Official Blackstaramps Forum

I would say my 20 has plenty of clean headroom, but then when I'm playing clean it's usually rockabilly, folky or perhaps indie style so not trying to compete with another rock guitar or manic drummer. It's pretty loud before it breaks up much though. Would 40W make a significant difference over 20W...

Personally I doubt it - perhaps the Artisans and high-end S1 may hold their value in the (fairly distant) future, but certainly not the run-of-the-mill stuff (of anybody's modern production, not just BS). But I don't understand the American attitude that anything that isn't made in the USA has to be...

Probably the cheapest and easiest way is to find or buy an RS232 serial cable like this and chop one end off.

The "momentary or latched" thing isn't really scary. When you step on a switch on the BS controller, it could make a connection between two of the pins then disconnect them again (either when you take your foot off or straight away with some switches) - this would be momentary switching. Or it could...

That's true of the 20 as well - it sounds better the louder it gets, but it still sounds very nice to me (if a bit different) at reasonable home volumes.
(whereas my ValveState was the opposite - started to get a bit harsh at band volume)

I used a Marshall AVT100 ValveState combo for almost ten years before recently buying an HT20-H. I actually think the AVTs sound pretty good (especially at home volume, not quite so nice very loud), but I just fancied a change. I looked at various smallish amps and finally tested a couple of Orange ...

Blimey - proper amp porn! Makes my feeling guilty about lusting after having an Orange Dual Terror as well as my HT20-H seem rather trivial :) Very understanding girlfriend (does she play as well? - that would help things!) What's the little BlackHeart like? I like the graphics on those, but never a...

Apparently E34L power tubes have less mids than normal EL34, so might make it sound more to your taste. I don't have any first-hand experience of this though - it's only that I've been reading up on E34Ls after accidentally buying a pair instead of EL34s. People say they have a more scooped sound th...

OK, a quick update: Had some more time to play yesterday, and was mostly playing "Scotty Moore style" with my big hollow-body, clean. Then started playing around with the drive channel and I must say it sounds absolutely fantastic with that guitar - I was using the les-paul-a-like before when playin...

Well, I've bought a few preamp tubes to try in my HT20 and had a bit of time to fiddle with it today. My main aim was to lower the gain of the drive channel a bit because I don't play metal and anything over about half way was not really to my taste. I put an EHx 12AY7 in and it's certainly spread t...