When I arrived at this afternoon's rehearsal I realised that I had forgotten to bring my pedalboard. D'oh! Rather than use the non-master-volume single-channel amp I had brought with me, I plugged into the rehearsal room's Blackstar HT Club 40. I set up the drive channel with enough gain (just 9 o'clock on the dial) to go between crunch and crunchier using the guitar's volume control. I'm not a fan of Blackstar amps, but it sounded surprisingly good. For various reasons I wouldn't choose to buy one, but kudos to Blackstar for making something that works.
Comments
What are you reasons for not buying a Blackstar? I don't have a lot of experience with different amps, and all of it strictly for home use, but mine seems pretty nice and the construction seems solid.
The band I was playing in at the time had 2 very different guitar sounds. I like the super thick Hetfield sort of thing whereas the other guy had more of a plexi thing going on with far less bass.
The Blackstar did what I wanted very well indeed. I'd certainly consider owning one if I needed an amp.
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I have previously played through Blackstars as a prospective purchaser, as a second pair of ears to a prospective purchaser, and when trying out guitars. On those occasions I found them rather ‘hard’-sounding, and I certainly didn’t care for the drive sounds. Also I can’t see (or rather hear) the point of the ISF control - thankfully the HT Club 40 didn’t have one.
At yesterday’s rehearsal I managed to dial in a sound that I could work with (the source of my surprise), although I wouldn’t say I loved it. By way of contrast I used a solid state Orange rig (CR120?) at another rehearsal studio and bitterly regretted not bringing one of my own amps - I just could not make it sound right, it was either too loud or not loud enough.
I built or re-built the guts of 3 of my 4 gigging amps. If they break, I can generally fix them myself. That’s how I choose to spend my gig money when it comes to amps.
We all enjoyed a very productive rehearsal yesterday, partly thanks to that HT Club 40.
Anyway I remember a few years later I saved up enough for an upgrade and saw the blackstar ht100 as one of those amps which seemed to tick all the boxes and went to try one along with a marshall dsl 50 and anything else I could afford.
The blackstar was not for me it just seemed processed even compared to the line 6 I had, mind you I remembered after trying the marshall why I don't like marshall either and ended up buying my mates peavey 51502.
One day I might try another blackstar amp but these days I'm very much an Orange amp man, and the Budda SD30 thats forsale keeps calling me if I could get the money together lol.