V!N
New member
Past week, a friend of mine went on a holiday and I got to watch his shop (de Guitarbox) for a week. Some really interesting things came in and I got to try everything. I've been talking with the Pierre on msn about pedals a lot lately and thought I'd share some of the things said with you.
The Blackstar company was founded by a bunch of senior technicians and designers who all worked at Marshall. These lads have some great ideas that seem a bit too far fetched for Marshall indeed, but I'll start with the pedals.
When the representative stopped by with them, I thought "oh great, POS with a tube in it for more light on stage .." I laugh when I read reviews about how wonderful and tube like a 9Volt pedal with a tube sounds .. Sure, it can sound nice, but the tube behaves more like a rather large transistor when it's not given enough volts at the plates.
However, the Blackstar gets 16 Volt and turns that into 300 Volts at the plates ! Just like in a tube amp and I have to say, these pedals feel, respond and sound like a tube amp, rather than a transistor pedal. A great idea and they're way popular in Europe already. As a matter of fact, the production can't keep up so I could only get three of the five different pedals !
Ok, so here's what I found out in the Store. My test amps were a crappy Marshall MG series and a Marshall JTM 60.
First, there's the HT-Drive: Pure Valve Overdrive. An overdrive pedal with gain, tone and volume. It made the MG series sound like a tube amp and when used with the JTM, it was awesome in each and every way. Clean boost, volume boost, gain boost without altering the tone of the amp itself much. It was like there was an extra footswitchable set of controls on existing tone the amp.
As for the distortion of the pedal itself, it can get into the early breakup of a JTM 45, gain wise.
But if you want a distortion, there are other things from Blackstar that are more suitable for that job, like the HT-Dist: Pure Valve Distortion. It's not very responsive to how hard you pick or the volume on your guitar. That's a pity, I suspect getting so much gain from only two triodes has them working at full capacity all the time already. For me, the first gain knob is my picking hand and the second one, the volume knob on my guitar and that's not an option here. This pedal sounds like it's a really good tube amp with a compressor pedal in front of it.
For those with a sloppy playing style or a guitar that doesn't sustain well, this pedal will smooth out all of that and make you sound great.
The tone is about 66% Mesa, 33% Marshall. With a new kind of tone knob ISF (Infinite Shape Feature), you can turn it to 33% Mesa, 66% Marshall, but never 100% of each. On (too) high gain settings, you'll get a nasty fuzz in the high end that can't be dialed out. Still, it's not even close to the amount of fuzz in the highs coming from the current production Mesa Rectifier series.
If that isn't enough, there's the HT-DistX: Pure Valve Filth. This is more than just the Distortion with more gain. The mids sound more "brutal", there's even compression and strangely, no fuzzy fizzy in the highs with the gain up high ! With the gain low however, the sound becomes dull and lifeless and still not sensitive to picking or guitar volume. But as Pierre pointed out: "I don't care for picking sensitivity with uber high gain". Touche, mon frère !
Now that was all in the store and that only gives you a rough idea what it will sound like at home. That's not good enough for me, so I took the Distortion and the Filth with me to the practice of one of my metal bands so I could A/B/C them with my V-Stack.
As some of you know, my current metal setup is STILL rather pathetic .. For practice and recordings, I use a late 60's 50 Watt Sound City PA head which I feed a V-Stack pedal. (NOT to be mistaken for the Behringer V-Amp POD ripoff). Live, I have to use what the venue has in stock or what the support acts bring to the gigs and I always take my V-Stack, just in case there is only crap for me to plug into.
While dialing in the volumes while the rest was having a smoke or a cup of coffee, I set them all at exactly the same perceived level. When we got to play together, the V-Stack was nowhere to be found in the mix anymore ! This was quite a surprise, I always thought the dynamic voice of the tube PA amp was enough and that it didn't matter much what I'd feed it, but transistors/tubes in what I feed it seem to matter a whole lot.
Both pedals had a long sustain that was really sweet for the Rhythm stuff and it was actually quite pleasant to work with a distortion that isn't that sensitive to picking. Dangerous though, I could picture myself getting lazy and sloppy and sounding like crap when I play with my blues band. My accents in solos however were completely gone and reminded me why I'll never use a compressor.
The Blackstar company was founded by a bunch of senior technicians and designers who all worked at Marshall. These lads have some great ideas that seem a bit too far fetched for Marshall indeed, but I'll start with the pedals.
When the representative stopped by with them, I thought "oh great, POS with a tube in it for more light on stage .." I laugh when I read reviews about how wonderful and tube like a 9Volt pedal with a tube sounds .. Sure, it can sound nice, but the tube behaves more like a rather large transistor when it's not given enough volts at the plates.
However, the Blackstar gets 16 Volt and turns that into 300 Volts at the plates ! Just like in a tube amp and I have to say, these pedals feel, respond and sound like a tube amp, rather than a transistor pedal. A great idea and they're way popular in Europe already. As a matter of fact, the production can't keep up so I could only get three of the five different pedals !
Ok, so here's what I found out in the Store. My test amps were a crappy Marshall MG series and a Marshall JTM 60.
First, there's the HT-Drive: Pure Valve Overdrive. An overdrive pedal with gain, tone and volume. It made the MG series sound like a tube amp and when used with the JTM, it was awesome in each and every way. Clean boost, volume boost, gain boost without altering the tone of the amp itself much. It was like there was an extra footswitchable set of controls on existing tone the amp.
As for the distortion of the pedal itself, it can get into the early breakup of a JTM 45, gain wise.
But if you want a distortion, there are other things from Blackstar that are more suitable for that job, like the HT-Dist: Pure Valve Distortion. It's not very responsive to how hard you pick or the volume on your guitar. That's a pity, I suspect getting so much gain from only two triodes has them working at full capacity all the time already. For me, the first gain knob is my picking hand and the second one, the volume knob on my guitar and that's not an option here. This pedal sounds like it's a really good tube amp with a compressor pedal in front of it.
For those with a sloppy playing style or a guitar that doesn't sustain well, this pedal will smooth out all of that and make you sound great.
The tone is about 66% Mesa, 33% Marshall. With a new kind of tone knob ISF (Infinite Shape Feature), you can turn it to 33% Mesa, 66% Marshall, but never 100% of each. On (too) high gain settings, you'll get a nasty fuzz in the high end that can't be dialed out. Still, it's not even close to the amount of fuzz in the highs coming from the current production Mesa Rectifier series.
If that isn't enough, there's the HT-DistX: Pure Valve Filth. This is more than just the Distortion with more gain. The mids sound more "brutal", there's even compression and strangely, no fuzzy fizzy in the highs with the gain up high ! With the gain low however, the sound becomes dull and lifeless and still not sensitive to picking or guitar volume. But as Pierre pointed out: "I don't care for picking sensitivity with uber high gain". Touche, mon frère !
Now that was all in the store and that only gives you a rough idea what it will sound like at home. That's not good enough for me, so I took the Distortion and the Filth with me to the practice of one of my metal bands so I could A/B/C them with my V-Stack.
As some of you know, my current metal setup is STILL rather pathetic .. For practice and recordings, I use a late 60's 50 Watt Sound City PA head which I feed a V-Stack pedal. (NOT to be mistaken for the Behringer V-Amp POD ripoff). Live, I have to use what the venue has in stock or what the support acts bring to the gigs and I always take my V-Stack, just in case there is only crap for me to plug into.
While dialing in the volumes while the rest was having a smoke or a cup of coffee, I set them all at exactly the same perceived level. When we got to play together, the V-Stack was nowhere to be found in the mix anymore ! This was quite a surprise, I always thought the dynamic voice of the tube PA amp was enough and that it didn't matter much what I'd feed it, but transistors/tubes in what I feed it seem to matter a whole lot.
Both pedals had a long sustain that was really sweet for the Rhythm stuff and it was actually quite pleasant to work with a distortion that isn't that sensitive to picking. Dangerous though, I could picture myself getting lazy and sloppy and sounding like crap when I play with my blues band. My accents in solos however were completely gone and reminded me why I'll never use a compressor.
