Blackstar Amped 1 user thread

Faff

monquixote said:

We need a tiny decent sounding amp revolution like bass players got with Mark Bass.

DV Mark Micro amps 

monquixote

Faff said:

monquixote said:

We need a tiny decent sounding amp revolution like bass players got with Mark Bass.

DV Mark Micro amps 

Had one.

It sounded like a very flat jazz amp.

I doubt most guitarists would consider gigging one.

Danny1969

relic245 said:

Thanks Danny.

So would that box you built go between the pedal and the speaker cab then?

If so then is it just a potentiometer in there or is there more to it?

Also would it be safe in this situation. I'm guessing that the pod go is line level where this is a 100 watt amp out.

I did wonder if something like that was possible.

No, this goes in the line out to feed IEM's or an active wedge .... so less useful I'm afraid if you are using a passive cab and the amp in the unit. I was thinking of my own use for the unit where the IEM's are monitored locally and FOH gets the DI. 

@impmann ;;  If you get a proper soundcheck the yeah there should be little reason to adjust the volume but there are many situations where you don't  ... festival slots, multiband club gigs with line check only etc. I played a club in Liverpool on Saturday and the sound was loud and lively at soundcheck, then 300 people turned up wearing coats and the sound changed dramatically. 

I still think it's a good product though, when I first saw it i thought is was just going to be a class D amp in a box like a PS170 but it's a whole lot more than that. 

relic245

impmann said:

At the risk of being ‘that bloke’… why would you need to turn up your volume mid gig if you had set all your levels properly at sound check?

if the bass player suffers from ‘turnitupitis’ a simple application of a lump hammer to the knuckle joints solves this.

However if you are ‘that guy’ who likes to hear yourself above all others then perhaps the problem isn’t really with the design? ;-)

Being serious for a mo - there is a level control in the side of the unit to adjust the output to desk from the CabRig out. Yes, that’s not as convenient as having the master independent of the xlr out but because the master volume is so interactive with the tone shaping created using the response circuit, it would be hard to do. Tbh, if you are tweaking a minor adjustment on stage mid gig to correct a volume imbalance, it’s likely your FoH will be wrong too. The trick is not to slam the trim on the desk so if you do raise the volume slightly, you don’t clip the desk… and then you can tweak that on the fly using the control on the side.

:-)

You make some good points and you're right that there shouldn't be a need to tweak mid gig but sometimes there is.

I hadn't thought of it before, but with an in house PA it's not going to be an issue. I'll be in the monitors so can just ask for more guitar there, exactly as I do with a physical amp. 

With our own pa it's a bit different. We only have 1 monitor mix available. We only have 2 monitors, the vocalist has 1 and the drummer the other and so there will never be much guitar in those. I don't even have a monitor in front of me so to get any noticeable difference is going to affect other people. 

While it would be great if we got everything right at the sound check there are times when we don't and it just feels like a backward step to have less control over what I can hear. 

I don't understand how using the trim will help anything. If I tweak that then I'm changing the foh mix without even being able to hear the effect of what I'm doing. 

Who knows, maybe it's a control thing. Maybe it's not going to be an issue in real life but the thought that I don't a usable volume control over what comes out of my cab is a bit scarey. 

I'm so on the fence with it at the moment. It sounds great, it's so convenient I just have questions over it's usability and how much it will bother me long term. I've got until the weekend to decide if I'm keeping it so I guess quite a bit of agonising until then. 

impmann

Put it another way…

if you were gigging your A30 with a mic in front and you needed to adjust the volume, is it that different?
What I meant about the trim is if you turn the master up, you can turn the trim down to compensate or visa versa 
Just ensure you have leeway in the gain structure of the desk so that if you turn it up, you won’t clip the input to that channel on your desk.

Regarding festivals with no sound check, well actually it’s no biggy really as the engineer will sort the FoH for you, and if it’s a decent sized stage/PA you can just ask for more guitar in your monitor/ears rather than actually turning it up yourself - which is really the best solution even if you have an on stage backline amp. Tweaking things yourself can balls up everyone else’s sound… and hence the comment about bass players and hammers. ;-)

mark_jwedge

relic245 said:

I don't understand how using the trim will help anything. If I tweak that then I'm changing the foh mix without even being able to hear the effect of what I'm doing. 

I guess if you feel your amp is a bit quiet on stage you can turn up the master volume on the Amped1. If everyone else then starts complaining that they are getting too much guitar in their monitor you can decrease the trim control to lower the level going to the desk but leave the volume level coming out of your amp?

relic245

impmann said:

if you were gigging your A30 with a mic in front and you needed to adjust the volume, is it that different?

No it wouldn't but currently when we are using our own PA I'm not miked up.

So if I turn my amp up or down to adjust stage volume it doesn't affect anything foh in the same way. To the half of the audience in the beam it's probably already too loud, and it's too quiet for everyone else, so a bit of a tweak doesn't make a lot of odds.  

What I meant about the trim is if you turn the master up, you can turn the trim down to compensate or visa versa 

I get what you're saying, but again how do I know how much to adjust it?

I'm effectively changing the foh mix without having any auditory feedback of what effect it is having. 

relic245

Found a solution to the monitoring headache.  It's good that I have as I took the amped 1 to rehearsal last night and it sounded lovely through the PA. So much better than through my monitors at home. There is no way I could send it back after hearing that. 

I'd forgotten that I have a tiny 50w class D amp that I paid about £25 for and sounds way better than it should. 

That's going to get fixed in the back of the bandit and then by using the bandit speaker I have a powered monitor. I can send XLR to the desk and line out to my monitor.  Problem solved. 

Faff

@relic245 ;

Then you would have a Cab simulation going though an actual non FRFR speaker. Why don't you just use the speaker output on the Amped into the speaker?

relic245

Faff said:

@relic245 ;

Then you would have a Cab simulation going though an actual non FRFR speaker. Why don't you just use the speaker output on the Amped into the speaker?

Then we are back to the point that sparked this whole part of the conversation. 

If I do that and want to turn up my on stage volume it will affect the FOH volume.  If we are doing our own sound I have no way to know how much I have changed it out front. 

For me, and maybe I'm a control freak, I need a way to be able to adjust my on stage volume independently of the PA. At the moment I also want to find a way to do that without buying any more kit. 

You're right that sound wise that it's probably not the best solution but as long as it sounds good enough then I'll be OK with that. 

PC_Dave

monquixote said:

Faff said:

monquixote said:

We need a tiny decent sounding amp revolution like bass players got with Mark Bass.

DV Mark Micro amps 

Had one.

It sounded like a very flat jazz amp.

I doubt most guitarists would consider gigging one.

Works for Eric Gales, Cory Wong to name but a couple...

Faff

To my mind having to take extra kit to compensate for the shortcomings of this unit takes the shine of it. 
The monitoring situation using Amped 1 is basically the same as using a real miked up cab. That's a shame.
 All? other modellers with XLR cab outs have output level independent of main output. It a design flaw. 

My main beef is that the Master Volume and Power settings are not saved to the preset so you cannot have it set manually to USA clean and  the preset as UK Crunch. They need different Master Volume levels to balance so you can't just go fro one to the other in a live situation. 

ICBM

relic245 said:

I'd forgotten that I have a tiny 50w class D amp that I paid about £25 for and sounds way better than it should. 

That's going to get fixed in the back of the bandit and then by using the bandit speaker I have a powered monitor.

Why not just plug into the Bandit's power amp?

Faff said:

To my mind having to take extra kit to compensate for the shortcomings of this unit takes the shine of it. 
The monitoring situation using Amped 1 is basically the same as using a real miked up cab. That's a shame.
 All? other modellers with XLR cab outs have output level independent of main output. It a design flaw. 

My main beef is that the Master Volume and Power settings are not saved to the preset so you cannot have it set manually to USA clean and  the preset as UK Crunch. They need different Master Volume levels to balance so you can't just go fro one to the other in a live situation. 

Not having the MV setting saved is ridiculous, any channel-switching amp effectively gives you that - and in fact some allow you to preset the power output per channel as well, eg some Mesas.

It also presumably means that you can't use the preset as your normal sound and set the MV higher in manual as an adjustable solo boost.

relic245

ICBM said:

Why not just plug into the Bandit's power amp?

That was my first thought. Maybe I'm missing something but by power amp I'm assuming you mean FX return?

I Tried that but I then the bandit's volume controls don't seem to do anything so I'm back to square 1 adjusting the volume from the amped1. 

Am I missing something obvious?

ICBM said:

Not having the MV setting saved is ridiculous, any channel-switching amp effectively gives you that - and in fact some allow you to preset the power output per channel as well, eg some Mesas.

It also presumably means that you can't use the preset as your normal sound and set the MV higher in manual as an adjustable solo boost.

What seems even more strange is that both the power level and master can be changed with MIDI so it's not an engineering reason. 

I would assume that it can be changed with a firmware update later on if enough people raise it as an issue.

ICBM

relic245 said:

That was my first thought. Maybe I'm missing something but by power amp I'm assuming you mean FX return?

I Tried that but I then the bandit's volume controls don't seem to do anything so I'm back to square 1 adjusting the volume from the amped1.

Yes, both the FX loop and the power amp input (depending on which series it is) are post-MV so the controls have no effect, other than the T-Dynamics, presence and damping controls on the Transtube ones.

If you want volume control, just plug into the front of the Bandit on the clean channel. It's not an especially coloured preamp.

relic245 said:

I would assume that it can be changed with a firmware update later on if enough people raise it as an issue.

I hope so, because both the DI and especially this are complete deal-breakers for live use, for me.

It reminds me a lot of the Boss Fender Deluxe Reverb pedal, which was a really nice-sounding thing but had such serious design mistakes with the switching and outputs that it wasn't practical to use live.

Faff

@ICBM ;said:

It also presumably means that you can't use the preset as your normal sound and set the MV higher in manual as an adjustable solo boost.

Exactly!
It's down to a '1 channel amp' for live use.  But a great sounding one at that!

@relic45 I have sent a few emails about this issue to BS with non committal replies back. Please send them an email too.

relic245

@Faff ;
I have done - about both issues. To be fair the preset thing is not an issue to me but do understand how limiting it is. 

I'm going to just use it as pedal platform so don't need the presets at present. If I do later on then I have a midi pedal that I could use to effectively create several different patches.

I do think that is something that could be addressed with a software update - although to be fair I'm not an engineer on the project and may be talking horsesh*t

ecc83

Just like to say that the amp/pedal is reviewed in the current issue of sound on sound.

Good one but one thing they missed IMHO was to try the 100W output into a suitable cab to see how loud it was.

I think a lot of gigging musos might buy this as a backup amp as well as a home/studio recording tool? Be nice to be able to tell them if it can fill a town hall?

Dave.

relic245

I've not tried it at a gig yet but my experiments so far tell me that it's not lacking in volume. I think it would give my A30 a run for it's money,and you know how loud they are.

ecc83

relic245 said:

I've not tried it at a gig yet but my experiments so far tell me that it's not lacking in volume. I think it would give my A30 a run for it's money,and you know how loud they are.

Well OK Relic but this is kind of the point. At home you cannot get any real idea of how loud a 'loud' amp is and how it will live with a manic drummer in a big venue.

Sound on Sound have the where with all to test that including putting it up against a 50W valve jobby (not fair to compare with 100W of valves)

I know that Blackstar's solid state kit does compare very well with valves for SPL but an independent view would be good to have.

And yes! It bloody should see an AC30 off  but I suspect the different, very high SPL character of the Vox would make comparison difficult? Plus after 2 minutes everyone would be goggle eyed!

Dave.