Phrasemaker
New member
Hi,
Having been a little frustrated with getting my guitar sounds right for recording when it's not practical to mic a cabinet, I've been pondering and looking around for the last couple of months to find a solution. When I say a sound that's right, I appreciate it's subjective and to elaborate, I guess a sound that's harmonically rich at clean levels and authentic when bordering on a crunch sound and beyond. I have a reasonable arsenal of solid state pre-amp effects with various modelling options and I've also used the mic tube pre-amps whilst recording guitar with some success.
The solution for me is the Hughes and Kettner Tubemeister 5 pictured below, I appreciate that everyone's requirement in respect of recording guitar sounds is individual, but I am so chuffed with what this amp delivers, I thought it would be worth mentioning. The amp is rated at 5 watts RMS, which is in my opinion seriously under-rated, as the only rule when connecting a cabinet is that it must be 8-16 ohms. I purchased a matched cabinet which is small enough to have in my studio loaded with a single Celestion TEN 30 driver which can be mic'd for when noise is not an issue, but the feature that I primarily bought it for is the XLR red box output which can be piped into a mixer or direct into my multi-tracker.
A push button on the rear of the amp mutes the speaker output and loads the amp so that the output which would drive the speaker is soaked and dissipated as heat. Removing the speaker jack from the amp also switches in this mode, thus protecting the amp. The output from the XLR is very comparable to to the cabinet sound in all respects and delivers the harmonically rich sound that valve amps are renowned for. This output is set up to emulate a cabinet sound and I have to say I think it does a fine job. For the sake of curiosity I hooked the amp to a 4x12 cabinet and was amazed by the results and found I'd certainly get enough output to gig with at a smallish venue. I think the over sized transformers contained in this diminutive head provide ridiculous amounts of headroom which result in a very flexible piece of equipment.
Turning up the gain easily takes the sound from clean into grunge, a drive button on the front when depressed overdrives the sound by a large amount whilst retaining the flexibility of adjustment via the gain control which provides a massive range of sound characteristics to be experimented with. I am just a newbie at home recording and have no agenda in respect of promoting equipment but found I am so pleased with this amp and how it performs, I thought maybe someone else might find my personal experience with it of interest.
Regards
Tim
Having been a little frustrated with getting my guitar sounds right for recording when it's not practical to mic a cabinet, I've been pondering and looking around for the last couple of months to find a solution. When I say a sound that's right, I appreciate it's subjective and to elaborate, I guess a sound that's harmonically rich at clean levels and authentic when bordering on a crunch sound and beyond. I have a reasonable arsenal of solid state pre-amp effects with various modelling options and I've also used the mic tube pre-amps whilst recording guitar with some success.
The solution for me is the Hughes and Kettner Tubemeister 5 pictured below, I appreciate that everyone's requirement in respect of recording guitar sounds is individual, but I am so chuffed with what this amp delivers, I thought it would be worth mentioning. The amp is rated at 5 watts RMS, which is in my opinion seriously under-rated, as the only rule when connecting a cabinet is that it must be 8-16 ohms. I purchased a matched cabinet which is small enough to have in my studio loaded with a single Celestion TEN 30 driver which can be mic'd for when noise is not an issue, but the feature that I primarily bought it for is the XLR red box output which can be piped into a mixer or direct into my multi-tracker.
A push button on the rear of the amp mutes the speaker output and loads the amp so that the output which would drive the speaker is soaked and dissipated as heat. Removing the speaker jack from the amp also switches in this mode, thus protecting the amp. The output from the XLR is very comparable to to the cabinet sound in all respects and delivers the harmonically rich sound that valve amps are renowned for. This output is set up to emulate a cabinet sound and I have to say I think it does a fine job. For the sake of curiosity I hooked the amp to a 4x12 cabinet and was amazed by the results and found I'd certainly get enough output to gig with at a smallish venue. I think the over sized transformers contained in this diminutive head provide ridiculous amounts of headroom which result in a very flexible piece of equipment.
Turning up the gain easily takes the sound from clean into grunge, a drive button on the front when depressed overdrives the sound by a large amount whilst retaining the flexibility of adjustment via the gain control which provides a massive range of sound characteristics to be experimented with. I am just a newbie at home recording and have no agenda in respect of promoting equipment but found I am so pleased with this amp and how it performs, I thought maybe someone else might find my personal experience with it of interest.
Regards
Tim
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