With the ever-pervasive popularity of amp modellers nowadays, it’s not all that often I see major discounts on the traditional guitar amp. That just changed though, because Thomann has slashed the prices of Hughes & Kettner amps by a massive up to 40%.
I suspect this is because Thomann recently acquired the German amp makers, and although I’m not sure what they’ve got in store for the brand, for those on the hunt for a backline upgrade, it’s a great way to save on tube amp heads, pedal amps, stomp boxes, and guitar cabinets.
The cheapest deal in the sale is on the teeny tiny ‘Spirit of’ amp heads, with my personal favorite, the Vintage model, getting a price cut that takes it down to just £44. It’s got all analogue circuitry, so no digital modelling here, and can spit out up to 25 watts of power with an 8-ohm speaker or 50 watts with a 4-ohm cab. It’s impressive values for the size, and even more so with the heavily discounted price.
The Vintage model has oodles of clean headroom, but if you want something gainier, the Rock version takes things up a notch with a more mid-range heavy, fatter tone. The Metal model barely gets clean, instead giving you pure saturated distortion that will cover everything from Slayer to Pantera and more.
If you’re looking for an even more compact solution, the Hugher & Kettner AmpMan Classic is a two-channel amplifier in pedal form with a huge variety of connectivity options. The two channels have individual controls, so you can dial in contrasting tones that will cover a lot of ground.
With a discount that takes it down to just £129, it’s incredibly good value for money, considering you can pay that for just a single overdrive pedal these days. I really love the flexibility of connectivity, with an FX loop for running your time-based and modulation effects, as well as a DI out with 8 different cab settings that should have you covered for the vast majority of playing and recording scenarios.
Finally, I had to shout out the Hughes & Kettner Redbox 5, whose lineage runs from one of the first speaker simulators ever created. It’s designed to sit between your amp and speaker, but it doesn’t have a dummy load built in, so you’ll either have to connect it to your existing speaker or add an additional load box into the signal path.
What it does do really well is give you great-sounding speaker emulation that’s easy to fit into a mix, with loads of well-thought-out options for tweaking your sound. With a 37% discount in the sale it’s down to just £43, which is super cheap for any DI box, and well worth it if you don’t want the hassle of miking up your amp each time you want to record.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.