Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 Floor

I’ve been using another brand of Pedalboard based amp for a while. So I fancied the BS200 floor as an expansion of that system. Particularly as it has built in boost, modulation, delay and reverb FX. Plus with the additional features of MIDI control, plus the audio routing of 2 pre gain FX loops and one post gain FX loop. You could easily turn this into an incredibly portable high quality guitar rig. Especially in this age of compact mini pedals and devices like the Line 6 M5 & HX One.

The positives.

It’s incredibly feature packed, built like a tank and has a brilliant app to control and organise your presets. Also it has a 4 channel amp mode, a full midi capable 128 preset mode, or a simplified 7 sounds preset mode. It’s very user friendly and easy to get sounds with.

The lower gain sounds are incredibly naturalistic. With the boost engaged on the clean channel. It really does have a beautiful break up sound. The higher gain sounds are all in line with the quality of H&K’s valve amps. Particularly the Tubemeister 36 & 40 type sounds.

H&K make much of its secret tech. But I suspect it’s some sort of JFET circuit as they behave closest to a traditional valve amp. But under the fingers it sounds great.

The negatives.

The blue neon lights are garish to the point that ( to quote another fretboard forum users comment ) it look like a ‘condom vending machine in a pub toilet’.

The last two criticisms are really about personal taste, so please don’t take my opinions as gospel.

1: I found the higher gain settings somewhat over compressed, but to be fair. I think this of the Tubemeister amps as well. So it’s not a criticism. Rather that it’s just not been for my musical needs. Objectively I think if you were a classic rock or metal player. This would be a no brainier. Especially at the current price.

But I found it much harder to get high gain sounds I liked, whereas the clean and light breakup tones were really incredible.

2: I found the pedalboard layout somewhat silly. As in manual mode it’s 4 channels are zig zagging lower tier, then upper tier from left to right. This to me is counter intuitive. Personally I would have made the 4 lower tier pedals the actual channel or preset switching. Then used the three upper tier switches as modulation, delay and boost. This would make it more user friendly for most players as other modelling and multi FX products have used that existing methodology for ages. From a Boss GT1000 to even my 34 year old Digitech RP1. So I think whoever designed the user interface on this was thinking about brand identity over practical considerations.

However, I think if the H&K tones work for you. This is a compelling package and in the long term. I suspect a much more useable pro unit than many of the current ‘lost in the menus’ modellers on the market.