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Hughes & Kettner announces new AmpMan series of pedalboard amplifiers
Featuring the brand’s proprietary Spirit Tone Generator tech.
Image: Hughes & Kettner
Hughes & Kettner has released the new AmpMan series of pedalboard amplifiers, loaded with extensive I/O and tone-shaping options.
The AmpMan comes in two flavours: Classic and Modern. Classic offers vintage-voiced clean tones and classic rock drive tones, while Modern offers parkly, ‘pristine’ cleans and full-bore metal high-gain drive tones. Both are centred around Hughes & Kettner’s own Spirit Tone Generator, an analogue signal processor that aims to recreate the behaviour of tube amplifiers.
Both AmpMan units feature the same control layout and I/O configuration. Each has two channels, with independent controls for volume, sag, presence, resonance, tone and gain, as well as a master volume and solo boost level control. Footswitches allow for channel selection, as well as engaging the solo mode and boost, and bypassing the effects loop. The solo mode allows for the selection of the secondary master volume, set with the red knob below the main control.
Alongside this effects loop, the amps feature eighth-inch jack connections for headphones and auxiliary input, as well as a 4-16 ohm speaker connection for the on-board 50-watt power amplifier. As it’s a pedalboard amplifier, not everyone will want to use it with a real speaker cabinet – luckily, there’s also a Red Box Ae+ cabinet simulator system on board. This has eight cabinet models loaded, but user impulse responses are also supported.
If you want to integrate the AmpMan Classic or Modern into your existing pedalboard, Hughes & Kettner notes that the input stage has been designed with pedals in mind. The “sensitive” input stage has been designed after that of old-school tube amplifiers, and so the unit’s impedance shouldn’t be a problem, even for picky vintage stompboxes.
The AmpMan Modern and Classic will be available this month (February 2021) for €349. Find out more at hughes-and-kettner.com.
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