BS200 Floor amp: relative volume difference between Redbox DI and line out outputs?

Hi new user of BS200 here
At home I practice via line out into active speaker, set my presets and equalize volume between clean/crunch/lead. when gigging, sound guy takes DI output and sends it into my monitor, suddenly the volumes are not equalized, crunch is louder, lead a lot louder and ultra is way way louder.
Any tips how to prevent that or explanations why is it happening?
Thanks a lot!

Hi Ondrejjj, welcome to the forum. I'm sure you must already have this sorted out as you say you can use the amp at home in a balanced way between channels but, the tool for what you want to do is the Volume control. The setting of the Volume control along with the Gain control is remembered individually for each Channel. When the channel is selected its settings are picked up and applied in their entirety, including the Volume setting. The Volume control is only intended to balance between each channel so it should be set to 12 o'clock as a starting point and then adjusted a little to cut or boost that channel as necessary.

As far as I am aware, (I have to admit I'm not a BS200 user), the Red Box output is affected by the channel's setting of the volume control. Is that the way you are using the Volume control?

thanks for the reply.
i understand the role of the volume knob, that is not really the issue. let me try to explain better: i connect the BS200 to an active speaker via line out jack connector, i set overall volume to something not too crazy for home practice. i set up 4 presets: clean, crunch, lead and ultra. i use the volume knob to make these four presets have relatively the same loudness. everything is cool.

then i go to a gig, sound guy connects to the redbox DI out and suddenly the lead and ultra presets are no longer equalized but massively louder and he asks me to fix my presets

so my question is: why is the relative loudness level between presets different between line out and DI out?

cheers!

Gotcha! That seems odd to me too. I have not come across this issue before. As far as I was aware the Redbox and the line out connectors both respond in exactly the same way to your volume related settings. I'll have another check of what may be happening here.

In the meantime are there any other BS200 users out there who can shed any light on this?

was testing again and turns out the master volume knob doesn't do anything when connected via DI out, whereas it works as expected via line-out. is that expected behavior?

Yes, that is by design.  Here is an excerpt from the manual:

H&K BS200 User Manual wrote:Heads up: Unlike with Hughes & Kettner tube amplifiers, the level of Black Spirit 200 Floor's Red Box out is not affected by the setting of the Master control.
Another heads up: The Master knob is not programmable like channel and effect controls. It works as any conventional knob would, and its physical position indicates the actual setting.

(Also bear in mind the level control switch on the back there to select between Line/Mic.)

I don't think this is relevant but I found this in the manual too:

H&K BS200 User Manual wrote:Setting a MIDI value to 0 by switching a connected footswitch to the off position or moving an expression pedal to the heel-down position is the same thing as turning a knob to the far left or setting a button to the off position. Setting a MIDI value to 127 by switching a connected footswitch to the on position or flooring an expression pedal to put it in the toedown position and is the same thing as turning a knob to the far right or setting a button on the amp to the on position. There is one exception to this rule:

The volume level stored with the preset always determines the volume control range's upper limit. Let’s say you stored a volume level with the knob set to the 12 o’clock or center position. In that case, you will only be able to adjust the volume up to that center-position level. The idea behind this is that when playing live, this lets you adjust the volume of a preset just like you would with a conventional volume pedal.

Other than that I'm stumped! The BS200 seems to do a few things a little differently to the preceding amps and I can't find anything which explains this.

If you can't find the answer here I would say you could get in touch with H&K's support team directly. Don't do this by email or by their online website forms, the team spend a lot of time out of the office and these can get stacked for longish periods. Go to the H&K official Facebook site and post a question there. That also has the advantage that that is public so everyone can see when it gets addressed. Despite what a few people will say, I have always had good relations with the support team and I think they are genuinely open in attitude and want to help. I know they know our site here and it gets a healthy slice of respect for its "no guitar BS" approach. If you do that and they reply it would be very helpful if you could post what you find here for others. The "great era" of our forum was during the GM36 days and there is less info on models since then.

I'll keep looking and report back if I can get anything new.


Is there anyone out there who uses their BS200 via the Redbox XLR who can verify they have the same issue, or that they DON'T have this issue?

thanks a lot for your effort! consulting this with some other people i realized that DI out not being affected by volume knob kind of makes sense. it's intended for sending signal to sound guy so he doesn't want me to screw with the volume level. i'm supposed to use line out for my monitor and that is affected by master volume. so this is actually kind of smart. still need to figure out the relative differences in volume. will try the facebook groups as you suggested. thanks a lot!

I'm still narked that we can't see the solution to this. You are absolutely right, you need to remove Volume changes from the DI out for just the reason you say. However, you should still have the ability to set the levels of each preset relative to each other and I would have thought that that should affect the DI signal. Global Master Volume changes definite No! Programmed balanciing Volume I would have thought Yes! I can't understand why it isn't doing that. There may very well be something simple which I am missing though, my experience with the BS200 is reading the manual and talking to other guys who DO own one.

Make sure to update us to what you find out and if having someone else comment on your FB post would help let me know.

Interesting topic. Did you already figure it out?
Lack of a visual indication of what is set to what level is a very big issue in this amp (as well as many other amp with different channels). I indicated this some time ago while mailing (yes was no problem) with a designer. I remarked that if only the amp would show (on a small screen or just via a ring of leds) what the actual level is, it would be waaaaay more convenient to use on stage.

I did notice a huge difference between the DI settings line and mic, but I am not sure if that has anything to do with this issue.

I prefer using the 4 channels as well, but if it really bothers you, just recreate them in preset mode and use 1 set of 4 for home and another set for on stage. Only drawback is that when you change your sound you have to change 2 spots ;-)

I certainly haven't got any closer to a solution but then I don't have one to play with I'm afraid. Did you come up with any solution in the end Ondrejjj?

I've always been a simple Marshall guy with my very old single channel SL100 setup and its basic controls. I've never been a user (or lover) of a pedal based sound either, it's the living breathing guitar+amp+speaker tone that I love. Then I got a TM36 and was so impressed I moved on to my own GM36 which kicked me into the MIDI age for the first time. I will say that that is the way to go in future - as long as we don't lose sight of where our base tone comes from. The one real criticism I have of the H&K amps' usability is that problem of lack of visual info, just as you say. Wit the MIDI amp heads, when you kick in a new preset the pots stay where they are set. All of the settings will change but you have no visual clue as to what has changed to where. Of course there is the LED flash that you get if you twist the pots past their original setting but that isn't at all a practical way of finding out on stage is it? If you use one of the heads you have to accept that limitation. You have to trust your preset settings implicitly.

With the BS200 floor units there could be the ability to fit some sort of indicator of the settings, maybe a screen as you say. But that would change the philosophy of being "a standard BS200 amp with a FSM432 combined in a floor based unit". And of course it would change the price point. That may not be an issue to some of us users of their gear but they are a business and have to take that into account when pitching a new design. As a previous designer of electronic gear myself I am painfully aware that there are always compromises to be made. You can never just design in every feature you want in the exact way you want them to work. I think at the end of the day with our gear we just have to accept, "you pays your money and you takes your choice", and the BS200 Floor is just the same I'm afraid.

Does anyone else have any advice on this issue? How do other users balance their sound to get around this problem?

Hmmm ... It's not exactly crowded in here. Pity.
Still playing with that BS200 here, but made up my mind, mainly because of the lack of visual indications, to sell it in the next couple of months and (most likely) step over to Headrush Prime (or sort-a-like).
Last sunday on stage I had the issue that my sounds just seemed changed. That is not the first time though. Appearantly there are things happening I don't see when changing things. I love the sounds, but this thing is too big to ignore. Even so with the volumes.

Pity, because I had high expectations. But it's just not there yet.

Yes, things don't seem to fit your needs Tuckson. It's a shame that an otherwise usable unit becomes compromised by something so simple. I've known it myself though, I've suffered from this with other amps I have owned. The needs of an onstage musician with a must have instant setup are often quite different to a bedroom player who has time to fiddle and reset. Good luck with the Headrush setup. I hope it does what you need.