When I first got a Blackstar HT-5, I was pretty surprised at how good it sounded. Friends of mine were as well.
I don’t care what’s in them, whether it’s pure tube or not or any of that controversy. Blackstar make fantastic stuff! My HT-Blackfire pedal is the smoothest, clearest distortion that just sounds absolutely fantastic especially for its size (it’s quite a big box compared to other pedals but the 3 band and ISF gets the definitive “amp in a box” for my sound.) The tube might do what they claim and run at the voltage required to be a real gain stage, might just be starved.
Straight up doesn’t matter because it’s worth every cent a paid for it new, to the point I was considering buying the amp version of it but was worried it might not even sound as good as the pedal! It’s transients are so punchy, you can
see the attack of every palm mute in a way thought only possible by really good tube amps.
It’s aged magnificently with even the newer AMT Legend series sounding a little hollow and grainy and just having that thick, smooth tubeyness I love about it so much! The fire channel cleans up and is capable of lower gain goodness and sounds very much amp like and not like a pedal. The Fury channel is where it’s at. More gain than you could ever need in your whole life, saving even more space and points of failure because you can leave your overdrive at home because this channel is
tight! It’s just as dynamic too with so much of the gain sweep being totally useable and musical!
It’s the ultimate preamp for my fly rig into the amp loop of my RP-1000, into an AmpTweaker Depthfinder (very small box with active presence and resonance) into the Crate Powerblock and bam, saves so much money on the plane with a truly amazing, uncompromised tone! It’s just so good, it’s a perfectly legit unit in the studio too whether stand alone or blended for modern riffing right into a tube power section and cabinet or the smoothest, most beautifully juicy lead tones you’ve ever heard!
I really don’t have much experience with Blackstar, it really might not be that surprising because it wasn’t cheap and Gus G really did use it (I’m not even a big Firewind fan or want his specific tone, it’s just good!) If it’s anything to go by, Blackstar are/were geniuses. I can’t praise it enough. The direct recording out is just an analog EQ curve. It’s passable for front of house but nowhere detailed enough for stufio use but clever enough routing and today’s IRs who cares?? Enough plugging, here’s one of the very first demos I made with the source of gain purely the Blackstar HT-Blackfire into some decent IRs.
