marnold
October 9th, 2009, 04:23 PM
I had to be nearby the local GC today and stopped in to see if they happened to have any of the Blackstar HT-5 series of amphs in stock. Around one corner what should greet me but an HT-5S mini-stack (http://www.blackstaramps.co.uk/products/ht-5/ht-5s.html)! Thankfully it was plugged in. I even saw my old Fender Showmaster in the used section still so I grabbed it since I was familiar with how it sounds. The cleans and bluesy grit were quite nice, although it'd probably be able to imitate a Tweed slightly better than a Blackface (if that makes sense), although it is really neither.
What brought a stupid grin to my face was the high gain settings. I switched to the overdrive channel and cranked the gain to max. I was greeted with an instant 80s-metal level of gain that sounded awesome. Moving the ISF knob to the USA side made it brighter and the UK side made it growlier. Can it do teh br00talz? Probably not, but for anything short of that you can just plug 'er in and let 'er rip. I was prepared to somewhat dislike the 10" speakers but they actually are quite punchy.
Long and the short is that I like it better than any small tube amph I've ever heard (although in fairness I still haven't been able to try out a Blackheart). The tone knobs are very responsive and can be tweaked to a wide variety of sounds in conjunction with the ISV. The effects loop and speaker-emulated line-out are nice bonuses. Looks like I need to start saving my shekels :)
What brought a stupid grin to my face was the high gain settings. I switched to the overdrive channel and cranked the gain to max. I was greeted with an instant 80s-metal level of gain that sounded awesome. Moving the ISF knob to the USA side made it brighter and the UK side made it growlier. Can it do teh br00talz? Probably not, but for anything short of that you can just plug 'er in and let 'er rip. I was prepared to somewhat dislike the 10" speakers but they actually are quite punchy.
Long and the short is that I like it better than any small tube amph I've ever heard (although in fairness I still haven't been able to try out a Blackheart). The tone knobs are very responsive and can be tweaked to a wide variety of sounds in conjunction with the ISV. The effects loop and speaker-emulated line-out are nice bonuses. Looks like I need to start saving my shekels :)