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A Greenback or a G12H-30 would be a *far* better choice if they want to upgrade it.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
I had a mk1 HT-5 mini stack. (No reverb. No tone control for the Clean channel.) Running the head through almost ANY other external loudspeaker cabinet revealed the inadequacies of the stock MIC Celestion. I upgraded to an Eminence Legend in the hope of extracting a more "American" sound.
Ironically, the overdrive in the HT-5 is created by using IC chips rather than by torturing valves. I dare say that, if he chose to, ecc83 could enlighten us as to which Blackstar standalone overdrive pedal most closely resembles the HT-5 pre-amp circuitry.
I much prefer the second version - I think both channels sound better, but especially the clean.
Although not as stiff, the Gold still sounds too much like an ‘alnico V30’ really. If you’re going for a speaker that price, the Blue would be much better - or an alnico Fane or Jensen.
Not true, despite what you can see in the schematic - the distortion does come from torturing the valve. Although there is an IC ‘Tube Screamer’ circuit in front of it, it acts as a clean boost and pushes the valve into distortion. The diodes in the ‘TS’ circuit don’t start to conduct until the gain control is almost all the way up and the valve is already far into clipping - their purpose is just to stop it being pushed so hard that it goes into ‘blocking distortion’, which sounds nasty. Any additional clipping generated by the diodes is totally masked by the distortion from the valve at that point.
I’ve spent some time investigating this with an oscilloscope, out of curiosity... I was annoyed by the early marketing claim about them being ‘all valve’, and having seen the schematic I also assumed the ‘TS’ circuit was doing the clipping. But the claim that the distortion is from the valve is correct - it’s actually almost exactly like running a Tube Screamer with the level up full and the gain at zero to push a valve amp into overdrive.
The HT-Dual is identical to the first version. It was a broken HT-Dual I’d been given that provided me with the opportunity to analyse it, in fact.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
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(Thanks .)
It probably depends what he's running it through - I think what I don't like about the typical 'Blackstar sound' is more in the power amp - the preamp voicing is very dark, but it's the stiff dynamics I really can't get on with, and I think that's almost certainly the power amp and power supply. I don't think it's a coincidence that the one I like best overall is the little HT-1 - although I still prefer the clean channel cranked up to the overdrive channel.
I do *almost* like some of the bigger ones, and I've sometimes wondered if a more drastic change of speaker would be enough...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson