Non ADA Gear > Amps

Hughes & Kettner Grandmeister Deluxe 40

(1/7) > >>

Dante:
I have been drooling over these for a couple years now, the Grandmeister 18, 36, 40 amps. I got my Switchblade combo in hopes that is was a cheap alternative, and it is, but still....those glowing blue heads are so coooool  :metal:

Somebody was selling a Deluxe 40 on Craigslist recently, specifying NO TRADES. So, what do I do? I offer him a trade - haha...I told him "I know you said no trades, but if I don't ask..." and he said "Y'know, I may actually take you up on that" and a trade was born. I gave up a nice US built Peavey EVH Wolfgang Special in exchange for the amp and I think we both did alright in the trade.

Turns out, I know the guy already - he's a local guitarist - friend of a friend (friend of a few of my friends) - and a really nice guy.

This amp is a lot like my Switchblade, but with some more bells & whistles. With the 4 voicings, I find it a pretty adequate replacement for my MP-1 Classic. The Classic also has 4 voices, but two are clean (Solid State and Tube Clean). The Brown channel on the Classic is very close to the Crunch channel on the Grandmeister - you can push it to overdrive really easy and it sounds great. Then, the Grandmeister has two distortion channels, whereas the Classic just has one. So, each has an advantage, each has a trade-off.

The effects in the amp sound pretty good, as good as my multi effects (Boss MS-3) for sure, but I have a lot more options available if I use the multi effects instead of the amp's onboard stuff...let me explain. The stock footswitch comes with buttons for each of the 4 channels, and 3 more buttons to toggle the Boost, Delay, and Modulation FX. So, that's all four channels plus 3 options for each one.

The Boss has 4 buttons, I set each one for a channel in the amp. Then, it has a button that accesses 4 stompbox type effects within. That's one more than the amp. Then, I also have a Boss FS-7 switch that is set to access the Boost and Delay in each patch. Essentially, I have SIX options for each patch. Much better, I can stack a couple delays on a clean tone if I want to, which is nice.

So, here's the first pic of many, I will have a review as soon as I plink around a bit

rnolan:
Hey Dante, very cool  :thumb-up:

Dante:
SEMI-UPDATE: it's only been a couple days

The direct out sound (via the built in H&K Redbox) is not as hot as the live sound out of the speaker. I simply turned on the boost feature in the amp to make it sound much closer to the 'plugged in' version

I have been plugging into my very wide, very deep 1x12 Peavey cab. It sounds really nice, so I am going to find a black one to match this amp (mine is tweed, to match my Peavey Classic 20mh). I think I ended up leaving the Blue Marvel speaker in my Peavey cab after trying a couple others. That cab really projects sound outward in all directions, and Peavey made black ones for their 5150 mini head and the ValveKing mini head...I'll find one to pair with this head and use both of them for my rack rigs too!

Dante:
UPDATE;

Got a Peavey cabinet, for the Valve King micro head (kinda the Metal brother to my Classic micro head). The cab is a bit smaller than the one I was looking for (the Peavey Classic 112C cab). In fact, the cab wood is thinner too. I opened the back to see the speaker...it's unbranded. NOTHING on it at all, no branding, no markings for resistance, nothing. Weird. I looked online, see that it's a 16 ohm/40 watt cab. It seems about the size of the ADA Viper, which had really great tone in a 1x12 package, so maybe this cab will be okay

I took it to practice today, finally got to turn it up, but I really wasn't expecting much...figured I'd be either changing the speaker or buying the cab I want. Well, the damn thing sounded pretty good, I cannot complain, and I usually do. Every fiber of my being wants to swap out that speaker, I'm fighting it like crazy. But, it sounded very tight and still had tons of bottom chunka, especially in the Devil's Tuning (drop D). The cleans were amazing, no breakup at all

So, I guess the cab stays like that for a while....at least through the gig I have on 9/30...I wanna see how it fills a room, if it's a sound beam or if it actually disperses

The amp itself is sounding very good - I used it at rehearsal with a band that only runs IEMs, so I didn't use the speaker at all, just ran direct. Everything sounded fantastic, that head is solid......and it looks so cool

I really think of this head as my modern day ADA rig, much like Harley considers his Cyber Twin(s) a modern alternative to the stuff we miss, the real deal, the ADA racks of yesteryear

rnolan:
Hey Dante, great the cab worked out  :thumb-up: , sounds like a keeper.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page