Getting a decent guitar sound on to tape (or disk) means getting dirty with a stack of amps and mics, or going down the well-trodden pre-amp route. Hughes and Kettner's answer is the Tubeman Plus, a switchable tube pre-amplifier. Roger Brown sees whether it offers a stairway to guitar heaven.

Last year Hughes & Kettner whisked me off to their research facility in Germany to preview a new series of PA systems. Impressed as I was by the various PA cabs on display, I was more intrigued by some unusual new products I saw being developed during my visit, which combined apparently contradictory technologies in imaginative ways, greatly enhancing their versatility.

The Tubeman Plus is one such product. While it was actually developed before my visit, it's been in such demand that this is the first opportunity I have had of laying my hands on one. Guitarists have apparently been snapping Tubeman Plus's up for live work, as it sits very nicely in a live setup as a preamp, providing numerous timbral variations without lugging a load of different heads on stage.

The Tubeman Plus is also designed as a piece of studio equipment, with an optional MIDI interface which adds the facility of saving settings as a patch, and recall them via MIDI Program Change. Used in this way, the Tubeman Plus could become a very useful piece of kit in studios where the need exists for a variety of different amp settings.

For the jazz and soul side of things, the Clean setting is the ticket to ride, providing clear, distinct tones. Punk, rock and grunge merchants will want the Crunch setting to provide that overdriven, distorted edge to their fretboard meanderings, while lead players will turn straight to either of the two lead settings for a variety of steps in their particular stairway to soloist's heaven.

Getting to grips

In use, the Tubeman Plus is a proverbial doddle. Guitarists aren't traditionally the most technologically literate members of the musical fraternity, and most of them just want to 'plug in and play', without knowing or worrying about 5-pin DINs. From the outset, the Tubeman Plus has been designed for them, with every setting easily accessible from the front panel knobs, or a remote footswitch. Adding the MIDI interface doesn't compromise this ease of use, although physically fitting the unit may cause those non-computer literate guitarists to scratch their heads in anxiety. Settings are saved to one of the 128 patch positions by the simple push of a knob, and recalled by either dialling up the appropriate Program Change number, or stepping through the PGMs from the footboard.

"lead players will turn straight to the lead settings for their particular stairway to soloist's heaven"

Setting up the Tubeman Plus for operation is simply a matter of choosing a signal path from the aforementioned Clean, Crunch or Lead, setting the input gain, adjusting the EQ and output level. The output and input gain knobs share the same set-up, with a single knob serving both the Clean and Crunchy signal path, switchable from the front panel while the Lead channel luxuriates in a set of knobs all to itself. There are two output sockets at the rear, one of which is a line output feed for sending a signal to an effects processor or power amp, while the other is switchable between mixer and guitar amp, depending on your unit's intended application.

Basically, there are two tube stages in the Tubeman Plus, with each of the three channels driving them differently, to deliver differing amp characteristics. In the Clean mode, the tube provides classic clean sounds for sharp single note lines and discriminatory chord work. The Crunch setting picks up where clean leaves off, pushing the tube into overdrive and thus distortion. Very high gain settings provoke a screaming sustain, ideal for driving blues lead lines. Of the two Lead modes, Lead 2 delivers the most bottom end compression and sustain for stinging lead lines, while Lead two is looser and grittier. A Mid Boost button is situated just to the right of the input socket, and comes in very handy for adding a little more presence to your twangings. Expressive sculpting is also afforded by the Bass, Mid and Treble stages in the EQ section. The Presence control influences the tone spectrum at around 10kHz, a makes a sound stand out by making it more 'upfront'.

MIDI to the max

Fitting the MIDI expansion socket allows easy switching between settings. Once you've found the combination of input gain, EQ, presence and output level you like, you then press the MIDI learn button located adjacent to the Bypass button, and the settings are stored. To store another patch in a different location, it is then necessary to increment the programs from either the footswitch controller or your sequencer.

This is the point where studio users may find the Tubeman Plus less than user-friendly. With no display to indicate which Program number you are currently working with, and no visual indication that you have changed patches, you're left in the dark, relying on your ears to tell you which of your carefully saved settings are which. This is probably all very well for guitarists on stage, who will simply step through their presets from the footswitch. Studio users, on the other hand, will need a little more flexibility, and a numerical display would help in locating that killer setting without a lot of time wasted changing programs, and listening to identify them. In use in the studio, I found myself ignoring the MIDI storage facility and altering settings on the fly. I did store various settings and used program changes to switch between them, as you can hear on the demo, but without a visual display one could very easily become confused, once more than nine or ten settings had been saved.

Verdict

Ease of use aside, the sound of the Tubeman is a delight. Not having a guitar to hand. I chose to use some of the guitar patches on my synth, and sent the signal from them directly to the Tubeman and thence straight into the mixer. For taking a bare sound and giving it an Eddie Van Halen makeover, the Tubeman does a sterling job. The level of distortion, crunch and general grunge will fool all but the most fastidious of guitar fiends into believing they're listening to a real axe. As such, it deserves a place in any serious studio, and only the minimalist implementation of the MIDI program change function is holding the Tubeman back from being a must-have purchase.

Listen to 'Whole Lotts Grunge', Roger's heavy metal jungle excursion to hear the Tubeman's circuits in action.