Hughes and Kettner Cream Machine in excellent condition and sounds great. Includes printout of user manual.
"The Cream Machine is basically a low wattage high-gain Marshall valve amplifier in miniature and is used to produce that classic over-driven British rock guitar tone. Just crank the controls around to the level of distortion required, from a very smooth cream mode to when cranked a full sounding mini Marshall.
The Cream Machine is a 1W - two valve (12AX7 & 12AU7) low-power pre-amplifier & amplifier combo in a super compact enclosure designed to produce guitar distortion tones. It was the first small valve recording amp produced. The H&K electronics construction is top-rate German quality. The Cream Machine does not do clean - it is built for distortion. To do clean one would use the Cream Machine in sequence with a Crunch Master (Blues Master) and have the Crunch Master provide the clean sections and also drive the speakers.
This little marvel is a small powerhouse that will surprise you with its apparent volume from just 1 watt . It is surprising to discover there is enough power to drive a 4 x 12 speaker cabinet. The advantage of the Cream Machine is that it drives a cab around 20 decibels quieter than a 100 watt Marshall amp when it is cranked.
It is very difficult to get a good guitar sound in a recording studio from a 100 watt Marshall amp because when they are cracked recording gear downstream of microphones get overloaded. The Cream Machine does a great job of emulating Marshall valve amps at reasonable volumes, which makes it ideal to record British cranked tones. The sound produced is in a range that fits in perfectly with recording.
The interface feature set Cream Machine is very broad compared to low power amps in current production, such as the Nano Head. The Cream Machine interface features fit in better in a recording environment than most current alternative products. It also has the right interfaces to function as a chained over driven tube effect unit in a live playing environment. On the other hand for miked low power guitar amps there are quite a number of brands on the market that are very nice. There downside is that they tend to be much more expensive than purchasing a Cream Machine on the used market. On the other hand one needs to be patient as all the H&K low-power amp effect units can be difficult to locate.
The only negative connecting the Cream Machine directly to speakers is that it lacks an EQ section and it has no effects loop. If EQ is required it is necessary to use the line level outputs and provide EQ externally or perform EQ before input into the Cream Machine. It is not possible to use the Cream Machine amplifier to drive speakers directly if EQ is performed downstream. It would also be nice to have a DI balanced XLR out.
It can be used as:
Recording amp
Low power practice amp
Miked amp simulator
Over-driven valve effect
DI box
Great if you want a simple amp for at home, it does rock/hardrock very well, if you want more of a thrashy distortion put a distortion pedal in front if it
Specifications
12AX7 preamp valve
12AU7 power valve
1W output @ 8 ohms
Front Indicator Lights
Bypass LED
When lit bypass is enabled
Power LED
When lit the unit is powered
Inputs
Front input jack
Rear input jack
Controls
Pre-gain
The amount of overdrive into the "tube amp" section
Master Level
Controls the overall output volume
Two amp (on back)
In concert with the other two controls can sweeten the sound
Connections
Eight 1/4" jacks
Speaker
Foot switch
Tube amp out
Instrument out
Mix out
Cabinetlator mix out
Input (front and back)
Tone Character
Heavy distorted lead
Mellow overdriven sound
The Cream Machine is meant to sound like a heavily over-driven Marshall valve amp and it indeed creates great valve distortion tones. At low volume levels, with the gain set high you can get feedback normally requiring very loud amplification.
At high gain control settings the Cream Machine is very sensitive to input gain and a slight touch of the strings will produce an over-driven growl if the volume on the guitar is set too high. It works best to control gain using the guitar gain knob to drive the level of the Cream Machine effect required. In this setting the Cream Machine volume is set to the desired level speaker output level. Then the gain control is brought up until it produces the desired crunch. The trigger point is then controlled with the guitar volume."