NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

[zionstrat]

Wow,

Have been patiently looking for a versatile single pedal for crunch in front of my super clean Musicman HD130 4*10 and boy did I find it-



Light OD on 1 and heavy crunch on ch2 easily goes from light blues to cliffs of dover with 1 step- Very responsive, built like a tank and some have complained about a noise with high gain, but so far, no problems.

An important requirement was gain and master on each channel to balance against each other and the bypass and it works perfectly-

I was a little concerned that there's a single EQ setting, but channel timbres are well balanced, so that's not an issue-

Messed with the ISF- Definitely moves from scooped to thick in a musical way- Imagine this will get tweaked a lot in the studio-

Great thread follows and big thanks to Gtrjunior for pointing me this direction!

https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?327725-Alternative-to-Wampler-Plexi-Drive-Deluxe-Overdrive-Pedal

Trying it live later in the week and will report back.

And in retrospect it all makes sense- The MM is a hybrid so it makes sense that another 12ax7 in front would be a good fit- hard to imagine why they stoped making these!

[6stringerguy]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

I had the HT Metal Tube pedal and it was cool, my main tone when I started out

[stevie_bees]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

They are fabulous pedals. I spent a morning trying different drive pedals when I got mine (there’s probably a thread about it on here somewhere!), and it was head and shoulders above everything else. Congrats!


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[SweetClyde99]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

I’ve got an HT Dual that spends all its time tied to my Line 6 HD500 these days, so I picked up an HT Dist to use with my amp. Both great sounding pedals. It’s crazy how cheap you can find them these days. I’m having a really hard time laying hands on anything that sounds better.

[Gtrjunior]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

Glad you like it!
Like I said, I’ve got 3!!
One on my Marshall board, one in my recoding setup using the emulated out and a backup...just in case.
Iirc, they come stock with a JJ tube which sound great as-is.
But if you’re a tweaker try swapping a bunch of tubes in....don’t lose the tiny screws!!
One of mine has a NOS short grey plate RCA that sounds awesome.
Again, glad it works for you!!

[zionstrat]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

They are fabulous pedals. I spent a morning trying different drive pedals when I got mine (there’s probably a thread about it on here somewhere!), and it was head and shoulders above everything else. Congrats!


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Yeah, the tone is amazing and makes me wonder why there aren't more real tube stompbox preamps out there- My little rig appears to have turned into a single pedal and get a chance to try that approach in the real world today and will report back.

[zionstrat]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

Glad you like it!
Like I said, I’ve got 3!!
One on my Marshall board, one in my recoding setup using the emulated out and a backup...just in case.
Iirc, they come stock with a JJ tube which sound great as-is.
But if you’re a tweaker try swapping a bunch of tubes in....don’t lose the tiny screws!!
One of mine has a NOS short grey plate RCA that sounds awesome.
Again, glad it works for you!!

As a constant moder, I can't wait to swap tubes, but as a musician who never has enough time, I'm going to try to be patient and enjoy it as is

Thanks again for pointing me this direction- it's at least 10% better than any of the other pedals I was trying and they were a lot more expensive.

[SweetClyde99]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

I’m sure cost, size, and power supply are the reason you don’t see more pedals like it. Though Kingsley is making a pretty good name for himself making tube powered pedals.

[67Mopar]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

I love this pedal as well, but you should check-out the Electron Analog Drive. Except for a particular hooker in Vegas, it is best $2OO.OO I've ever spent. It has a sound and feel to it that I can't explain. The Harmonic Fuzz setting is the nastiest I've ever heard! There's not a single bad setting one this thing. The latest one has improved firmware, so there are no issues with MIDI implementation. The tone circuit is 1OO% analog. The controls are digitally mapped for setup and recall only.

There's an outrageous trick that most EAD owners don't know about... You can sweep the midrange frequency, so that every "pedal" is converted to an effected Wah using an external foot controller. I flipped-out when I discovered this! Reminds me of the old Colorsound Wah pedals. If you're thinking this is the same as running a Wah into whatever drive, it's not. It has it's own thing going on. I'm not saying it's better, just different. This single pedal takes the place of 8 drives pedals + wah! That's nearly the entire front section of a pedalboard.

[zionstrat]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

I’m sure cost, size, and power supply are the reason you don’t see more pedals like it. Though Kingsley is making a pretty good name for himself making tube powered pedals.

Yeah, I guess they compete with 'amp in pedal' and considering a lot of them are 1w, it can be essentially the same thing.

[6stringerguy]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

My tone for the first 6 months or so was a Ibanez RG with EMG 81/60 going into a blackstar HT Metal tube pedal going into a orange micro dark

[zionstrat]

Re: NGD- Blackstar HT-DUAL Distortion Pedal

Well, 1 week in and I'm a very happy camper!

Giged it twice, and as expected, it does exactly what I need with my 130watt music man... It provides an incrediblly wide range of tones from light breakup to heavy, singing sustain.

The surprise came when I put it in front of my little mustang2. Combined with my normal 2 channels, I found lots of logical combination and imagine I'll mess with thus more for the small, lite gigs.

Once again, great forum and great recommendation!

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