H&K amps have always sounded to me like they have a permanent "loudness" button engaged. Remember those on old stereo receivers and boom boxes? Think of a graphic EQ in that classic "smile" shape.
Definitely put eq in loop. ❤. Great video Jarrod. I like it. It not tight like modern amps but sounds good to my ears. They were going for a recto type tone if I remember correctly.
I desperately wanted to love my triamp mk3, but it just didnt cut it sound wise. It was really cool feature wise, and looked unreal- used to have the lighting on the front be a different color for each channel
I actually this amp sounded really good, especially in the mix. But I can certainly hear why you might not like the response. All woofy weird stuff, like a lot of times with H&K. Great video! I also like the thumbnail, that one turned out clean and great!
I agree. John Browne makes these things sound great. I bought the grand meister 40 and hated it. I wound up trading it for a 5150 block letter. Some guy in my area just happened to have bought it off of Ryan Bruce “fluff” and even had him sign the bottom. Solid trade imo.
The irony is that these are some of my personal favorite tones you've dialed in. I think you go a little too hard on the gain and lose some punch as a result, but this amp sounds good on you! Of of course what you hear in the room is different than what we hear...
I tried the mk2 way back when and while they’re amazing and versatile amps they don’t do that one thing that I need my lead channel to do which is the SLO/5150/recto thing. They just feel weird to me.
Did you try putting an eq in the effects loop to make some cuts. I think the problem is that there are some very harsh frequencies in high mids that need to be cut.
@JimsMusicJourney thanks for commenting. No, I didn't put an EQ in the loop. That probably could have helped some things but that said, for $4500, and amp should sound amazing without having to put an EQ in the loop.
Man that's surprising I'd think you'd like this. I love the 3b channel with a boost out front. Sd1 being my favorite. Also not sure what speakers you use but I played it with a cab of greenbacks and a cab of v30s.
@@tj1486 thanks for commenting. A lot of people thought I would really dig this amplifier. I thought it sounded good and other people's reviews but in my hands, it just doesn't sound or feel right to me. I used it with my Mesa cab with vintage 30s.
Not sure how to describe it, but there is definitely something going on with the mids, becoming more apparent with more distortion. I used to describe it like having a strange dry mid frequency(s), but others disagree
You really want to turn the masters down a little bit more like on 2 of the volume up. I don't really like the amp neither, but that was the best way it worked for me until I got rid of it
People also don't like the Grandmeister 36 but i kept it over the 6505mh, MT15 , Blackstar id150 and i played a mini rec that didn't make me wanna sell it either 🤷♂️
I thought the tones were at least decent in the video. I’ve never tried the MKIII Triamp, but I have tried the MKII on one occasion at a local shop. It sounded really harsh and thin with the matching V30 loaded cab, but it sounded really good when I tried it through the EVH 4x12 that was in the same room.
Hey Jarrod, you find enough great amplifiers - you don’t have to settle. If you don’t like it, there’s plenty of proof on your shelves that there are many amplifiers that do meet the occasion.
I like the look of the amp, all those glowing tubes. I like the absurdity of it. What a beast !! Imagine your wallet draining with a tube service done.
Hughes and Kettner know how to make an amp full of modern features. But they do not know what modern high gain should sound like. Even their boost feature adds more mush instead of doing the opposite.
I've got one of these...thought if Alex Lifeson likes them they must be good. Played it less times than I have fingers...just cannot get a tone that doesn't utterly depress.
Oh I remember a long long time ago I desired aTriamp MK2 as it looked like it could do everything. I was disappointed in the amp the more and more research I did on it.
I had the Mark 2 and the 3B channel was good for metal with a boost but it needed to be loud. It was almost too smooth when I had it, not enough aggression? I'm sure Mark3 is more or less the same minus the power tube options? Got rid of mine because it felt like a fragile "bedroom queen" and not something I would actually use at band practice. You may like the Switchblade/Coreblade better for the chugs! I still have my Switchblade 100 head and love it with some new KT77s in it. Cheers!
As someone who also enjoys boosting high gain amps, I’m curious if you’ve ever tried the Maxon ST9 pro+ yet. I saw awhile back that cannibal corpse (I’m not too big on them but love the extreme push in their guitar tone) boosts their dual rectifiers with it so I got one for one of my Marshall’s and really does add a really hard kick to it and I don’t care to use any other boost anymore. Anyway, just a boost suggestion if you haven’t got around to trying one yet. Great channel btw.
@@someonehadtosayit2566 thank you so much for the suggestion and the kind words. I'm going to screenshot this and go to Motor City Guitar and see if they have one. Cheers
I haven't played that amp but I have a Coreblade that I've been screwing with for 13 years or so to see If I can get it to sound better via swapping tubes. My experience with the Coreblade and my Switchblade is that you will only get a decent sound using H&K custom speakers because the amps are so bright. I also had it service by an H&K official service center In New York and I had a bad tube and when I got it back they put a completely different set of tubes in the amp the Electro Harmonix EL34Eh. which I think helped a bit. I think the MK3 also allows for auto-biasing the power tubes using TSC so you could take tubes out of the other amps that you have and put them into the MK3 to see what sort of sound difference that makes before you sell it. I think the Coreblade is similar in sound to the MK3 and I've found that on the tighter (less bass) channel Ultra 1 when I turn the presence, mid and treble completely off and then adjust those channels up to to suit how bright your speaker is. I have a very bright WGS ET90 in my ported cab. Where as the fat bass Ultra 2 channel I do the exact opposite with the presence and crank that to max then turned it down to taste but do the same with the mid and presence controls that I did with the Ultra 1 channel till I like what I hear. The interesting thing about the Coreblade and the reason why I kept it for all these years is because it has the Depth and Presence controls savable per channel instead of how they set up the presence for the MK1 through Mk3 amps as global for all 4 channels. I think this is a mistake on H&K's part because it seems that Presence is the key in my to making the gains work for me at least. I also now think that the treble and mids kind of suck where they set the frequencies and is the reason why i dial them back so much . This may not be the case for all the speakers out there though.
@jconner3891 I've been mulling over getting an EQ pedal and have also gave some serious thought to trying out the M or Creamback. I also have used the Jensen Tornado/ Et90 combination but adding that Jenson really ups the bass making hard to use the neck pick up.
@ definitely a EQ. most important pedal imo. I put mine in the loop in all my amp, you can also put one in and loop same time. Let me know when you try those speakers. I like to know your thoughts Have fun playing,definitely have a great new year
As someone who mainly plays metal, I'm not surprised by H&K not being so great. However, I actually invested in the H&K Stompman and paired it with a Strymon Iridium, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how it sounded. Perhaps its because of the Strymon preamp (Strymon just shits excellence for some reason) or because of the pedals I'm using for distortion. Either way, for a bare bones analog power amp, H&K did fairly well from what I could tell. I noticed you do a lot of all-in-one units and full sized tube amps. Have you checked out any of compact power amps like the Stompman? KSR has a killer tube version, Moore has a couple, and so does TC Electronics. For someone who can't justify the expense of many of the standard tube amps and hates interfacing with a computer as much as I already do, these simple power amps have worked pretty well for me and it would be cool to hear educated opinion on them. Anywho, great video. Its also nice to see someone being critical of Mesa these days. Hope the new year treats you well. Cheers!
That's a lot of knobs and buttons lol but using a modeler to the effects return would be cool if you could switch between the power amp tubes by midi lol
Turning the gain knob down isn’t gain shaming. Most amps have a bright cap on the gain knob and diming it defeats the bright cap turning the tone to mush. You get better results if you run the gain lower and boost than just cranking the gain.
@@TONEWARSgearshow Not that one no. I'm not gain shaming either, more gain is always more fun, just saying that sometimes letting the bright cap do its thing can have positive results, in the case of this amp I guess not.
I've got the 40 watt tubemeister and I feel the same... the gain structure sounds a bit weird as well as the feel, the eq controls are retarded and interfere with each other (active controls) and when you get 1 of the gain channels dialled in decent (but not great) the 2nd channel sounds horrible but it's shared EQ so have to pick one or the other or re dial it every time you switch. The gain is pretty weak and pathetic too.
It's a classic case of trying to do everything and it ends up not great at anything. If I was a cover band guy, I'd have one of these and a prs 513, cuz they both do a sort of passable version of every tone.
I can’t stand channel switching lol. This would just piss me off. I like amps that you use the bridge pickup for the heavy. And switch to the neck rolled down for clean. Or using 3-4 of them at a time lol.
I had a Duotone. I had to crank the channel volumes and use the master to taste. Then it came alive. They are weird amps. But their support really sucks. They do not support customers well at all. They have no service centers in the US. They had one in the Carolinas somewhere, but I wasn't shipping my amp across the country for new tubes and a bias. Moved on from it.
My KSR ceres and UA knucklehead pedals sound better. Sad but true. I think the amp looks cool, but they need to take a look at whats out there and work on a mark IV that slays. Good luck H&K rooting for you guys. Take a look at Fryette, ENGL, Soldano SLO, etc.
I appreciate you sharing your demos and testing the gear out. It’s great to see how others experience it and gain insights into its functionality.
H&K amps have always sounded to me like they have a permanent "loudness" button engaged. Remember those on old stereo receivers and boom boxes? Think of a graphic EQ in that classic "smile" shape.
This was the alternative to a mesa rectifier back in the early 2000s so it definitely has that same vibe going for it.
Definitely put eq in loop. ❤. Great video Jarrod. I like it. It not tight like modern amps but sounds good to my ears. They were going for a recto type tone if I remember correctly.
I desperately wanted to love my triamp mk3, but it just didnt cut it sound wise. It was really cool feature wise, and looked unreal- used to have the lighting on the front be a different color for each channel
These amps seemed to be somewhat popular in japan for rock bands but I don't recall ever seeing anyone use one for metal before.
Japanese ... it's the lights
Killswitch engage used one for a little while
I actually this amp sounded really good, especially in the mix. But I can certainly hear why you might not like the response. All woofy weird stuff, like a lot of times with H&K.
Great video! I also like the thumbnail, that one turned out clean and great!
@@PippPriss thank you so much for commenting and for the kind words. I'm definitely working hard on my thumb now game. Thank God for canva right?
I think the amp sounds great. Not 4k great but great.
You mean 5k. it's 4400 BEFORE TAX!
I agree. John Browne makes these things sound great. I bought the grand meister 40 and hated it. I wound up trading it for a 5150 block letter. Some guy in my area just happened to have bought it off of Ryan Bruce “fluff” and even had him sign the bottom. Solid trade imo.
I prefer the 36 over the 40 easily.
The irony is that these are some of my personal favorite tones you've dialed in. I think you go a little too hard on the gain and lose some punch as a result, but this amp sounds good on you! Of of course what you hear in the room is different than what we hear...
I would love to see you get your hands on a LENZ OCTANE amp.. Kyle did the hot chili now you need to do the octane !!!
I tried the mk2 way back when and while they’re amazing and versatile amps they don’t do that one thing that I need my lead channel to do which is the SLO/5150/recto thing. They just feel weird to me.
Ima stick with my 6505+ And my Marshall TSL 100. Thank you for the demonstration on this.
Did you try putting an eq in the effects loop to make some cuts. I think the problem is that there are some very harsh frequencies in high mids that need to be cut.
@JimsMusicJourney thanks for commenting. No, I didn't put an EQ in the loop. That probably could have helped some things but that said, for $4500, and amp should sound amazing without having to put an EQ in the loop.
Sounds great to me
Man that's surprising I'd think you'd like this. I love the 3b channel with a boost out front. Sd1 being my favorite. Also not sure what speakers you use but I played it with a cab of greenbacks and a cab of v30s.
@@tj1486 thanks for commenting. A lot of people thought I would really dig this amplifier. I thought it sounded good and other people's reviews but in my hands, it just doesn't sound or feel right to me. I used it with my Mesa cab with vintage 30s.
If the Neighbor ‘s dog pooping in your yard was an amplifier
Haha
Not sure how to describe it, but there is definitely something going on with the mids, becoming more apparent with more distortion. I used to describe it like having a strange dry mid frequency(s), but others disagree
You really want to turn the masters down a little bit more like on 2 of the volume up. I don't really like the amp neither, but that was the best way it worked for me until I got rid of it
It sounds really honky. Does scooping the mids a little help add some clarity?
@robjohnson5829 Good question, boosting the mids just brought it more forward, but that was about it.
People also don't like the Grandmeister 36 but i kept it over the 6505mh, MT15 , Blackstar id150 and i played a mini rec that didn't make me wanna sell it either 🤷♂️
I thought the tones were at least decent in the video. I’ve never tried the MKIII Triamp, but I have tried the MKII on one occasion at a local shop. It sounded really harsh and thin with the matching V30 loaded cab, but it sounded really good when I tried it through the EVH 4x12 that was in the same room.
Hey Jarrod, you find enough great amplifiers - you don’t have to settle. If you don’t like it, there’s plenty of proof on your shelves that there are many amplifiers that do meet the occasion.
Fantastic
I like the look of the amp, all those glowing tubes. I like the absurdity of it. What a beast !! Imagine your wallet draining with a tube service done.
Hughes and Kettner know how to make an amp full of modern features. But they do not know what modern high gain should sound like. Even their boost feature adds more mush instead of doing the opposite.
Coreblade was killer. Lots of big bands used them. But yea I agree with your comment. My gm40 with internal boost was garbage. ❤
Please, try the Hughes &Kettner. Black Spirit 200.
I love mine specialy for metal.👍👍👍😎💪
I have one. For a solid state amp it’s a freaking phenomenal amp for the price
I've got one of these...thought if Alex Lifeson likes them they must be good. Played it less times than I have fingers...just cannot get a tone that doesn't utterly depress.
Probably a good rock amp, which explains Alex Lifeson. But I haven't heard metal tones that blow me away.
Oh I remember a long long time ago I desired aTriamp MK2 as it looked like it could do everything. I was disappointed in the amp the more and more research I did on it.
I had the Mark 2 and the 3B channel was good for metal with a boost but it needed to be loud. It was almost too smooth when I had it, not enough aggression? I'm sure Mark3 is more or less the same minus the power tube options? Got rid of mine because it felt like a fragile "bedroom queen" and not something I would actually use at band practice. You may like the Switchblade/Coreblade better for the chugs! I still have my Switchblade 100 head and love it with some new KT77s in it. Cheers!
As someone who also enjoys boosting high gain amps, I’m curious if you’ve ever tried the Maxon ST9 pro+ yet.
I saw awhile back that cannibal corpse (I’m not too big on them but love the extreme push in their guitar tone) boosts their dual rectifiers with it so I got one for one of my Marshall’s and really does add a really hard kick to it and I don’t care to use any other boost anymore.
Anyway, just a boost suggestion if you haven’t got around to trying one yet.
Great channel btw.
@@someonehadtosayit2566 thank you so much for the suggestion and the kind words. I'm going to screenshot this and go to Motor City Guitar and see if they have one. Cheers
@ right on! I hope you find and enjoy it!
I haven't played that amp but I have a Coreblade that I've been screwing with for 13 years or so to see If I can get it to sound better via swapping tubes. My experience with the Coreblade and my Switchblade is that you will only get a decent sound using H&K custom speakers because the amps are so bright. I also had it service by an H&K official service center In New York and I had a bad tube and when I got it back they put a completely different set of tubes in the amp the Electro Harmonix EL34Eh. which I think helped a bit. I think the MK3 also allows for auto-biasing the power tubes using TSC so you could take tubes out of the other amps that you have and put them into the MK3 to see what sort of sound difference that makes before you sell it.
I think the Coreblade is similar in sound to the MK3 and I've found that on the tighter (less bass) channel Ultra 1 when I turn the presence, mid and treble completely off and then adjust those channels up to to suit how bright your speaker is. I have a very bright WGS ET90 in my ported cab. Where as the fat bass Ultra 2 channel I do the exact opposite with the presence and crank that to max then turned it down to taste but do the same with the mid and presence controls that I did with the Ultra 1 channel till I like what I hear. The interesting thing about the Coreblade and the reason why I kept it for all these years is because it has the Depth and Presence controls savable per channel instead of how they set up the presence for the MK1 through Mk3 amps as global for all 4 channels. I think this is a mistake on H&K's part because it seems that Presence is the key in my to making the gains work for me at least. I also now think that the treble and mids kind of suck where they set the frequencies and is the reason why i dial them back so much . This may not be the case for all the speakers out there though.
Core blade is sick. Love it
@jconner3891 Do you own one, if so what speaker(s) do you use?
@@torchlord11 I played my friends coreblade all the time. He used v30 and 75 creamback with 10 band in the loop.
@jconner3891 I've been mulling over getting an EQ pedal and have also gave some serious thought to trying out the M or Creamback. I also have used the Jensen Tornado/ Et90 combination but adding that Jenson really ups the bass making hard to use the neck pick up.
@ definitely a EQ. most important pedal imo. I put mine in the loop in all my amp, you can also put one in and loop same time. Let me know when you try those speakers. I like to know your thoughts Have fun playing,definitely have a great new year
As someone who mainly plays metal, I'm not surprised by H&K not being so great. However, I actually invested in the H&K Stompman and paired it with a Strymon Iridium, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how it sounded. Perhaps its because of the Strymon preamp (Strymon just shits excellence for some reason) or because of the pedals I'm using for distortion. Either way, for a bare bones analog power amp, H&K did fairly well from what I could tell. I noticed you do a lot of all-in-one units and full sized tube amps. Have you checked out any of compact power amps like the Stompman? KSR has a killer tube version, Moore has a couple, and so does TC Electronics. For someone who can't justify the expense of many of the standard tube amps and hates interfacing with a computer as much as I already do, these simple power amps have worked pretty well for me and it would be cool to hear educated opinion on them. Anywho, great video. Its also nice to see someone being critical of Mesa these days. Hope the new year treats you well. Cheers!
I know someone that had a Mark II for awhile and loved it. For me the tone always just seemed weird to my ears.
The Mark II is the bomb.
Is it me or is there a small delay in video and audio? I noticed this in all your videos the last time.
Yes I'm still working on it. Sorry about that.
That's a lot of knobs and buttons lol but using a modeler to the effects return would be cool if you could switch between the power amp tubes by midi lol
you can swap between tubes
with midi
I agree. I’ve tried their amps, I’ve listened to other demos, and I just can’t. Not for me.
Turning the gain knob down isn’t gain shaming. Most amps have a bright cap on the gain knob and diming it defeats the bright cap turning the tone to mush. You get better results if you run the gain lower and boost than just cranking the gain.
In Channel 3a, you have to crank the gain to get enough. Otherwise, it's very thin. Have you played this amp?
@@TONEWARSgearshow Not that one no. I'm not gain shaming either, more gain is always more fun, just saying that sometimes letting the bright cap do its thing can have positive results, in the case of this amp I guess not.
All your other amps sound great. This amp has a weird fizz thing going on and it just doesn’t cut it.
I've got the 40 watt tubemeister and I feel the same... the gain structure sounds a bit weird as well as the feel, the eq controls are retarded and interfere with each other (active controls) and when you get 1 of the gain channels dialled in decent (but not great) the 2nd channel sounds horrible but it's shared EQ so have to pick one or the other or re dial it every time you switch. The gain is pretty weak and pathetic too.
It's a classic case of trying to do everything and it ends up not great at anything. If I was a cover band guy, I'd have one of these and a prs 513, cuz they both do a sort of passable version of every tone.
I had the original for 24 hrs....returned it.
Mk. i is much better than the Mk. iii. More raw, direct
7:40 is what I was thinking. Not great.
I can’t stand channel switching lol.
This would just piss me off. I like amps that you use the bridge pickup for the heavy. And switch to the neck rolled down for clean.
Or using 3-4 of them at a time lol.
You need help ask Thomas blug from bluguitar
Triamp and really all the HK stuff = jack of all trades, master of none.
@@TrumpetsInMy4x12 well said!
If you want a Jack of all trades, Fryette Sig X. Pretty damn good JOAT if you ask me.
Im not a fan of that amp either. It's not you 😅
I had a Duotone. I had to crank the channel volumes and use the master to taste. Then it came alive. They are weird amps. But their support really sucks. They do not support customers well at all. They have no service centers in the US. They had one in the Carolinas somewhere, but I wasn't shipping my amp across the country for new tubes and a bias. Moved on from it.
My KSR ceres and UA knucklehead pedals sound better. Sad but true. I think the amp looks cool, but they need to take a look at whats out there and work on a mark IV that slays. Good luck H&K rooting for you guys. Take a look at Fryette, ENGL, Soldano SLO, etc.
Check out the Warp X amp..
There is a video of the Warp X and the guy said it was H&K's version of the Peavy 5150.
The amp sounds quite good.
In the beginning there we had all the "Boost Karens". Now we gotta deal with "Gain Shamers"!!!!!
If you don't want it i'll take it.
"Boost Karens". Hah! Love it.
Dude, find some new riffs to play while your testing amps!
I don´t like it too!
There are amps way cheaper that sound better than this big pile of mush.
Definitely not a modern metal amp compared to a lot of what else is available these days.
Its too honky, flubby and shrill.
I dont like that amp either
Sounds shit but you've got bass on max so...
I only had the bass maxed on channel 3A because it's a very thin channel. I had the bass really low on Channel 3b.
That amp sounds like 💩
I don't like this amp its not the sound for me that i'm looking for.
It’s a garbage amp