Sparkling clean tone that chimes like a glockenspiel. Smoky blues tones with the snarl of a junkyard dog. Lead sounds that wail as seductively as Siren’s song. Expansive, enveloping arena rock tones. The malevolent grind of a chainsaw gnawing on heavy metal: Iconic sounds such as these have been giving voice to new modes of musical expression and shaping the sound of entire genres for more than 60 years now. The new Spirit Nano Heads from Hughes & Kettner capture the spirit of each era of legendary guitar sounds in three amps with distinctive personalities.

LEGENDARY ROCK TONE

What would the guitar heroes of the arena rock era have done without the trademark sound of a full stack blasting away to lend wings to their lead lines? We’ll never know, but that wall of sound certainly inspired a lot of melodic soloing and virtuoso tapping.

The Spirit of Rock purrs when you pick softly, snarls when you dig in, and roars when you punish those strings. It is so touch-sensitive and responsive that your guitar’s volume knob puts the full range of tones from crunch to lead at the beck and call of your pinkie.

The Sagging knob works like a variable turbocharger, welcoming you to the world of brown sound. It is so articulate that every chord note rings out clearly – and we’re not just talking about power chords here. Dime the Sagging knob and the amp behaves like a cranked non-master tube amp. It invites you tap into all that sound and fury to let your emotions fly off your fingertips.  And if you nudge up the Gain knob, the amp will greedily siphon every drop of sound out of those pickups even at the softest touch of a string. Tapping suddenly seems effortless. And it has more gain than you would expect from a rock amp: From 12 o’clock upwards, it behaves like an amp with an upstream booster.

Do you prefer Californian or British lead tone? Why settle for one when the Tone knob sweeps smoothly from the Pacific to the Atlantic to give you both – and all points in between.