New amp gear - Hughes & Kettner zenTera 2x12 combo

In the recent quest for a living room amp that delivers a lot of tone/flexibility at relatively low volumes, I started my journey by looking at the new Line 6 Spider Valve combo... essentially a tweaked Spider preamp mated to a 40w Bogner-designed power section and two Celestion V30 speakers. It caught my attention because it felt like a considerable step-change in modeling amp design... not since the Johnson JM150 had something come along that felt so innovative. I played the Line 6 a couple times at Sam Ash and Guitar Center and was reasonably (surprisingly) impressed, so I pulled the trigger and ordered one. However, fate being what it is, the amp was damaged in shipment, and UPS returned it before I ever laid eyes on it. Bummer.

While waiting for the amp to arrive, I started reading reviews, many of which said that the Line 6 sounded good at mid-range volumes but began to display its digital nature at both high and low volumes. Got me thinking... maybe it wouldn't be the best choice for a low-volume living room amp. So while poking around on e-bay I found a great deal on another modeler, a used Hughes & Kettner zenTera combo, and hit the buy-it-now button before I had time to over-think it.

I did own one of the H&K zenTera heads a couple years back and was pretty impressed by the tone... it is the only solid-state/digital amp I've ever played that really responds and feels like a real tube amp. Of course, if you look at the price for a new zenTera and read about the massive amounts of R&D that H&K invested to bring the zenTera to life, it had better respond and feel like a real tube amp! In the grand scheme of modeling devices, it's relatively simple on the outside... H&K's goal was to engineer a digital modeling amp that behaves like a traditional guitar amp. So it doesn't have hundreds of amp and effects models built in, and it doesn't have hybrid architecture (i.e., marketing tubes). What the zenTera does have is 17 amp models, a handful of effects, a 12ow stereo power section, two 12" Celestion V30 speakers, and direct outs (theoretically based on the H&K Redbox) for recording. MIDI implementation and a PC-based editor are available, though not really necessary since most of the parameters are easily adjustable from the amp's front panel by clicking a couple buttons or turning a couple knobs.

Again, I largely knew what to expect based on my previous zenTera, but was curious to see how the "all-in-one" zenTera combo stacked up against the head... I took a few minutes to update the amp to the latest software version (v2.34) and install an expanded set of 100 factory presets to explore. Overall, the combo fares quite well... I imagine that it was easier for the H&K crew to tune the combo's models to the two V30 speakers vs. trying to tune the head's models to sound good with a wide variety of cabinets. The models and effects sound great, the tones are relatively easy to dial in... only gripe is that some of the high-gain models are noisy (with such an expansive digital FX section, why no noise gate???). Time to pick up another Decimator!

So in addition to using the zenTera as a living room amp, I also expect to use it for jazz gigs (where I can take advantage of the clean headroom of the Twin/JC120 models) and use it for some "filler" tracks in the studio... I created a very stripped down set of presets--one for each model, all with limited effects--to use as a starting point for recording when I can't quite dial in the tone I'm looking for with one of the other amps around here (or perhaps when I need to dial in a decent tone for recording late at night). Would be nice to find the z-Board dedicated MIDI controller, but I should be able to get by alright without it if since it'll predominantly be used for jazz gigs & studio sessions (where footswitching is kept to a minimum).

As always, here's a pic of the zenTera, next to another recent acquisition, an H&K Edition Tube combo...



--B