Steve Vai - Guitar Interactive Magazine Issue 12: Hayden HGT A20 Head & 2x12 Cab Review

Guitar Interactive Magazine Issue 12 Featuring Steve Vai! iGuitar Magazine! Steve Vai talks with Guitar Interactive Magazine at his home studio in L.A to talk about playing, his gear & his brand new album. Learn how to play like Steve Vai in Guitar Interactive Magazine Issue 12 free guitar lessons to learn Steve Vai style and tricks with Andy James. Featured exclusively in this issue we were loaned the Steve Vai Ibanez EVO - only 100 were made as exact replicas & we have one to talk about in this issue. Win a Steve Vai Gem EVOs in our Free Entry Competition - Also featured in Guitar Interactive this Issue - We featured the band The Aristrocrats - headed by the fantastic Guthrie Govan check out the live performances of this super group!! To celebrate Marshall Amplification 50 Years - we interview Paul Marshall about the companies history & we talk with the man behind the designs of Marshall amps with an exclusive tour around the factory. Guitar Reviews this month feature; Review of the Ibanez Jem Evo & JEM 70V Review of the Duesenburg Fullerton CC Review of the Fender Excelsior combo Review of the Godin Session Custom Guitar Review of the Cornell Valve Pre Amp Pedal Review of the Hayden HGT A20 Head Review 2 x12 Cab review IK Multimedia iRig Stomp review TC Electronic Spark Booster Review A/DA APP-1 Pre Amp Pedal Rocktron Boutique Series FX Pedals Review Faith Eclipse Venus 12 String Review Review Marshall as50d Soloist Huss And Dalton acoustic review Review of the Laney NEXUS Fet & NX410 & NX115 Review of the overwater Tanglewood Standard Bass and plus bass Review of Elixir Coated & Coated Nickel sbass strings

REVIEWS_GUITAR REVIEW

Hayden may be a relatively new name to the guitar amp scene but it comes from the long established Ashdown bass amp company. So how does it stack up, we asked? Michael Casswell ignored the pun and got on with his review.

Have you have heard of Ashdown bass gear? Good, because Hayden is the guitar amp brand from the same stable, based in the county of Essex in the UK. Here we have the HGT A20 head, boasting three channels and delivering 20 Watts, which is switchable down to three Watts via the back panel, making it versatile enough for studio use, sensible gig volume and home practice. By yourself in a room, 20 Watts is always deafening but the big test for amp power is putting it in a band situation next to a drummer, and if that’s where you plan to use your amp, you might want to consider the 40 Watt version of this head, not surprisingly called the HGT A40! It’s not that this amp is quiet - just that drummers are loud and any 20 Watt amp would struggle!

Plugging into the tasteful looking head, we find three channels: Clean, Crunch, and Full Gain, all switchable via the supplied footswitch, and powered courtesy of three ECC83 pre-amp valves, and two EL84 output valves - the classic arrangement. The clean channel has its own independent bass, mid and treble EQ, and can go from super

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clean to a nice bluesy break up, which would benefit even more with the right compressor and overdrive pedal in front to help things along. Channels two and three both share the same EQ and are where you will find some nice crunch and hi gain tones, great for full bodied Rock sounds as well as high gain solos. Again, you could easily expand these channels with the right choice of stomp box in front of the input and this is a very attractive proposition as this amp takes pedals well, as a good valve amp should.

You also get a contour control pot, that works on channels two and three, which you can treat as an extra flavour to dial in to your EQ settings. I guess they are wanting the contour control to give what we consider a more ‘British’ sound or a more ‘American’ type voicing, which it sort of does, but in my book, you just find where it sounds fattest and warmest and then leave it!

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