HUGHES & KETTNER
TUBEMEISTER 18
BY JORDAN WAGNER
From cars to cameras, Germans have a well-deserved reputation for building
good stuff. So it’s natural that the boutique
guitar and gear trade flourishes in Teutonic
regions. Hughes & Kettner was one of the
first German boutique brands to really
thrive. And since the company was founded
in 1984, its gear has been used by such
big-name players as Alex Lifeson, Allan
Holdsworth, and Tony MacAlpine.
The EL84-powered TubeMeister 18
marks an interesting deviation from the
company’s usual medium- to high-wattage
fare. It’s built with studio musicians and
low-powered tube-amp lovers in mind. But
it also packs an impressive array of bells and
whistles more typical of its bigger brothers.
Feature meister
At just 11 pounds, the brick-shaped
TubeMeister 18 fits in a padded carrying
case that made it a breeze to transport the
amp between the Premier Guitar offices and
my practice space. When you turn it on,
its Plexiglas faceplate glows with the same
blue hue seen on the company’s Triamp,
Puretone, and Duotone heads.
The front panel features controls for
Clean and Lead channels, which are switchable via a Channel Select switch or an
optional footswitch. Both channels share
a 3-band EQ, though each has its own
Master and Gain controls. To kick in even
more gain and volume, you can select the
Lead Boost feature from either the front
panel or the footswitch.
Unlike most amps, many of the
TubeMeister’s tone-shaping controls are on
the back panel: Next to the series effects
loop and footswitch jack is a specially
designed version of the company’s famed
Red Box direct output circuit—the cabinet-emulating DI box that put H&K on the
map—and a Power Soak knob. While the
TubeMeister’s DI Out is always available to
run out to a mixing desk, the Power Soak
reduces maximum wattage down from 18
watts to 5 or a single watt.
One of the coolest features of the
TubeMeister 18 is its ability to keep power
tubes at optimum voltage levels. This is
accomplished with the amp’s internal Tube
Safety Control (TSC ) circuit. According
to Hughes & Kettner, this feature
. . . the TubeMeister
18 covers crystal-
clear cleans, British-
infused rhythm
crunch, and heavy
molten leads . . .
automatically and continuously adjusts
power-tube bias to prevent bias drift. On
the back panel, a set of LEDs indicates
power-tube status. When the LEDs are off,
the tubes are operating at optimum bias
levels. If one LED flashes and another stays
on, the tube corresponding to the flashing LED is generating too much voltage
and needs to be replaced, while the other
is shut off but doesn’t need to be replaced.
If one LED is on for more than a few
minutes, this indicates the tube doesn’t
produce enough voltage and needs to be
replaced. These same LEDs also work with
a tube-biasing circuit that’s activated by
inserting a guitar pick into the slot next to
them. Handy stuff!
Lead channel
Master EQ section
Clean channel
Lead Boost switch
