Blackstar HT Stage 60 'uncompromising' reliability..hmmmmmm

[Vinchente]

Am posting this without wishing to sound like a, er, vexatious complainant!!

To be fair, I got my Blackstar HT 60 off ebay from a bloke who said it was only 6 months old. Is in immaculate condition cosmetically, though.

Anyway...first night I used it..after 3 hours the footswitch behaved erratically...the clean channel only responded intermittently. Next band practice the footswitch screws fell apart and the connector disappeared inside the amp!! Took it to local tech who said it was a design fault...advised me not to tighten up the footswitch screws too much. Hmm I thought...I thought these amps were supposedly road-tested for reliability...surely you repeatedly connect and disconnect the footswitch during your gigging life...?!?! I'm not the most macho bloke either....

Next band practice the clean channel started cutting in and out...then died.

The amp spent a total of a month at the local amp tech...turned out a resistor (or something!!) had gone open circuit...then a capacitor had packed up..throwing the phase splitter out-of-whack.....so....I know I bought the amp secondhand, but it has spent most of its life in the amp repairers!! The (reputedly unreliable) Vox AD120VTs I had before weren't THAT bad!! I had a Marshall JCM900 head through some Laney speakers for years and years of being chucked in Transits etc..and that fucker never missed a beat apart from a one-time valve-change!!

So...tonight I have finally tried it at home...sounds pretty good, but I can't say I'm over enamoured yet. Not only this, the manual is sloppy...totally contradictory information re correct speaker connection....hardly exemplary stuff in my experience.

To put it all in context... I used to have two Vox AD120VTs which sound great but were unreliable..and I take care of my amps!! So I finally did some internet research and took a leap of faith on Blackstar because of their reputed tonal flexibility and reliability...so far..not so good...

[ronnie robinson]

Oh Dear.....sorry to hear that


I bought a new stage 60 last July and my experience was that build quality was very good all hardware worked well and felt solid - the only negative thing was the power tubes failed within 2 months

Did u buy the Amp 'unseen' such as off Ebay or were you able to give it a test drive before u bought it

[majikmojo]

such is life with tube amps....
my 60 is almost a year old and has been gigged hard every weekend and has never failed me
like Ronnie the only complaint i've had is the quality of the stock chinese tubes which i dumped right away
and replaced with good quality valves - every mfg gets a bad apple once in a while
buying used is always a risk unless you know where it came from
it wouldn't really be fair to judge quality from 1 experience - now that a tech has gone through it and corrected
any issues i would expect the amp to perform like it should - the 60's as a rule have not had too many issues

[richard cranium]

I would tend to agree with the OP on the poor choice of connector type on the footswitch, D-SUB? Whats that all about?
Mine hasnt failed or anything, but I have to remind myself to baby it and not stand on it or anything.
I guess it stands out because I cant fault my HT-60 in any other way!!!

[Vinchente]

...haveta say it is reassuring to read all of your 'reply' posts. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I really want my HT 60 to be reliable!! Here's hoping it is. The (obvious I s'pose) point I was trying to make is that if Blackstar were making such a big deal about how reliable their amps are, one would realistically expect their road and lab testing to detect any faults. A case in point is the often-reported unreliability in the supplied valves. Call me picky, but if I was starting up an amp company, I wouldn't spend ages designing a great amp and road-testing it etc etc, only to shoot meself (and my company's reputation) in the foot by putting unreliable valves in it.

Yes I know valves are easily replaceable...but that's no joke when it's a friday night, and the venue (no pun intended!!) is packed and yer amp packs up and you haven't had it that long!!

To be fair, yes. as I've already said, my HT 60 was a blind purchase off good ol' Ebay. However, if I had've tried it, even for an hour, it would not have failed. Ironically,it started playing up after about 2 and a half hours of play. And..call me old-fashioned, but I think amps should be really really reliable!!

When I telephoned the bloke that sold it me and complained, he was hostile and said, I quote, 'You could have pissed on it for all I know'. I replied, 'Why would I urinate on my amplifier?' Lol... I could've said a lot worse... Ho well...and he seemed so nice when I collected it! Lol. Don't ask me what I think of him...unprintable..but it rhymes with 'hunt'. Eek.

Had band practice this afternoon for 3 hours with no problems. Have a gig next Friday...wish me luck!! Lol. I actually had two of my old Vox amps and it was a bit of a standing joke that I'd have to swap them at some point in a gig.

Anyway..thanks for the above replies....will let y'all know how things go. Ta again!! Keep rocking....

[mthrfq3r]

Ive had nothing but trouble with my ht stage 60. Actually the first one I bought brand new worked for roughly 30 seconds, and the somma bish blew out. Got another brand new replacement and here I am 3 months later and the replacement one has gone wrong. After about 2-3 minutes of playing I slowly loose all volume on both channels, which leads me to bad tubes. These amps are incredible when they work! I unfortunetly have spent more time and gigs playing on my marshall which sucks cause I had it sold to buy a artisan blackstar and now im second guessing that purchase as well. If it wasnt for how amazing these amps sound I would tell blackstar to kick rocks!!!!!!!!!!!

[ronnie robinson]

...haveta say it is reassuring to read all of your 'reply' posts. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I really want my HT 60 to be reliable!! Here's hoping it is. The (obvious I s'pose) point I was trying to make is that if Blackstar were making such a big deal about how reliable their amps are, one would realistically expect their road and lab testing to detect any faults. A case in point is the often-reported unreliability in the supplied valves. Call me picky, but if I was starting up an amp company, I wouldn't spend ages designing a great amp and road-testing it etc etc, only to shoot meself (and my company's reputation) in the foot by putting unreliable valves in it.

Yes I know valves are easily replaceable...but that's no joke when it's a friday night, and the venue (no pun intended!!) is packed and yer amp packs up and you haven't had it that long!!

To be fair, yes. as I've already said, my HT 60 was a blind purchase off good ol' Ebay. However, if I had've tried it, even for an hour, it would not have failed. Ironically,it started playing up after about 2 and a half hours of play. And..call me old-fashioned, but I think amps should be really really reliable!!

When I telephoned the bloke that sold it me and complained, he was hostile and said, I quote, 'You could have pissed on it for all I know'. I replied, 'Why would I urinate on my amplifier?' Lol... I could've said a lot worse... Ho well...and he seemed so nice when I collected it! Lol. Don't ask me what I think of him...unprintable..but it rhymes with 'hunt'. Eek.

Had band practice this afternoon for 3 hours with no problems. Have a gig next Friday...wish me luck!! Lol. I actually had two of my old Vox amps and it was a bit of a standing joke that I'd have to swap them at some point in a gig.

Anyway..thanks for the above replies....will let y'all know how things go. Ta again!! Keep rocking....

Your Absolutely right of course Valve Amps should be ultra reliable and of course many are

I also dont understand the logic regarding the stock valves - Blackstar surely knows how unreliable they seem to be and it may well be just down to them not getting tested properly before being put in an Amp.

But unfortunately when buying second hand you just dont know its history from the day it was purchased

Anyway hope your Amps all sorted now.

[mthrfq3r]

IMHO Whether you pay buckets o' duckets for a tube amp or buy a second hand or "bottom shelf" amp You almost always have to swap out tubes. Should be less of an issue on buying new amps, but everyone seems to skimp when it comes to stock tubes. I unfortunetly have had more problems with blackstar stock tubes going rotten much quicker than my other amps. Good luck brother, I do know what its like to blow a tube mid gig not only embarrassing but then we dont get to fulfill our show which is what we all live for

[kc9ejn]

I’d be very wary when it comes to buying off of EBay unless it was someone who either I had dealt with before or they have a good return/refund policy.
Personally, I bought my HT-100 head second hand at my local guitar center. I spent a solid hour putting it through the paces before I decided to buy it.
As for the whole footswitch thing; my head didn’t come with a footswitch. I looked all over the internet and called quite a few Blackstar dealers and the best they could tell me was they were on back order. Out of frustration, I set out to build my own. This was not an easy task as the footswitch wiring diagram is not widely known or available.
After locating the required information, it was then a matter of collecting the necessary parts and building the chassis. The footswitch I built functions perfectly (clean,OD1,OD2 and reverb on/off with funtional LEDs) and the wooden chassis takes a beating and is still beautiful.
From what I’ve read here, my impatience served me well. It sounds like the factory footswitch is pretty cheaply made.
Sorry for your troubles. Hopefully you can get them resolved in a timely manner!

[rich56]

I dont think the problem is with the footswitch itself but with the connectors. Only other time I've seen connectors like this is on a pc. Same as the OP I nearly lost one of the " securing" screws inside the amp but was fortunate to notice it before it was too late & it fell in. Now , for me , it's a case of screwing it up very loosely.

As Ronnie said , if the stock tubes are so unreliable why doesn't Blackstar do something about it ?

I'm sure most buyers would pay a few extra bucks / pounds / euros for an great amp that was reliable & who could justifiably say " this is a great amp I highly Recommend it, I've had no problems ".

I wonder , does any one from Blackstar actually read these threads ?