Hello from New York

Tell everyone about your background and why you chose Blackstar
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BigMike
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 1:46 pm
Location: New York

Fri Mar 04, 2016 2:18 pm

Hi guys, I'm 28 years old & this is my first Blackstar amp. My journey began on Sweetwater.com while researching low wattage amplifiers. I wanted the lowest wattage amp possible. I didn't want an amp that went from 50:25:5 watts or something like that because I just feel like when you play an amp at half volume, there isn't good tube saturation. So after narrowing down my list to 5 watt amps & lower, it came down to a Bugera, an Ibanez, a Vox AC4TV & the Blackstar HT-1R. All these amps were 5 watts, Blackstar was the only 1 watt amp. To top it off, Bugera, Ibanez & Vox were all 1 trick ponies from as far as I could tell. Nice clean sounds but left more to be desired in the distortion department. Not only was Blackstar the only 1 watt amp, it was versatile in sound. I noticed that not only could you rip out some heavy metal riffs, but it cleaned up really nice too. I own mostly strats & telecasters & the Blackstar takes them really well. I like the EQ interface at 12 o'clock for warm almost Martin sounding tones (I know Martin is an acoustic guitar, but that is the only thing I can compare it to) then when you roll the EQ interface all the way to the left, you have a bright, chimey, American sounding Fender tone. The reverb is also really nice. Haven't tried too many pedals with it yet, but I will hopefully soon. No problems at all playing pinch harmonics on a strat nonetheless. The price is also reasonable. I paid $330 for mine. I'm still just dicking around, but eventually the prospect of playing an MP3 through it with backing tracks or using head phones late at night is very appealing. I have yet to read the manual, like any typical man I opted to figure it out by myself! So far so good, I'd definitely get another Blackstar in the future. I'll let you guys know when I try running it through my DS-1, wah & TS.

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Sonofarich
Posts: 671
Joined: Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:00 am

Sat Mar 05, 2016 5:14 pm

Congrats and welcome to the BS community. Great little amp.

BigMike
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 1:46 pm
Location: New York

Sun Mar 06, 2016 4:47 pm

Sonofarich wrote:Congrats and welcome to the BS community. Great little amp.
Thank you very much.

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