend 24/7. Plug in your audio source and there’s nothing to stop you from jamming to backing tracks with a refreshingly authentic tone any time, day or night. You won’t have to fuss with any outboard equipment. The amp blends the Aux In signal with your guitar’s signal and then routes the composite to the front-panel Phones jack in full stereo.

Specifications:

• With transistor amplifier
• Ideal for clean, blues and crunch sounds
• Completely analogue sound generation
• Transport-friendly miniature format
• 1 Channel
• Power: 50 watts into 4 ohms
• Spirit Tone Generator technology
• Controls: Master, Sagging, Tone, Gain
• Sagging control for power amp saturation independent of volume level
• Unfiltered line-out as basis for the use of software cab sims
• 2x 6.3 mm Jack speaker outputs: min. 4 Ohm
• 6.3 mm Jack input
• 3.5 mm stereo jack aux input
• 6.3 mm Stereo jack headphone output with RedBox emulation of TubeMeister18
• Dimensions (W x D x H): 190 x 90 x 90 mm
• Weight incl. power supply: approx. 1.1 kg - 725g without power supply