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Never played one but it might be worth a try.
The circuits all point to point and the transformers are massive for such a small amp. For the money I can't fault it at all.
Thanks for the tip.
Victory doing a lot of good stuff at the moment amp-wise.
I'm such a fan of the HT-1R head that I ended up with three of them, each with their own 1x12" cabinets. I use them separately and as a pair or W/D/W setup. The wife loves them as well, because I can get sounds I like without disturbing her reading upstairs. The clean headroom isn't especially high, but they work very well for me for home recording (and I have other amps for headroom).
"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
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
If you want to try different valves, the 12AX7 is safe to replace with any other 12AX7 or a 5751, and *probably* a 12AT7. The 12AU7 must only be replaced with another 12AU7, and probably won't change the sound much anyway.
You won't get enough of a tone change with any kind of 12AX7 to really revoice the amp and take away that 'Blackstar' sound, but you might with a 12AT7 - it does brighten and open up the tone of the amp noticeably, and reduce the gain slightly. Experiment at your own risk! The good news is that in the event it does burn out the plate resistor (not that likely, but possible) it's one of the few components in the amp that's easy to replace.
For what it's worth, I found I could get a better overdrive sound with the clean mode turned up all the way than the overdrive mode, and bear in mind that the 'ISF' control goes backwards compared to what Blackstar say... the 'Marshall' sound is on the left, not the right.
I still didn't buy it though...
"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
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
"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
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
If you want a bit more wattage the 20HR (or 20CR with a speaker swap) is great - can be dropped to 10w too.
Or for an extra £20-50 depending which model you go for, you could get one of the licensed Soldano-designed 20w models and have loads more options (and better sound). (2nd hand you could pick one up for £100-150). There are loads of mod options available over on the Jet City owners thread, or mod kits you could buy or take it to a tech to fit - Plexi style, SLO mod, JCM800, Hotrodded Marshall etc (this is one of my favourite sounding:
And to open up the master volume more for £85 you could add a Harley Benton attenuator (OEM version of the Jet City Jettenuator, or cheaper if you can find one 2nd hand or B-Stock) or there's a Rat Amps one for £45 I believe.
I just bought my first tube amp, and I looked at some of the low-watt style but just found myself a bit unsatisfied with the tone which was always compromised in some way, they seem to lack versatility and usually only do one thing really well. So I ended up with a higher-watt amp and Two Notes Captor reactive loadbox to let the power tubes open up. And that suits me well for being able to play on headphones in the middle of the night with the master volume on 6.
It's a variable frequency notch filter. As to which 'sound' is which? Don't have a Scooby but it is QUITE possible that the PCB got "mirrored" on some later designs!
Re ICs caution about swapping valves around in the HT-1? No, don't put an '82 in the pre amp stage, never tried an 81 but it might be ok but, FFS don't fit anything BUT an ECC83 in that dual pedal! The anode loads are necessarily wee! In fact about the only resistor* I ever had to change in a Blackstar product was an O/C 100k in a pedal. No reason, valve was ok, just failed. One only of 1000s!
*I did change the 100K loads in the first triode of an Artisan because hiss levels were out of spec and they are those (silly IMHO) 'booteek' carbon comps. Fitted 100k MFs but it did not solve the problem, turned out to be a bad solder joint. Again a one off! This time of 10s of 1000s!
Dave.