Great Tone. Flexibility. Portability.

These are all very compelling words when it comes to guitar amps. Until now, they've been just that: words.

It was in this conundrum that Greg Mackie saw the opportunity to once again be a major innovator in delivering audio to musicians, this time specifically for guitarists. More pragmatically, perhaps even a little selfishly, Greg was driven by his desire to create a single, great sounding and extremely portable guitar amp to carry to his gigs and recording sessions instead of trucking around his half a dozen or so boutique and classic tube amps. Four years after this seemingly simple revelation, the Mackie Hotwire VT12 emerges as the only tube amplifier capable of honestly being associated with the words great tone, flexibility and portability. To accomplish this, Greg took a completely different approach, unlike anything that's come before, and without assumption or compromise.

The result is the world's first Mode Switching guitar amplifier, which is a fancy way of saying that Greg preserved the proper use of the critical physical components and circuit designs found in real tube amps rather than trying to recreate classic tones by artificial means. Using real Class A and Class AB operation and performing complex circuit re-wiring on the fly, the VT12 gets its great guitar tone from time-tested analog circuitry, and reserves the "modern technology" for effects processing, where it belongs.

On the next page, you'll read the why's and how's of the incredible performance and flexibility of the Hotwire VT12. You will no doubt appreciate the simple elegance of Greg's approach to creating what we believe to be the finest amp for the needs of today's guitarist. You will be equally taken by the painstaking attention to detail and unforgiving standards of performance that the VT12 has been held to. In the end, however, these are all just words on paper until you experience Hotwire's soul. And more importantly, the soul of your own music pouring out of a brilliantly designed musical instrument that keeps its focus where it belongs: on pure, uncompromised tone.

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Hotwire: Features

• Real tube tone, ranging from crystalline clean to full-on high gain distortion sounds
• Fully-configurable vacuum tube circuitry with 12 distinct wiring modes including, UK I, UK II, USA I, USA II, CLASS A, HI GAIN I, HI GAIN II, ACOUSTIC, HI FI, JAZZ, BLUES and LINE IN.
• High power output – 120 Watt main amplifier with eight-position Output Power selector, plus separate 30 Watt amplifiers for compression driver and optional EX12 extension speaker
• Maximum portability – with a curb weight of less than 25 lbs., the Hotwire VT12 is roughly half the weight of a typical single 12" combo amplifier… without any compromises in tone or output power!
• Four-band tone stack (Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence) with user-selectable USA and UK tone stack types
• Storage capability for 96 presets, conveniently arranged in banks of Clean, Crunch, Overdrive, and Lead tones
• A 12" custom-voiced speaker, with neodymium magnet structure for reduced weight while retaining the tonal characteristics of traditional Alnico speakers
• A 1.35" Celestion neodymium compression driver with custom-designed waveguide, under wiring mode control for full-range applications
• Front-panel selectable USA and UK speaker voices
• 32-bit onboard digital effects, including modulation (chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, modulated delay, and rotary speaker), delay (simple delay, tape echo, multitap delay), and reverb (room, stage, hall, plate, and short spring/long spring)
• Pedal jack, for connecting optional PB1 pedal board or PB4 four-function channel selector switch
• USB jack – provides streaming cabinet emulated audio to your computer (PC or Mac) for recording, and provides access to deep editing, preset archiving, live control, and firmware upgrade function.