Welcome to the Black Spirit forum

Welcome to the latest addition to the family.  We now have this forum for Black Spirit owners and users.  Any available tech info about this latest model would be very welcome as we are starting from scratch with it.

hey there, just so you all know I've sold my TM40 and use the BS now. I love it, and use it all the time, both live and recording. Ya gotta love the RedBox w/ cab sim.

Aha! So they have sold at least one then OldPunk. Glad you are enamoured of it. I've been listening to some YT reviews of the amp and I have to say it does impress me. We know that all H&K amps do high gain but the Black Spirit seems to have a better palette of more classic tones than the GM36, or even those of the GM40D that I have heard. Maybe my GM36 could help fund... No! Let's not even go there.

And solid state too, that's a plus from my side. If it sounds great then we can discount the technology and get on to the other factors like convenience and scalability and cool running. For myself I want to know a bit more about that technological side to know how the amp should last and how much maintenance it would need over the years. But - - - I am intrigued, nay - - - piqued even!

I almost have an 8 channel amp w/ this head. I set up my rhythm sound in Crunch channel w/ my guitar's vol pot at about 20%, w/ my med. gain humbuckers. Kinda like an older Aerosmith or AC/DC gain. Rather cleanish by today's standards. Then for leads, I just open the pot up and YEAH, I get what i need. And of course, if i want lots of harmonics and increasing compression, I use the lead or ultra channels. And so far, no technical issues.

I’ve recently played one. I can tell you this. It’s the loudest amp I’ve probably ever heard when cranked. Now I’ve never played a Marshall Pig either but its easily the loudest of all HK amps. It’s apparently being well received among that crowd of users. But other than a quick demo its not for me and I’m not going to give it much more of a chance. It’s trying to emulate a technology i already have in my tube amps from HK so even though it offers a few more features I just dont need to take the plunge and get one. That being said its a good amp bordering on great sounding and definitely not the joke I thought it was. Sadly with the combo and floor releases it seems HK has a direction they are going and it doesn’t seem to involve tube amps going forward. That’s a bummer as Ive been a diehard HK user for 10years and always bought the newest tube offering if it had anything real to offer over the others. Unfortunately I think I’ll be changing teams and probably going to one of the Marshall Studio amps for my next amp purchase. I’ll play tube until the day I give it up. SS just leaves something out but this BS amp definitely get closer to the tube tone and feel but its still not the same and probably never will be.

I bought one and I'm regretting it. Personally it's the worse sounding amp I have ever played.
To me it sounds broken. I really should have tried it before picking one up.

It's been a while. So, I did the GM36 and sold it, too metal, I did the GM40D and now I'll be selling that too.

I've got the BS combo and it's a keeper. Nice to have the amp with the designer's cab and speaker so you get the designer's intention. The amp is as good as the GM40, which was a real improvement on the GM36. Wither the thiele cab and Creamback, this thing sounds great on all channels. Functionality is a step on again, Bluetooth very useful at home for headphones play through.

I think I once said if only Marshall had built the GM so we had more classic rock tones. The BS does it.

Try it and make up you're own mind. Sold my Mark iii Boogie, I no longer need it and my back is thanking me!

Good to hear more good things about this new amp approach.  It really does sound very interesting.  At the moment I'm playing with a couple of new (old) Marshalls so I won't be getting one in the near future but who knows, when they start to appear second hand...

Be careful with making a lot of the "Thiele/Small" thing, while it is the benchmark for HiFi design it doesn't really apply to guitar speakers.  H&K are making the most of this as a marketing factor.  Thiele/Small parameters and calculations only apply when the speaker is driven within its "linear excursion" range.  We deliberately try to get outside of that for guitar work to give that lovely speaker compression and non-linear overdrive and the calculations then cease to work.  That is one reason why speakers have very stiff surrounds, they restrain the cone much more effectively and prevent damage.  (It was Celestion who first insisted on that point to me when I spoke to them about guitar cabinet design using the T/S approach.  They don't use it at all for guitar, never have and insist that it doesn't apply if you speak to them direct.  Have a look at the foot of the page here: Celestion: Speaker Cab Design)  H&K are notorious for finding a wrinkle like that and milking it for all the marketing kudos they can.  (Who can blame them, that's the nature of business in a sometimes gullible market.)  They did the same thing with the Direct Coupled Cathode Follower when it was pointed out to them that that has a unique even harmonic distortion mechanism built in which sweetens up valve amp tone as Marshall use.  (Modesty prevents me from saying who pointed it out to them.   )  A week or two later all their advertising blurb had semi-accurate info concerning their own use of the DCCF.  They don't miss an opportunity those boys!  

No need to be careful Bert, all that tech theory is one thing and way over my head, but I've got my ears instead. This thing is good, cab and Creamback are punchy, sagging control is great and this is the Swiss Army knife that the GM36 was meant to be..

Dyama wrote:I bought one and I'm regretting it. Personally it's the worse sounding amp I have ever played.
To me it sounds broken. I really should have tried it before picking one up.

Well I've never even seen a Black Spirit(I was going to abbreviate this,but it didn't look quite right )let alone heard one, but i seriously doubt it's that bad,there are some really bad Amps out there,you need to try a few more.
I suggest you start with a Roland GA212