Presets on the you tube videos

Is it just me or are they not the same as appeared on the tube videos ?
The J J bloke for instance having downloaded them they sound nothing like on the videos the pop princess one in particular is a pale imitation . Yeah I know the touch and his guitar is different but to me it’s nothing like it same with the hero one and the one he claims you would be on most of the night .
I am referring to the other 200 head btw
I would love to see the guy who does the sultans and still got the blues ones do sounds for the BS I tried using the same setting he used for
the grandmeister 40 and it was nothing like .

I must admit I expected a lot more presets copying or getting close to well known songs like tgd axefx has but so far I’m disappointed .
Are the sounds for the floor unit and combo supposed to sound the same with the head ?
Sorry for all the questions but I have had it a few weeks and I’m still struggling to get that classic 80’s pop rock power chord sound (?the sound in my head I always match too is the crunch sound on turn back time by Cher .
Pic of my rig attached for insight

I'm afraid this is a perennial problem for H&K owners.  The amps are often heralded to be a "universal tone generator" and they can be anything but.  My own tastes are for 60s/70s classic rock tones.  If I'm honest, they can't really come close to them.  That's why I'm back in the land of Marshall for gigging our set based mainly on that era.  I won't sell my GM36 but I can't use it to gig for the moment.  It can't give me the tones I need.  Every review I see of anything H&K is set up the same way.

"Wazzaaaaaap doooooods!  We'z gonna splut ya nutz wv da l8est H'nK.  Get down crazeee gang 'n rock on.  (A couple of long wheezing deep chuckles - obviously too many cigarettes)"  Then there is 20 minutes - yet another 20 minutes -  of "Chug chug chug chugga chugga chug chug chugga chug chug" followed by a bit of ultra clean quiet noodling to show he has soul too, then it's back to "Chugga chugga chug chug chug chug chugga chug" and finish with the horns of Satan hand salute with tongue pulled out over chin and a loud long "Whaaaaazaaaaaaap!".

No one approaches using a H&K amp to generate anything but pretty much death metal tones.  The idea that the amp could and should be used for more than metal doesn't seem to occur to players.  I suppose if you genuinely believe there is only that one genre and all else is superfluous then whaddyagonnado...   The Germans are a metal loving race, and good luck to them with that.  However, they do seem to be a bit lacking in appreciation for the delights of the softer genres of rock.  The designers at H&K set out to make broad based amps but if your own experiences are limited to one particular sphere then you aren't going to achieve universality easily.  The amps are great metal units.  They do the Ultra Clean + Ultra Dirty task magnificently.  Just don't ask me to endorse their softer rock side.

A couple of points which may be relevant and may help.  Everyone always wants to find magic valve combinations to give them that guru tone but that whole concept is a money swallowing cul-de-sac.  H&K amps are genuinely very sensitive to speakers.  Your pic shows Egnaters which I have never heard matched with a H&K amp.  I don't know what is inside them but you can be sure they will sound different to other cabinets with different drivers installed, to the point of even being a usable/unusable combination.  You must find a fitting speaker for your desired tone.  How your speakers sound with other amps is not relevant here, you are using them with a H&K and that must give you the sound you want.  That means trying speakers out live until you get it right not asking for someone else's recommendation based on descriptions of what you want and what they think they hear.  We all hear things very differently and this is subjectivism in the extreme.

Also have a read of this:  Understanding and using the H&K input buffer  I put it up because there was a steady stream of people complaining that the amps were harsh.  They can be if they aren't handled sensitively and the problem is often caused by people's indiscriminate use of gain in too many places.  It doesn't help if you clutter up the signal path with many sources of distortion and insist on using them all because "you have it there so you have to use it".  Have a think about what I say in that post about how the amps are generally set up and see if you can't simplify your signal path in terms of how many ways you try to overload.  Too many cooks spoil the broth definitely rules here.

The cabs are excellent they are very deep almost square with a ported design so they don’t sound brittle they have 80w Celestion Elite speakers in them . I bought the 1st one with the Rebel egnator amp which sounded fantastic but is limited by just one channel .
There are reviews on the net of the cabs which are outstanding due to the ported design ( Mesa tiele style) it they also tend to cut off the Extreme high end but cut through well .

I still have to say you should consider that, even though the cabs may be excellent, there is no guarantee that they will produce the sound you are looking for with your H&K amp.  The combination is always more than the sum of the separate parts and sometimes a magical match occurs when all of the theory tells you it shouldn't and, vice versa, a mismatch occurs between bits of gear which, individually or paired with other gear, are extremely good.  You say they are not brittle at all and that is no doubt true with other amps, but it is no guarantee that they won't be brittle with the BS.  It would surprise me if the brittleness was due to that speaker combination but it isn't an obvious "definitely not the speaker".

Have you tried your amp with any different speakers?  If you do I think you will see that the speaker, (in truth the match of the amp with the speaker), is a very significant part of the overall sound.  You can't just take the known sound of a speaker with one amp and just plug that same sound in with any amp, the interface of the two generally alters it sometimes severely.

I'll be honest, ported designs for guitar work can often be a bit of a cul-de-sac.  I wouldn't see that as a very important factor in the sound you are getting.  I've never heard one where the porting was absolutely necessary to get the tone that was produced.  Are you able to simply block off or stuff the ports with something on the outside to see if it makes a huge or a subtle difference, or even none at all.  We are talking about overall tone here not frequency balance.  Balance from low to high can be adjusted with your amp's controls.  It is tonal character we are talking about here and that is different. For bass the ports do help as basses obviously go down another octave below guitars in standard tuning. Guitar work is restricted to not very far below 100Hz and the idea of a port is to resonate and reinforce only the lowest frequencies.  Above that they actually act like a solid part of the cabinet wall to the sound.  It is usually unnecessary to include that for guitar.  Most amp systems are designed to start tailing off even above that so the lowest frequencies are already being curtailed a little.  They can occasionally also lead to a loose flubby feeling in the lower register depending on their tuned frequency as the open port ceases to have any effect below its resonant frequency and it makes the speaker unloaded by the air spring of the cabinet.  It's a more important aspect in hifi than guitar work as it is also much more significant at hifi/bass frequencies.

I don't mean those cabinets are not good in any way, I'm not trying to criticise them at all, just that I wouldn't count on the ported design as being a major contributor to their tone, (remember not just their balance).  It would be good for you to swap out those cabinets for a trial just to see how much difference a different setup will make.  I don't mean buy them, just try out the amp with others to see if things change much.

This is what I'm talking about.  Here is some advertising bumph about the Mesa Thiele cabinets.  Very good cabinets they may well be but when advertising and marketing people come into the picture things slide downhill.

Peach Guitars wrote:The Boogie Compact 1x12 Thiele Cabinet is a front mounted, front ported, closed-back extension cab that is one of the punchiest yet most frequency-balanced cabs Mesa Boogie make. The tuned front porting provides exceptional balance across the lows, mids and highs...

True so far.

...while simultaneously providing additional punch-character via the air/tone escaping the front port.

Woo-o-o-o-oah there pardner!  That's rot!  In a tuned port cabinet NO AIR LET ALONE TONE ESCAPES FROM THE FRONT PORT. ABSOLUTELY NONE".  The port contains an "air brick" of a known mass of air.  This acts as a solid lump and sits on the springiness of the air locked inside the cabinet.  It therefore resonates at a fixed frequency based on the port dimensions and the cabinet volume.  At no time does any air escape, the brick simply moves forwards and back as one solid block.  Any sound above the area of tuning is blocked as the mass of the air in the port becomes too great for higher frequencies to move.

The authority of it's tuned bass resonance sits perfectly with mids that breathe and presence frequencies that shimmer versus non-ported designs that often provide a darker response overall.

Eh?  But the point of a ported design is to ONLY affect and reinforce the lowest register, it is a part of the overall design choice that the mids and upper register are unaffected in any way.

Even the name is a misnomer.  Neville Thiele was an Australian engineer who worked with Richard Small to come up with the famous Thiele/Small parameters used to characterise a speaker driver's performance so the design of their low frequency response was mathematical and fairly predictable.  Thiele/Small parameters DO NOT APPLY TO GUITAR SPEAKERS.  (Celestion even warn of this fact openly on their website.)  They only apply when the speaker is used within its "maximum excursion limit".  Hifi speakers are designed to have fairly large maximum excursions as this leads to flat responses needed for ultra accurate reproduction.  Guitar speakers are deliberately designed to have limited maximum excursions and fairly stiff surrounds.  This is to generate early restriction of the movement of the cone adding compression and distortion to the sound.  To bring them alive under your fingers you need to drive guitar speakers into the area where the Thiele/Small parameters no longer apply.  The name Thiele really is not a fair way to suggest "high quality design" as his parameters simply do not apply having no meaning under those conditions of use.

Be careful of misinformation which sounds great, makes you hear what they suggest you should hear, and then shapes your choices, (buying choices that is), based on preconceptions they plant in your mind.  The genuine science and engineering CAN'T be sidestepped.

Hi I have tried the amp through a pair of vintage 30’s in an Engle 2x12 pro vertical and it was not better just different a bit too brittle .
Going to try running this weekend into a set of QSC Q10 through the Redbox and see f I can get closer

Yes, I'm not surprised to hear the Vintage 30s are brittle, most people seem to find them that way with H&K amps. They were my own first choice as a cheap starter in the Harley Benton 1x12 cabinets. These were less than the price of other stores selling just the V30 driver so I took a gamble and got a couple. They are now sitting under my stairs! It made for an awesome looking mini stack with my GM36 on top but the sound was just too strident and tiring for my lower gain classic rock taste. They may have been absolutely fine for some people, perhaps playing in your face metal, but subtlety was not their strong point. In the end I went for a pair of G12Ms and they were so much better I picked up another swapped out couple on ebay. They were much more restrained.

Good you are playing around and simply trying everything you can. That's the way to get to a tone you are really happy with in the long term, (and that means with least expense ).