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HUGHES AND
KETTNER ‘TRILOGY 100 WATT CUSTOM VALVE HEAD Reviewer: Craig McDonald Distributor: CMI |
This edition I am reviewing the Hughes and Kettner "Trilogy" 100-watt ‘Custom-Valve-Series’ head. After many years of looking at standard vinyl black covered amp heads with the manufacturers logo just stuck on the front, it is refreshing to see that a company like Hughes and Kettner has decided to put some effort into the design, and have come up with a very attractive and extremely tough looking head. At first glance this amp looks like it really means business and in the sound department it certainly does.
With "Trilogy", Hughes & Kettner has unveiled one of the worlds most advanced and fully-featured all-tube amp in its class. Sporting three totally independent channels, four selectable modes with additional ‘sparkle’ and ‘boost’ modes, it conjures six markedly different sonic-sensations at the touch of a button, (or footswitch), courtesy of built-in midi-intelligence and ingenious ‘Smart-Loop’ effects routing. "Trilogy" turns a new page in the book on on-stage handling efficiency and convenience.
I tested the "Trilogy" head through my Marshall quad-box, and it really did look awesome sitting on top. The head is of very solid construction all round with chunky corner protectors, solid rubber feet, a clear Perspex front cover that allows you to see the valves glowing in the distance and to top it off, that fantastic blue neon glow inside and across the front illuminating the valves and the Hughes & Kettner name. It really looks impressive!
At first glance, there seem to be a lot of controls spread out across the front, but this is due to the extra channels and tone-shaping adjustments you are able to make, although it is pretty simple to work out. You have a master-volume, presence and FX-mix control on one section controlling the overall settings, bass, mid and treble EQ controls for all the other three channels. Clean with a ‘sparkle’ option, crunch with a ‘boost’ option and lead with an ‘ultra-lead’ option. The supplied foot-switch plugs into the rear of the head (with ample length of lead) and is able to switch between clean/sparkle — crunch/boost — lead and ultra-lead.
The rear panel is very clean and uncluttered with four loudspeaker outputs for different ohms settings, series/parallel FX return jacks, foot-switchable FX-Loop on/off jack, midi-in, channel select jack and FX-level adjustment. So let’s go straight to the first of the gain channels that has been such a hot topic of discussion.
Well if distortion is what you are after, you will find plenty of that here in this head, and I only started with the ‘crunch’ channel. Switch to ‘boost’ and things start to get even hotter, with a nice crunchy ‘Marshall’ valve distortion tone which was still pretty heavy, and easily able to be used for solos, but wait, there is still one dirtier channel available! Jump onto ‘lead’ and things begin to scream with a perfect thick distortion tone for solo’s then switch to ‘ultra-lead’ and things begin to scorch, with over-the-top fully saturated valve gain and screaming harmonics.
A click of the foot-switch will bring you back to earth to a pristine clean tone with plenty of headroom, and no sign of distortion, even at higher volumes, then for that added crystal-clean clarity, select ‘sparkle’ and brighten up your tone even more. The "Trilogy" is truly a very flexible amp with some of the best distorted tones I have heard for some time!
If you are after a bluesier ‘just-breaking-up’ tone, no problems, just wind back the gain on any channel, you will find all gain controls and EQ to be very responsive. And if you require just a little more bite overall, just add a little extra presence via the master-control section — it’s so easy to get a great tone out of this amp. Each of the individual channels has it’s own coloured led so you know which one you’re on, and if you have ‘sparkle’, ‘boost’ or ‘ultra-lead’ selected. The ability to pre-set your channel settings and bring them up simply with the supplied footswitch is great, especially in a live situation.
I love the overall tone and amount of gain it has, and still always controllable. As most guitarists know, it’s far better to be able to turn down the gain, rather than struggling having no gain left to turn up! And you will never have any trouble running out of volume! Make no mistake; this is a power machine, no reverb, no built in effects, just pure valve power. The brilliance is in the ability to connect an outboard effects-processor via the FX-mix, control it via a midi-footswitch, but have the head actually store the FX-loops setting in either series or parallel modes.
This is a fantastic option, as all the tones from this amp are so good, you would not need external distortion pre-amps, maybe just some other modulating effects to compliment the "Trilogy’s" already great sound. This option is called ‘Intelligent-Channel-Switching and FX-Routing’. Configurable in serial and parallel modes, ‘Smart-Loop’ automatically recalls its setting (including on/off) for every channel. Simply plug in a midi stage-board and an outboard effects-processor to be able to access many different effects.
If you take a look back at amp development, there have been a lot of changes made, also as rock music has evolved, so have guitarists’ demands. Whereas in the ‘60s and ‘70s the single-channel, one-trick pony was standard, many of today’s amps offer three or even four channels, but some things haven’t changed. Most of these multi-channel machines get just one sound right. There’s the hi-gain shred monster with clean and crunch channels tacked on as a cosmetic afterthought. Then there’s the amp that does pristine clean thing wonderfully, but is less stellar in the overdrive department. Now the "Trilogy" brings many of its remarkable qualities to the midrange price class of $2099 and most prominently with a jaw-dropping experience in tone. Overall I thought this amp was fantastic and very flexible. Clean tone can be jazz or totally crystal, crunch tone can be bluesy or straight rock and lead tones can be metal or more metal! - but all truly ‘fat-valve-tones’ throughout. Perfect for the gigging musician, or still right at home in the studio, the "Trilogy" is certainly worth a good look.