The latest addition to Hughes & Kettner’s successful AmpMan line is the new StompMan — a full-fledged, high-end guitar amp in the format of a compact floor effects unit. Astonishingly powerful, it serves up outstanding fundamental sound with a tonal spectrum that can be shaped to suit the genre, style and taste. The StompMan has been engineered to bring out the best in effects plugged into its input and FX loop.
Hughes & Kettner has been shoehorning inspiring sound and advanced features into ingeniously compact and exceptionally practical formats for more than 30 years now. Known for their Cream Machine, TubeMan, TubeTools, TubeMeister and Black Spirit. The latest milestone on this path, the new StompMan, carries this legacy forward.
At the heart of the StompMan is Hughes & Kettner's award-winning Spirit Tone Generator technology, a fully analogue circuit that captures the tone and ultra-direct, dynamic feel of traditional tube amps. Its Tone knob works like that of its archetypal predecessors, shaping the amp’s response according to the Gain, Master and Sagging settings. With the added tone-sculpting power of the Presence and Resonance knob, players can dial in the full sweep of classic clean and overdrive sounds.
The StompMan’s power amp delivers up to 50 watts into 4 ohms, 25 watts into 8 ohms or 12.5 watts into 16 ohms, depending on the connected speaker, and packs a punch assertive enough to be heard and felt in most rehearsal rooms and gigging situations.
Another feature is Hughes & Kettner’s exclusive analogue Sagging knob, which controls power amp saturation by seamlessly varying its supply voltage to produce time-honoured tones with dynamically responsive compression.
Hughes & Kettner claim the StompMan works well with upstream effects plugged into its front end, bringing out the best in these stompboxes; and its adjustable FX Loop does the same for reverb and delay effects. This sophisticated floor amp also provides tools for integrating outboard external preamps. The Bypass button removes the onboard preamp from the signal chain, while the Trim knob sets the gain to that sweet-spot level that works best with the power amp section. All preamps benefit from the organic sound of the StompMan power amp.
The new Hughes & Kettner StompMan is available now for €199.
