Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 Guitar Amp Head

Black Spirit 200 delivers an explosive ride through musical history, a four-channel eruption of thrilling sounds that gives you the most intense playing experience you’ve ever felt. Blessed with incredible practicality and an exhilarating range of sounds and features, immense power, and weighing in at just 8 lbs., Black Spirit 200 is perfect for anywhere from your bedroom to the world’s biggest arenas. The sound experience and feel of a high-quality tube amp circuit. The flexibility and versatility of a modeling amp. The ease of use and robustness of a transistor amp. All this is contained within Black Spirit 200. It truly is like no amp before.

Over the years, we’ve been exploring the origin of the tonal magic of tube amplifiers more and more deeply. And what became obvious is this: it’s about way more than just the tube. The true tonal magic emerges from all the ‘weird’ dynamic interactions between the single circuit sections and the amp stages, the transformers and the speakers. Together, these highly complex and dynamic physical phenomena create that rich, organic and tactile sound experience guitar players are looking for. The Spirit Tone Generator technology faithfully recreates the natural yet wildly complex interactions of traditional tube amp circuits on a digitally controlled but strictly analog working platform. This miniature masterwork houses the essence of the physics behind tube amplifiers, with all of the intensity – hereby creating the rich and responsive tonal behavior that gives you an unbridled joy of playing. Put simply, Spirit is made to inspire guitarists to perform at their best.

Much of the fascinating tone of the great clean, crunch and lead guitar sounds is down to a drop in power supply voltage when spiking transient signals hit the output stage hard. Now, for the first time in an analog amp, Black Spirit 200 lets you adjust the amount of power amp sag and dial in creaminess and growl regardless of the volume level.

Black Spirit 200 features four channels that take you on a trip through all the trademark tones of the last 60 years. And like four external stomp boosts, the channel-tailored boost will give you an even more assertive, creamier, or punchier tone! Four inspirational, strictly analog channels plus a complete range of built-in digital reverb, delay and modulation effects make it a perfect all-in-one solution, while a sophisticated FX Loop lets you connect external FX units. And it’s all accessible directly and with the trusted handling you expect from a real guitar amplifier.

All parameters apart from the Master Volume can be stored in up to 128 presets and recalled any time you want! Black Spirit 200 is the perfect solution on stage and for your sound library in the studio or at home. Recalling all your favorite Black Spirit 200 tones couldn’t be simpler: just use the optional Hughes & Kettner FSM-432 MK III MIDI board, where every one of your presets is the tap of a toe away!

Hughes & Kettner’s award-winning Red Box has been the music industry’s go-to device for recording guitars without microphones for decades. Black Spirit 200 features the most highly evolved Red Box ever: Red Box AE+. It’s the simplest, easiest and flat-out the best sounding way of sending your tone to a mixer, a PA or a recording device. But what truly sets Red Box AE+ apart is its versatility: choose from eight different cabinet types – from monstrous 4×12 stacks to compact 1×12 cabs, and anything in-between – to truly personalize your tone. This option is not only more convenient than miking up a cab. In most cases, it sounds a whole lot better!

Black Spirit 200 can drive any kind, size and number of cabinets with a total impedance of 8 to 16 ohms. With 200 watts of output power, Black Spirit 200 is one of the loudest guitar amps ever. You’ll probably never need this kind of volume, but you’ll always love the dynamic headroom. And Black Spirit 200 is the world’s first guitar amp that lets you also play directly into a passive PA cabinet or monitor wedge without losing the sweet character of a high-class guitar cabinet. With the cabinet type switch you decide if you want to play through a guitar speaker or a Full Range Flat Response (FRFR) cab. The Output Power switch limits the wattage according to the location or the power capacity of the cab you’re using.