Hughes & Kettner Triamp

ZEN Amps

ZEN Amps

Well-known member
A friend brought one of these over to Zen HQ today for us to check out. MkIII version.

6 channels, 6 power tubes, lots of blue lights and a whole heap of knobs. Was pretty awkward telling him it just didn't cut it. I mean it was ok - it did everything ok, nothing great. No personality, vanilla at every setting sort of amp.

Seemed in good shape. It's pretty new, and ran clean and quiet, and no signs of running sub-optimally. I think he paid around $5500 (Aussie) for it, big money.

Many here tried this thing out? Any success?
 
I think they used some version of this on Fuel's Something Like Human, which I thought sounded pretty awesome. Never played one though.
 
ZEN Amps said:
A friend brought one of these over to Zen HQ today for us to check out. MkIII version.

6 channels, 6 power tubes, lots of blue lights and a whole heap of knobs. Was pretty awkward telling him it just didn't cut it. I mean it was ok - it did everything ok, nothing great. No personality, vanilla at every setting sort of amp.

Seemed in good shape. It's pretty new, and ran clean and quiet, and no signs of running sub-optimally. I think he paid around $5500 (Aussie) for it, big money.

Many here tried this thing out? Any success?
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To me it falls into the same category as the Revv Generator I traded for it in terms of not really standing out in any serious way. I do think it has a slightly different voicing to other amps I’ve owned. I also got mine for an amp I got for 2400$ USD so I feel like I got my money’s worth. Growing up I wanted one of these because it looked so cool, so I have some bias towards it. That being said, it is not worth the store price.
 
the Mk2 was supposed to be pretty awesome from what i've read and heard. Never played one myself.

The Mk3 freaks me out with all the options available :D (never played one)
 
I had about an hour to test the MK III and compare it with my 2203KK. It is very variable, perhaps that is why people write that it does not have its own character. I liked it, on the other hand, nothing that I must have. However I dialed in a lot of good sounds on it, mostly very massive sounding, not spiky or screaming, rather balanced. I'd say it's a nice amp for rock and lighter metal etc. Not for fast riffing and staccato. Today people expect percussive tightness and articulation, MK III is not like that. I would compare it to Engl Steve Morse. Great amp, but not suitable for thrash, for example.
 
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The Triamps are great 90s rock amps if you need to cover a lot of ground, this forum is mainly super metal so I wouldn´t expect it to be very popular here. Falls into the same deal as the old Egnater TOL stuff, I suppose, not made for the chugs.

With that said, I´ve only played the original version from the mid 90s. Probably the best all-round channel switcher you can get for that money, at least here in Europe. Maybe the II and III versions are voiced differently.
 
I think the deal with H&K is most of their amps have a hi-fi sound thing going which can come off as sterile and lackluster to many folks. The Triamp is pretty good but there's so much better stuff out there in the price range. If I'm going to be paying upwards of 4K USD for an amp I'm gonna step it up a little more and grab a Wizard, Naylor or vintage Marshall. Anyone would be better off paying the going price used of around 1K USD for a Mk I or II if they wanted a Triamp. But hey, if you're buddy likes it and it gets the job done then who are we to burst his bubble.
 
The original version is about $500-600 if you buy it out of Germany, that´s a lot of amp for that coin unless you need to ship it across the Atlantic.
 
For me, it didn't seem like some of the channels really lived up to what they were described to be: California Clean, British Clean/Lead, Brown. Like some of the ENGLs I tried, even the low/medium gain channels still had some of the qualities of high gain, even at lower gain settings. Like when you turn the gain, the amount of overdrive stays about the same, and it just becomes more compressed. It could be a fine amp, and I just had the wrong expectations.
 
braintheory said:
I agree with your experience. I never liked them. They’re like a Swiss butter knife IME. Not great at anything, but tries to cover everything
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With all the amps you've owned/played I know you're pretty particular about what you like; or at least what peaks your interest. What are the amps that stand out as exceptional to you?
 
3-4 years ago they were quite often for sale in a range of 200-300 Euros, but they somehow disappeared.
 
A few years ago I found a mint MkIII for $2k so I jumped on it. I thought it was a pretty good amp for that price, and the midi switchable everything (including power tube types) was rad. Long story short it didn't make the cut though.

I disagree about the thrash/metal comments above. This amp can get heavy as fuck and tight as you need with proper EQ/boosting. But I found it to be very low mid heavy and this needed an EQ in the loop to clean up.

The clean channel was also pretty harsh IMO. Mid gain sounded good. So yeah, overall a good sounding amp and if you need max tonal options in a tube amp this gets my vote over the Revv. But each individual channel can be done better with other amps, and well I'd rather own those :D
 
I had a mk2 Triamp and used one for a number of years in modern skate punk style group I was in. I bought it because that group was pretty dynamic and required alot of tone styles from clean all the way to thrash style gain and the Triamp, with its 6 channels gave me that.

Standouts for me were channel 2A, which did a good Marshall-ish crunch, 3A which gave a great lead tone (great combo of punch and saturation....felt awesome!) and 3B, which kinda reminded me of a leaner Uberschall/Recto vibe.

I still think it is a good amp and was good for what it is: a versatile, super channel switcher. At that point in time, I really was tired of doing the multi-amp thing for my rig.

That said, there is a reason I sold it in 2019. As has been said, it is kind of a jack of all trades amp, master of none. For specific tones, there are much better amps. So, guys who own C+'s, Wizard's, SLO's etc are probably going to find the Triamp very average. Along those lines, my experience is that it doesn't record as well as some of those other amps. Although I never found my Triamp to be "harsh" or "sterile" playing live, there must be something to that, as it had this weird upper mid thing coupled with a kinda fizz in the top end. My friend who was helping us record some demo stuff quickly told me the Triamp wasn't working and quickly plugged me into my old trusty Pittbull Ultra-lead, which absolutely tracked better.

Would I buy one again? Maybe. Still kinda curious about the mk3. But for a modern, super versatile channel switcher, I don't think it could trump my Diezel VHX.
 
MusicIsLife said:
For me, it didn't seem like some of the channels really lived up to what they were described to be: California Clean, British Clean/Lead, Brown. Like some of the ENGLs I tried, even the low/medium gain channels still had some of the qualities of high gain, even at lower gain settings. Like when you turn the gain, the amount of overdrive stays about the same, and it just becomes more compressed. It could be a fine amp, and I just had the wrong expectations.
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Actually yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. Diezel VH4 channel 2 is a bit like that.
 
Techdeth said:
I’ll have it to do that . Is it a tube amp ?
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Yep. It's the newest amp they've made that was marketed exclusively for br00talz

Also has a great built in gate and a few fx

Jeff Waters and Tony Macalpine were longtime Coreblade users. Not sure about Jeff but Tony still uses them, at least as of the last time I saw him live about two years ago
 
I had one last year that I got from a store that was closing. It went poof so they gave me another one. The second one was fine.
Lots of great features on the amp and a S$it can of tubes in there!

I like the channels 5 and 6 of it the most. The other channels were ok. The built in boost was nice to have.
The whole amp had a high end zing that I didn't like as much. Either way, lots of usable tones in there but I kind of gave up on it.
 
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