Hughes & Kettner Switchblade 50 combo

[Dante]

Just pulled the trigger.

Midi programmable 50w tube combo. I'm in.

The amp hasn't even shipped yet, I'm all excited about it showing up. I'll keep ya posted. I may have a set of tubes waiting when it gets here.

Trying to decide if I just use the onboard FX in it (delay, chorus, flange) and my midi pedal. (It has phantom power through the 7 pin midi cable!!) OR...if I use my Boss MS3 FX, and use the MS3 as a midi controller. It has more FX inside, and a couple FX loops. Can't wait to tinker.

If I remember correctly, Panda has a Switchblade combo too...

UPDATE: I just realized that this thing is almost an ADA TriTube...it has programmable Tubey Preamp/Poweramp, onboard Chorus, Flange, and Tremolo, Reverb, Delay. The only thing(s) to add; wireless transmitter, Pitch Fork pedal. I only use 2-3 patches for each song, I can easily have 4 patches per song with the stock footswitch....seems like a win/win.

The ONLY drawback: no direct out, gotta use the mic. Both of my amps are that way (well, my other one doesn't sound great direct....so)

[rnolan]

Hey Dante, nice  :whoohoo!: hope it sounds good for you  :thumb-up:

[Dante]

From what I've heard online, it's gonna kill.  >:D

I'll run through a demo, record a video. (I'm amazed at how many people actually watch the ones I've done about old amps I've demo'd)

[Dante]

Whelp, I got the amp the other day. It looks just like the pix, in decent shape, but been around the stage a few times.

It's noisy.  :facepalm:

I tried new tubes, still noisy. Really noisy. On all voices...really amplified on the Lead and Ultra channels...

So, I reached out to my local amp repair shops in town - nobody will touch it. They only work on Marshall, Fender, Peavey, etc. They will not touch a Line6, H&K, Blackstar, Egnator, etc. So, I had to get online and find somebody that will service an H&K. I found a guy in Southern CA (9 hour drive away) and called him. He said I can ship it to him for repairs and get it shipped back.

The saga continues....to be continued...

[Dante]

Bump: The saga is over.

I shipped it to the Palm Desert, CA for $80. So, we know my bill is gonna be $160 worth of shipping. Mind you, I'm fixing an amp I've never really 'had'....or used...just making it more expensive at every turn  :hair-out:

Whelp, here we are, 4.5 months later and I just picked up my amp from the local FedEx office. (of course, they put it on the counter upside down - the UP arrows pointing down  :facepalm: )

I got it home, unpacked everything, hooked it up to my ADA footswitch and created 7 patches about as quick as an MP-1...possibly quicker, because, knobs. Turn all the knobs where you like 'em, push the STORE button, push the number on your pedal. Done. So easy, so quick.

The cleans on this thing are amazing - as good as (or dare I say better than) the MP-2 cleans. It's nice. The gains are everything you want/need. It gets a great Brown sound on the 'classic' voicing with the gain a little less than half. Turn up the gain and it starts to snarl. The Crunch is BEEFY, the Ultra is...well, over the top. You can dial it back and get great downtune metal tones that don't flub out.

I must add; It has all new tubes and a new speaker. The repair guy said the power tubes I just bought were leaking, so he put some Svetlana tubes in it after trying several options he had at his shop. Good choice, that thing sounds great and is very low noise, even on the Ultra. I get some singing feedback that is really nice. The new speaker is a WGS G12c/s

Now, I need to figure out how to assign the effects via Midi CC numbers to use my Quad switch to toggle them on/off in each patch.

[rnolan]

Hey Dante, great news  :whoohoo!: :thumb-up: .  I went to a tube rolling thingy a few years ago where the Svetlanas sounded better than anything else in Marshalls and Fender amps, the guy compared a bunch of tubes and they sounded the best for that application (both 12AX7s and power tubes).

[Dante]

Well, here's an interesting development. The effects are permanently assigned to particular CC numbers. You can't change them, you have to set your pedal to activate that CC#.

The main ones I need are as follows:

• The solo boost is #64
• The Modulation effects are #52
• The Delay is #53

As far as I know, I cannot change the CC#s in my ADA MXC footswitch (see the screen shot below, I tried that, but why won't it work?). Let me know if I'm wrong because I'd really rather use my existing midi footswitch.

For now, the only options I see to switch the FX on/off are;

• Use a separate multi-effect device
• Use the proprietary footswitch that H&K makes

Since the cheapest multi effect I could find with midi is at least $300, I am opting for the H&K proprietary footswitch for $200.

For what I've spent on this Switchblade, I could've purchased a Grandmeister 36....which comes with the pedal  :hair-out:

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey Dante,

            Try plugging the Quad Switch in the other jack on the MXC, see if that makes any difference.
 
            The first thing to understand is that you don't change CC assignments in the MXC or the Quad switch. What you're doing is instructing the amp to respond to that CC# when you press an assigned button on the Quad switch.

            What I would do first, is try to establish that there is a communication between the amp and the MXC/Quad pedals.
                  (Super Cool little amp BTW)
            If there is some way for you to see if the amp sees the Quad switch buttons being pressed, then that's a good beginning. When you know it sees the Quad switch, then you'll have to look at how to assign that CC# to that button on the Quad Switch. I'm 99% certain it would be in the amplifier's MIDI controls to do that.

           Let me know what you find out.

Harley 8)


P.S. I did a little investigating, and it looks like plugging the Quad Switch into Switch 1 on the MXC will give you CC#64 on button 1 by default. So...if you can get that to give you your boost, then all we need to do is figure out how to change CC assignments for buttons 3 and 4.

[MarshallJMP]

Changing the CC numbers in the MXC should be possible, I know I have done it before.  What you can do is plug the MXC into the MP-2 and go to the midi monitor of the mp-2 so you can check what the mxc is sending out.

[Dante]

I went through the whole process, and it appears to be sending a signal to the CC# I want, but it doesn't work on the amp  :dunno:

NOTE: Once you press 9+7 on the MXC, you use the Bank UP/Down to select the CC number, then press 9+1 to store it, and Bank Up to accept the store. Done. Took me a while to figure that out, it wasn't saving the change without that crucial last step.

[MarshallJMP]

I'm sure you checked it but is the midi channel setting correct? Also are you sure these CC commands are fixed?

[Harley Hexxe]

It sounds like the MIDI channels might not be matched up.

Just from personal experience, I've found Omni mode to be completely useless for 90% of MIDI applications. It's better to have channels matched to each other.

Just sayin'

Harley 8)

[Dante]

Y'know, I haven't tried that. I will try all the other midi channels to see if that works. Not sure what channel the amp is on, but I found a way to switch the midi channel of the proprietary H&K footswitch. I tried all of those, but nah. No workie on the fX. strange.

If my midi pedal doesn't work, I'm going to cannibalize my Peavey pedal board and take the Boss MS-3 off. I can hook it up via 4cm and run it that way. I still have access to all four voicings via Midi with that thing...

[Dante]

Okay, I have officially tried everything I can think of and it still doesn't work on the damn switchblade.

I tried each midi channel, one at a time. Nothing.

It was pretty easy to program the MXC quickly to test it out and pretty quick to change the midi channels too. Oh well, I'll just try using the Boss for effects...on the pedalboard, and use it for patch switches too. It's a bit tricky to get it to be a midi controller, that's another rabbit hole for a different thread.

[Dante]

Okay, I think I just saved this thing from a firey death...I was literally ready to roll it off a cliff, video the whole thing, and call it "how to fix a Hughes & Kettner"

My MXC has no problems at all saving patches and selecting them in the amp. Cool. I wrote one for each voicing (four total) and saved them using my MXC. Then, using some new math, I figured out which patches I needed to access with my Boss MS-3. (the H&K is in banks, with four patches each)

Once I could simply use button 1 for the Clean channel, 2 for Crunch, 3 for Lead and 4 for Ultra...I could just save the settings I liked for each one. The MS-3 has something called 'manual mode' which is the same thing that H&K calls 'stompbox mode' and it allows you to turn individual FX on/off. I'm using the MS-3 to do that because I simply cannot find a way to do it with anything else. So, I'm not using any of the effects in the amp, but I got a (programmable) 4 channel amp outta the deal.

It'll work, and I already have a pedalboard set up to do it (I use the same board for my Peavey). I found a guy nearby selling a combo case (rolling case with a handle like a suitcase) and my amp fits nicely inside. Makes a good amp stand for the stage too.