Boutique amplifiers are hugely popular these days, and the number of brands focusing on this segment keeps growing. One of them has been working in this direction for quite some time: Matchless. This company has already appeared in a previous article, but it never hurts to briefly recall where the Nighthawk, the amp we are looking at here, comes from. Matchless is a Los Angeles-based company specializing in hand-built tube amplifiers, most of them Class A, known for delivering a fairly clean sound full of harmonics. Other family members worth keeping in mind are the DC-30, Clubman, Lightning, etc. The Nighthawk is a 15W Class A amplifier that sounds simply incredible and is well worth five minutes of your time if you are lucky enough to come across one. If what you are looking for is a clean, clear sound, this is one of the amps to consider. Let's see what it's made of, what it sounds like, what it pairs best with, and so on.

Construction
When I have an amplifier like this in front of me, I tend to pay close attention to how sturdy it is and, above all, whether it will survive the wear and tear of gigging, although of course the finish is also important, especially considering its price. Its ruggedness is key, since it's never much fun picking up pieces of your gear on stages or in rehearsal rooms. In this case, we can see that the amplifier is built in a way that will stand up well to the abuse of live shows, and the finish is also of great quality.

On the other hand, the Nighthawk belongs to the family of amplifiers that follow the approach that the fewer pots, switches, etc. our signal passes through, the better it will sound, since keeping our sound as unprocessed as possible means the guitar's tone is respected to the fullest.

On the front of the amplifier we have:

1) Master. The master lets us control the power amp volume, that is, the overall volume of the amplifier. Having the master higher means more volume and therefore makes it harder to get it to break up without blowing out our ears.
2) Volume. This determines how much preamp gain we have and, therefore, how much preamp saturation we get. In other words, the higher the volume and the lower the master, the more saturated the sound, and vice versa: the less preamp volume and the more master we have, the cleaner the sound will be.
3) Tone Control. This is an EQ control with only six positions. At first it may seem somewhat limited, but as you use the amplifier you realize it's a great idea, since all six EQ settings sound incredible. Depending on the guitar you plug in, it will work better with one setting or another. When you plug in your guitar, you see that these are the six settings the manufacturer considers best for making the amp sound good. It fits the philosophy that the fewer switches and pots there are, the easier and faster it is to get it to sound good.
4) Reverb. A reverb control never hurts, but bear in mind that you already get a sense of natural reverb from the amount of harmonics and the huge, open sound it has.
5) It also has two instrument inputs. The first is the amplifier's natural input, where the amp works at full output. The second input provides a specific routing and therefore reduces the amount of guitar signal going into the amp, so we get a cleaner sound that is harder to overdrive. It's worth experimenting to find the combination that works best for us, depending on the guitar we have in our hands.

That covers the front panel layout. Its simplicity is something I value highly, because the fewer options you have, the more you focus on playing.

As for the rear, we have many more options, which we will look at now:

1) Speaker output. There are two outputs: one at 4 and another at 8 Ohm. The internal speaker output is 8 Ohm. As with any amplifier, 4 Ohm outputs make sense for a punchier sound, and 8 and 16 Ohm outputs for less aggressive sounds.
2) Line Output. The amplifier's line output comes after the power stage. This means it can be used for a number of tasks, from feeding another amplifier (master – slave) to serving as a recording output to the monitor desk or a studio's recording input.

Sound
Let's move on to the amplifier's sound, which is what will really surprise us, since in terms of hardware it is a fairly simple amp at first glance.

The main thing to keep in mind when thinking about this amplifier is that it is truly faithful to whatever guitar you plug in. Sometimes, with lower-end amplifiers, if you plug in a Les Paul® or a Strat®, you can tell the difference, even if it's not easy to perceive. In any case, with the Nighthawk you can be sure that when you plug in one of these models, they will sound exactly like what they are. I did the tests with a Strat® and a 335, whose sounds are worlds apart. Playing the 335, I could feel the versatility typical of that guitar, but always within a fat, dense sound. When I plugged in the Strat®, Fender's characteristic chime started to appear.

The volume pot works as a drive selector for the amp's preamp, giving it an increasingly aggressive character. The master pot lets you select the amount of power amp volume you want at the amplifier's output, but bear in mind that it is completely tied to the volume control. So we can generate very clean or very dirty sounds depending on how much volume and master we dial in. The six-position switch is a great idea, as it ranges from sounds with very defined lows to sounds where the mids are emphasized. For each guitar you can find two or three positions that really suit you. What's more, you don't waste much time searching for your sound; if you don't like one sound, you move on to the next, and if not, to the next, and so on up to six. The reverb control, as we said earlier, works properly, but I didn't use it much in the tests either, since the amplifier sounds spectacular on its own. One place where the reverb comes in handy is when using a vibrato effect. In that case it can be a good option, as it adds perfect depth.

How would adding pedals affect the sound?
This is an important question, since we only have one channel, and it is really clean. We will very likely need options to make our guitar sound more crunchy or distorted. The alternative is obvious: add pedals to the signal chain. You can say without hesitation that the amplifier has enough “bandwidth” to respond with quality to any pedal you put in front of it.

It should be added, however, that although this is a fairly versatile amplifier, it particularly excels at classic sounds: settings where the tonal foundation has great timbre and rich harmonics, but clean. So it seems logical to think that if you're into metal or very aggressive sounds, you'll probably need a bit more push. It's clear that the engineers who developed this amp did not have metalheads in mind as its main users.

Another question is which guitars pair best with this rig, since each type of amplifier is better suited to one guitar or another, depending on its characteristics. In this case, the answer is fairly simple: anything with a somewhat classic flavor will sound incredible: Strat®, Telecaster®, Gretsch, 335, Les Paul®, etc. In short, anything that sounds organic and lets us get the widest dynamic range.

Conclusion
The conclusion is simple: the amplifier sounds brutal, and it's one of the ones that has impressed me most lately. But there are some details to keep in mind: if your sound is metal, this isn't your amp; if your sound leans more toward blues/rock/pop/jazz, it's perfect. Pedals suit it wonderfully, mainly mild boosts, Tube Screamer-style overdrives or vibratos.

The other factor to consider is cost. It comes as no surprise to anyone: boutique amplifiers tend to come with painful price tags. In this particular case, the price has to be weighed against its wattage limitation (15). Even so, I think these are the most powerful 15W I've heard in a long time.

We might also wonder whether 15W is enough. Saying it will do the job on every occasion is risky; if Metallica calls you to play, you might fall short, but for everything else you have more than enough power (in fact, it's surprising how loud those 15W can get). To conclude: the amplifier sounds outrageous. If you're thinking about getting a boutique amp with controlled power, this one will leave you speechless. If not, I still recommend that you don't miss the chance to see what it can do.