Blackstar LT pedals demo - Sound pretty sweet!

ThePrettyDamned

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO0UmCd-T1g

The drive sounds really great, the distortion I still reckon I'd prefer the Duncan powergrid, but still sounds great.  Volume is a bit low, they look like they can boost a bit, but unity seems about 3/4 up, which is a pity but so long as it's capable of only slight boos,t that's enough for 90% of us I reckon.  

The LT metal sounds pretty great, too.  Skip to 5 and a half minutes or so for the actual playing stuff.  

ICBM

Is it possible for those two idiots to have become even more annoying than before? I didn't think so, but now I'm not sure... I just wanted to punch at least one of them repeatedly.

Dreadful demo, they all sound awful - grainy, muddy and totally lifeless. The twat with the guitar can make anything sound terrible though - including the clean sound - so I wouldn't read too much into it.

I suspect Blackstar will be annoyed by the 'Boss Super Overdrive' comment too.

The demo with the rather 'wooden' guy from Blackstar was far better.

ThePrettyDamned

I know the sounds demoed were not the best, but I thought it gave an approximation and they sounded quite good! I don't find them annoying as such... I wish they'd get facts right first, then demo. And I skipped the, er... Rest

ICBM

The problem is that you can't skip it because they don't confine their painful attempts at "comedy" to the intro, they do it all the way through.

I couldn't really tell the pedals apart tonally after the first couple - although I must admit I lost the will to listen closely because it all sounded so crap and they were beginning to make my blood boil. I am actually interested in these pedals, but I would write them off entirely if that's even remotely what they sound like... luckily from the other demo I don't think so.

Chuffola

They used to be mildly irritating, but now I can't even watch them without sneering and swearing. However, 8 bagillion internet viewers puts me firmly in the minority, I fear.

Wish they would just blow each other and get it over with. (Not that I want to see that video!)

Drew_TNBD

Yeah, usually I'm quick to defend these guys, because I think they get a lot of stick (particularly amongst the Musicradar lot?) but this video was fucking annoying.

ThePrettyDamned

ICBM;44133" said:

The problem is that you can't skip it because they don't confine their painful attempts at "comedy" to the intro, they do it all the way through.

I couldn't really tell the pedals apart tonally after the first couple - although I must admit I lost the will to listen closely because it all sounded so crap and they were beginning to make my blood boil. I am actually interested in these pedals, but I would write them off entirely if that's even remotely what they sound like... luckily from the other demo I don't think so.

Just saw the other demo, and you're right, they sound brilliant!

Travisthedog

The level of vitriol that I reserve for those two idiots increases daily and when I see things like this it gets more and more.

It's good that black star have finally made some pedals smaller that a shipping container but they sound as muddy and waspish as all their other stuff.

Nil points

dindude

Apart from the yellow one, which seemed passable, if those clips are anything to go by then pedal design has just lost 3 decades, they sound terrible.

ICBM

Try the other one...

OK, some of the video editing is annoying (what exactly is the point of the annoying half-profile shots?) and the chap isn't exactly one of nature's great presenters - although at least I don't have to fight an urge to kill him - but they sound far better, and far more varied.

For me there's a slight flaw in that the demo amp is a Blackstar, which may obscure what the pedal actually sounds like to some extent, since it's layering 'more of the same' - that's not a dig at the tone of the amp, I wouldn't demo a Mesa pedal into a Mesa or a Marshall pedal into a Marshall either - but the clean sound is natural and balanced as well, which at least gives some hope that the dirty sounds are reasonably accurate.

Pyroman

  Totally off topic, but I can't help but find it hilarious just how much you pack of curmudgeons let these two under your skin.  Seriously- it gets positively YouTube-like.

  I've seen a few video twats who take themselves FAR too seriously, that are much more annoying than these two.

monquixote

The pedals do sound a lot better on the Blackstar demo, but it's somewhat disappointing that they don't actually have the features of their HT equivalents. 

For example the Dual would be much better with a speaker sim and a proper EQ. 

I'm actually quite impressed they haven't made them true bypass. 

ICBM

monquixote said:

The pedals do sound a lot better on the Blackstar demo, but it's somewhat disappointing that they don't actually have the features of their HT equivalents. 

For example the Dual would be much better with a speaker sim and a proper EQ.

I agree, but they're probably trying not to take away sales from the HTs. It's pretty clear that the LTs are designed as pure drive pedals for in front of the amp, whereas the HTs are really preamps that you can use into an amp as well.

I'm not sure I don't actually prefer the tone of the LTs, either, going by the demos! Although I haven't tried them in person yet.

monquixote said:

I'm actually quite impressed they haven't made them true bypass. 

They wouldn't, it's not part of their design philosophy - rightly in my opinion, and probably not too much of a disadvantage in sales terms since they're not really aimed at the boutique market.

ThePrettyDamned

Hopefully I'll be trying them out in the next week or so. I'll report back

Grumpyrocker

I assume the LT Dual won't offer as much gain as the Metal. I was hoping it might, because then I'd be all over it. Though given the products now available in the HT range - I suspect a dual channel LT Metal pedal may appear in the future.

monquixote

ICBM said:

I agree, but they're probably trying not to take away sales from the HTs. It's pretty clear that the LTs are designed as pure drive pedals for in front of the amp, whereas the HTs are really preamps that you can use into an amp as well.

I'm not sure I don't actually prefer the tone of the LTs, either, going by the demos! Although I haven't tried them in person yet.

They are pretty well priced so I'd be quite tempted to pick one up based on the demos. I'm a bit puzzled about the ISF though. On the HT Amp I had as far as I could tell the ISF seemed to make the mid knob respond differently. These pedals don't have mid knobs so is it actually just a mid knob.

ICBM

monquixote said:

They are pretty well priced so I'd be quite tempted to pick one up based on the demos. I'm a bit puzzled about the ISF though. On the HT Amp I had as far as I could tell the ISF seemed to make the mid knob respond differently. These pedals don't have mid knobs so is it actually just a mid knob.

The ISF is a mid sweep control basically - the two are interactive, the lower you have the mid set the more drastic the effect of the ISF. I assume the mid is preset internally on the pedals to quite a low value, or there wouldn't be much point.

monquixote

Just had a quick peep on YT and I think the Crazy Train Music demo is the best one. 

I'm really liking the sound of the Drive and even more so the Dist. 

For some reason the Dual doesn't sound quite as good as either of them which is a shame as that was the one I was thinking of buying. 

dindude

Those other clips do sound better, although these still look like pedals that don't given a crap what you put them through, nice valve combo, solid state combo, toaster, all the same really.

ICBM

monquixote said:

Just had a quick peep on YT and I think the Crazy Train Music demo is the best one.

The amp sound is way too muddy to hear what the pedals really sound like, and as a result they all sound too samey as well as muffled. It's really hard to hear anything useful at all - the whole demo sounds like it was recorded under a pile of blankets.

dindude said:

Those other clips do sound better, although these still look like pedals that don't given a crap what you put them through, nice valve combo, solid state combo, toaster, all the same really.

I still think it's a mistake to use a Blackstar amp to demo Blackstar pedals as well, however it's set.

It would be more useful to hear them through a typical balanced-sounding clean amp like a Fender, or even a Vox. Or something even more neutral, solid-state maybe.

monquixote said:

For some reason the Dual doesn't sound quite as good as either of them which is a shame as that was the one I was thinking of buying. 

From the very little you can tell, I actually thought the Dual sounded the best simply because it was marginally clearer than the others, so possibly we just have very different tastes in sounds...

monquixote

I think we must have completely different ears. 

I seem to like everything you hate and vice versa.