Hughes & Kettner Switchblade 50W Combo

50w-(EL34)all tube, four channel, fully progamable (total recall), onboard fx, midi footswitch inclusive, 1x12 -monster!
Wich other tube amp does this?
And its quite easy to carry around with 22kg.

Hughes&Kettner does an amazing work. It is the only company, that could emulate and integrate the powertube breakup in the preamp stage in a way that it sounds authentic and very musical. I experience this phenomenon every time I play this amp or my H&K trilogy head or even the old tubeman plus preamp. Of course, it sounds even more authentic when cranked up! With the Volume half the way up it is too loud for the rehearsals. I use an 112 extension cab from Engl to spread the sound and to smooth everything out. Thats really ballsy, like a half stack! I only played it with strats, but the eq section has a very wide range, so you also find settings, wich are suitable for buckers, too.

The 4 four channels:

1-clean is classic California. First I expected a Fender blackface tone. But no! After comparing it with original amps, it is the legendary tweed bassman tone! It can be sweet, bright, clean, roaring everything. My father owns the bassman reissue and this channel smokes the original. Very responsive and like I said before this amp can emulate the powersection breakup of the original perfectly, no I would say even better, because more musical and not as mushy as the original.

2-crunch is classic Brtitsh overdrive. Very voxish. I compared it with a Vox AC30CC1 with a Celestion neodymium NeoDog speaker. This voxish crunch channel is more defined and versatile than the original! It goes from clean to oldschool rock. On the higher gain settings it sounds a bit like mix of a pushed ac30 and vintage Marshall jtm/plexi.
Very dynamic with the typical growl and highend sizzle.

3-lead is classic british high gain. Like a hot rodded and tuned plexi/early mastervolume Marshall. You get the Marshall powertube grind at low volumes. Good for my ears. It screams from Hendrix to Malmsteen.

4-ultra is american high gain. I am not playing nu metal, but this channel is a very good lead channel with a warm and defined tone with good sustain. The best quality of this channel is that the tonal character of the guitar is shinig through the distorted tone. Newer Marshalls and Mesas are falling short in this category. Nice!

The reverb and delay effects are suberb!

The modulation fx are ok sounding, not so useable for recording, but for gigs the sound quality is good enough and easy to tweak. They are digital not analog, so dont expect warm, deep and lush modulation.

flanger- a bit too much intensity. Here a mix or level knob would make it perfect.

chorus- a bit too harsh at slow speed, but does the leslie sound very good at higher settings!

tremolo- very cool, coz of the phasing wwwooouuuaaash. It is not like the classic louder/quieter oscillation. The tremolo is more mix between this early also phasing Vox and Fender tremolos/vibratos and a uni-vibe. I would call it a kind of vintage phaser/vibe/tremolo-mix.


All in all the tone is not as rich, deep and smooth like my tweed deluxe and marshall 18Watt vintage clones or of some boutique amps, but that is not the intention of this amp, I guess. If you are a gigging musician, here we go!
I got the amp 3 weeks ago. The speaker still takes time to break in, so the sound is still a bit stiff and harsh, but this will go by after a while. So it will sound even better in the future!

After some days a preamp tube got microphonic, but that can happen to every high end tube amp.

The shop gave me a new tube, no problem. But first H&K wanted the amp to be send to them. Hey guys, I am not an idiot. I am able to evaluate, if a preamp tube is broken or not. Believe your costumers!

I compared it to a tweed bassman, vox ac20cc1, a marshall modern vintage combo and a engl classic combo. This is the winner, it smokes the originals soundwise and does a lot more. Its a very musical,versatile, small powerful package. H&K, why dont you build 1x12 cabinets?

This is a follow-up to my post last December. I still love this little amp but I've discovered what a piece of shit the speaker is. I don't really get what they were going for with this sound. The Switchblade 4x12 they sell with the head comes with Celestions and sounds great. I've played my combo thru a 1x12 (celestion) mesa cab and a 2x12 open cab with Cel vintage 30's and both sound WAY better than the Eminence POS that comes stock. Tone is a subjective thing, I guess, but if you have one or are looking at them, be sure to try different speakers. And changing the speaker is a pain with how they have the chassis in the way back there... otherwise, this amp is bad-ass.

The amp is a late 2006 model, I bought it in February 2007. The amp has plenty of versatility, four selectable gain settings (clean, crunch, lead, ultra) with presence, treble, mid, bass and gain controls. A master volume, selectable effects (chorus, flanger, trem), a very nice delay control (volume, feedback, timing) and reverb. All are programmable and can be stored in the amp for instant recall when selecting the channel they've been programmed into. In addition, you can also run pedals into an effects loop and program the effects loop to switch in and out with a specific channel selection. I'm not a techy kind of person but I found this amp extremely easy to program. This amp will probably suit just about any kind of music styles, I play rock and rock/blues and I can get any type of tone out of this amp with either single coils or humbucking pickups. I can't really think of any thing the amp is missing or that I wish it had, it has more features than I'll use on a regular basis. It's a 40 watt tube amp and get get very loud for a single 12 combo, I've used it at several gigs and believe I'll never have to worry about volume, it's pretty loud.

The amp can get clean fendery type tones, definitely gets marshall tones (regardless of what other reviewers have said and I'll tell you why later in the write up) and will do some really sweet singing lead tones using the Ultra channel. I'm using a couple of different guitars with this amp, it doesn't necessarily favor one guitar over another, depends on how you set the channels up. As I've already stated I play rock (ZZ top, AC/DC, Zepplin, Crows) and blues and the amp works great, it's not a boutique type tone and definitely not for playing in the bedroom but set it up, take it to a gig and you'll be stunned at how well this amp sounds with whatever you guitar you plug in. It covers a ton of ground, all of it done very well. It's not a noisy amp, even with higher gain settings.

On thing about these types of amp, you need to spend some time with them dialing in the sound, the presets the amp comes with are pretty much crap, very shrill and maxed out on the presence control on every channel. I spent a few hours dialing in the first seven banks using my EJ strat and I've got some excellent sounding channels using a variety of effects and some of my own effects in the effect loop. I get a great marshall crunch and even a very cool dumble kind of singing tone using my humbucker equiped guitar. If your not willing to sit down and spend some time with the amp then your not going to like it or get the most out of what the amp is capable of doing.

Here's where I had a problem, I bought the first amp off of the showroom floor, it crapped out after two weeks - not sure if it was tubes or what. I returned the amp, I've had other amps go south on my so it's not a huge problem - a week later I had a new amp right out of the box and it's been fine so far. I've really never taken a backup amp with me to gigs, the amp went south on me practicing at home so it wasn't an issue, I've had other amps crash at gigs (mesas....) and it's a pain but that's life. Only time will tell if the new amp holds up so the jury is still out, I'm not going to ding the amp a huge amount for the problem, it's a well made product and I'm sure I won't have any issues in the future.

Now here's where H&K makes up points for the failure - when I called the store to tell them I had a problem with the amp (this is before I even took the amp back) the H&K Rep called me within and hour!!!! He came to the store, tried new tubes, took the amp home, played it for hours, didn't like what he was hearing, called me several times (called me, I didn't have to call him) and told me he was getting me a new amp. I have NEVER had customer service at this level on any product I've ever purchased - let alone a tube guitar amp. My hats off to Joey, he's a star as far as I'm concerned and I'm a confirmed H&K customer from now on. I've played the hell out of the new amp and it's perfect. Thanks!!!!

I've been playing for years, off and on in bands since the late 70's. I own several other guitar amps but I'm tired of hauling around amps, cabs, pedal boards - this amp is the perfect solution to my issues with lugging equipment around, plus it's a great sounding amp. If I had to replace it I would, I haven't found anything like it being manufactured by another company. I dig the tones, the volume, the cleans, the grind/crunch and the lead tone I get out of the amp, I guess that pretty much covers everything. When I bought this amp I was looking at several amps, orange - genz benz - bad cat - fuchs - bogner. It's not a boutique amp, but it does many things well rather than one thing great, it's better than any comparable cost product I played through and replaces pedals I paid over a grand for, I'm going to sell my pedals and cover more than half of what I paid for the amp..... not a bad deal at all!!

The features are as stated on the H/K website. I did not see anything that was not factual.

I did not like the sound of this amp and returned it for a refund.

That is the main reason I rated it a 5 and I personally think it sounds horrible and was shocked at the sound quality when I tried it out. The sound samples that are available on the H/K website are not a good indicator of the sound of this amp. I cannot help but think they have been processed in a studio before being made as samples. There is simply no way those sound bites can sound that clean and noise free without noise suppression and other enhancements to improve the sound. I also can???t help but think digital processing has helped to make it sound warmer as well.

The high gain settings are quite noisy and you will need a noise gate to play with high gain at lower volumes and likely at all volumes. As a minimum, H/K should have made a noise gate as part of their effects portfolio but they didn???t.

I tested this amp with 2 different Les Pauls, includind Seymour Duncan pickups. I also tested it using 3 different Celestion speakers as well as running a Zoom GT multi-effects unit. And I used a Rivera R-55 to use as a comparison amp. In no way does the Switchblade compare to the Rivera even though it uses the same 12AX7 & EL-34 combo as most Marshalls and Rivera do. One would think with the same pre-amp and power amp tubes a player would get similar tones, but this is not true.

If you are used to a Marshall sound then I suggest you don't buy one of these since regardless of which channel you use, it has much more of a high mid-range scream rather than the normal mid-range boost normally associated with Marshalls. And there is nothing you can do to get rid of the higher mid ???sizzle??? that makes it sound like a tube-solid state hybrid. I have had owned quite a few other tube amps before, including 2 Marshalls and this amp sounds more like a solid state amp than any of them.
Even if you turn the presence & treble knobs all the way down, there is still the high-mid sizzle sound. And it is not coming from the Eminence speaker either.

But if you want something that is guaranteed to fry your eardrums with decibels of high pitch scream, then this may be the amp of your dreams. The Switchblade could be called the anti-Marshall since it seems to be sound like the opposite of ???warm???.

I???m sure there are others who use this amp that probably think I???m being too harsh, but for those who read these reviews, I suggest you take my comments into consideration. For the price of this amp ($1300 USD), I think you can get a better sounding amp and multi-effects unit that will replicate everything the Switchblade can do. There are just too many better sounding amps in this price range to settle for something that sounds like this.

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all tube: 2x EL34,2x 12AX7
Fully programable 128 patches
4 channels: clean,crunch,lead,ultra
series/parallel effects loop
midi footswitch included
digital effects: reverb(spring emu),delay,chorus,flanger
master volume,volume,treble,bass,mid,presence for each channel

Clean channel: clean as the german snow! lol (its unreal clean!!!)
Crunch channel: light overdrive, blues, ACDC, dirty kachunk
Lead channel: Smooth, creamy, plucked harmonics scream!
Ultra channel: high gain, metal up yer arse, schwinnnnnnnnnnng

This amp sounds awesome! Every channel is unique and high quality!
Peddles sound wicked in the clean channel too!!! (distortion factory)
I spent weeks just playing in the Clean channel only.....wow
Sustain is unbelievable, with no breakup on decay.

Had it for two months now.
No problems

Never had to deal with them....

Try one.
It sounds wicked, its programmable, loud as hell and has cool lights.
Nuff said!

Context: I've owned this amp for 3 weeks. I've played it for practice every day, 3 loud rehearsals, and one gig so far.

They should have called it the "Swiss Army Knife," not "Switchblade," but I guess that wouldn't sound as cool.

OK, so this is a new (2006) offering from H&K. All-tube with digital control and effects. It's got 4 "Channels," which are really 4 gain stages that can be assigned to 128 different presets, so the normal concept of "channels" really doesn't apply unless you're not using a footswitch; if not, you can manually dial between the 4 stages. Having the presets makes it extremely versatile because there's a lot of variety of gain tones on each stage, all of which can be dialed in and saved separately. I play in a rock cover band and I'm able to get lots of settings off the clean and crunch "channels" that I use in 40-50 different songs. For example, you can easily set up half a dozen variations on your basic clean tone, adding just the right amount of gain and EQ for each song. It's super flexible.
The foot switching is done in banks of 4 switches, with an up/down control for going between banks. It's versatile enough.
There's a switchable series/parallel effects loop that gets assigned with the presets - wherever it's set gets saved to the preset.
One feature it doesn't have is a built-in tuner - H&K could have included this for pretty cheap, so I'm not sure why they overlooked it.

This is the amp for tube afficianados who also need tons of settings at gigs.

From time to time I'll go into a guitar store to try out amps. Rarely, and I mean like only every couple of years, will I get to try one that really blows me away with its tone and feel, so that I leave the store thinking that I'm going to have to apply for another credit card and sell my current amp on ebay. You know what I mean - that special amp by which you judge others. OK, well, this H&K wasn't really that amp for me after I test-drove the head/cab at gig volumes at a shop. I bought the combo, and I feel the same way about it. But read on.

Above all other sound quality concerns, it's a tube amp. It's as versatile as many digital modeling amps, delivering 128 preset sounds, but it behaves and responds as you would expect in a tube amp. Get a power attenuator or a set of earplugs because it gets loud as you start hitting the sweet, power-tube sound at aroud 4 on the dial. All the resposiveness to picking, volume pot, feedback, etc. that you expect in a good tube amp are right there.

Overall, I find its tones very good, very useful, but not jaw-dropping. Frankly, it won't replace your Soldano in the gain department, and if you're addicted to your Twin, you may find this amp a little lacking in vibe. But it's NOT bad in any way. It just has its own thing going on.

This amp is AWESOME at what it's meant for - gigging. It produces an array of tones that can all come very close to matching original recordings or creating your own sounds. The built-in effects (reverb, modulation, delay) are good enough for gigs, but probably flatter that what most people want for recording. Again, it's a gigging tool, not a boutique studio amp.

The distortion goes from very clean to about as hot as any amp I can think of. With four stages, you can get pretty much whatever amount of gain you want. The lead and high-gain tones have their own flavor. You'll have to play one to be the judge, but it's fair to say that this thing does modern heavy and classic brown tones very well.

As I said, I play in a cover band, so I need tones from clean 50's to heavy modern, and this amp delivers. I only play humbucker-equiped guitars, but it does fine with coil tapped sounds. The guitars' personalities and subtleties come through.

One cool thing is that you set the volume with each preset, so you can easily set up lead volume boosts.

I should mention that the presence and EQ knobs aren't as responsive as on some amps I've owned. I was spoiled by my Rivera when it came to how much you could tweak the tone. This amp's controls work fine, just not a super wide range.

I wouldn't say it's noisy; you expect some sound on higher gain settings, and I never notice any unusually loud noise.

I'm rating this category based on the fact that the amp is meant to cover lots of sonic territory, not just one or two drop-dead awesome sounds like most boutique amps. I reserve the 10 for Deizel, Cornford, Soldano, and the like.

Too new to tell how it'll hold up. No matter what amp you have, it would be foolish to gig w/o a backup - at least take your POD.

Have not dealt with the company. See other reviews for this.

I've been playing for 19 years. I've owned amps by Fender, Marshall, Egnater, Rivera, Mesa, Carvin, Vox, and a few others, so I feel qualified to comment on amp quality.

I would buy it again tomorrow if it were stolen. (My wife would hate me for this, but she would get over it.)

No other tube amp that I'm aware of is anywhere near this versatile. It's exactly what a cover-band guitarist needs - tons of good sounds that are all immediately available via footswitch. There's hardly any ground that you can't cover.

I do wish it had a tuner, but that's no big deal. There's nothing really to hate about this amp.

Anybody who is using a modelling amp for flexibility but is longing for real tube tone should check this out. I'm really glad I did.

This amp is a four channel tube amp with digital effects. The sounds and the settings of the effects are programmable. The channels are clean, crunch, lead and ultra. The built in effects are reverb, delay and modulation effects. The amp has an effect loop which can be switched from parallel to seirell and which also is programmable. The amp comes with a midi-footcontroler which also allows to tab the tempo of the delay.

I only give it a 9 because it would be great if could switch the internal effects seperately which you cannot.

The sound of an amp is always a matter of taste but I think this amp is very flexible and for me it sounds just great. All four channels react like you expoect that from a good tube amp. It sounds very dynamic and reacts to the volume of the guitar in a very good way. If you find the sweet spot of the channels (which is in my opinion around 3 o clock of the channel master) the amp responses very quickly and gives you a very direct sound (and I compared it to some boutique amps like the Fender Vibro King).

The four channels:
Clean: This is a very fenderish sounding clean channel which stays clean even at higher volumes. If you use the boost function of this channel it adds a little bit of dirt which is nice for rhythm parts or blues lines. For me the clean channel is just great.
Crunch: The allows everything from almost clean to AC/DC rhythm guitar. Great channel with a more british charactere but without the brizzle of some marshalls.
Lead: This my absolute favorite channel. It sounds great with all of my guitars (Fender American Tele, PRS MC Carty, Blade California Custom and Diego Strat) and delivers everything from chrunch to high gain solo sounds. It has a britsh charactere like an modified marshall.
Ultra: This channel is supposed to be the channel for Nu Metal stuff but I do not use it that way. I use it with less gain settings (around 12) and it delivers a sound with another mid shaping with sounds a little bit like playing throug a cab loaded with celestion greenbacks. Very nice alternative lead channel.

The combo has a lot of punch and is also sounds very good thruogh different cabs - I own a 212 cab with vintage 30 but a also tried it through 412 cabs with vintage 30 and greenbacks.

The built in effects a great and very helpful. Of course you will find especially modulation effects that are better but you can use the effects they sound very good and you can programm them with the soundsetting without any midi programming and with any additional cabling.

What I really do like ios that the lead channel always stay transparent even at higher gain settings and that the amps reacts very dynamicly on my playing and on the guitar volume.

I give it 9 because you of course find amps which sound better in one of the four channels but they usually cost at least twice as much.

I have this for half a year and had no problems.

Very good. During my decision process I mailed with an employee of hughes and kettner several timnes and he always answered my questions very quickly.

I would definitely buy it again. I played a lot of amps through the last years (including Marshall TSL, Line 6 stuff, Vox AD60VT, H&K Triamp) but for now this amp is it for me. It delivers great tube sounds with good effects and it is programmable which is great. I went through that modelling stuff but for playing live none of this amps for comes close to the real tube thing. If you are looking for a versatile tube amp which sounds great in a handy format this amp is for you. The only amps that come close in the area of price are Engl amps but they have another charactere which one must like. For me the Switchblade is just perfect - for now ... :-)