Blackheart Clip and Review

[tunghaichuan]

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?p=25879536

Direct link to clip:

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6160647

Apparently the tube rectifier in the amp in the clip was installed by Pyotr Belov himself.

tung

[piebaldpython]

With the Little Giant...it has 4 knobs---volume, bass, middle, treble....so how do you dial up the gain, just thru the VOLUME knob like on an Epi Valve Jr.???

[tunghaichuan]

With the Little Giant...it has 4 knobs---volume, bass, middle, treble....so how do you dial up the gain, just thru the VOLUME knob like on an Epi Valve Jr.???

Yup, preamp volume only. No master volume. The only way to get it to give up the goods is to dime it.

tung

[duhvoodooman]

Am I just hopelessly jaded & cynical, or does it occur to anyone else that--just maybe--you might not expect to get a completely, er, objective review from a guy who knows the amp's designer personally and actually had him do a mod on it??? :thwap:

The clip sounds pretty good, but I'm not blown away, by any means. I think these are good little amps and great values, but the hype is getting kind of out of hand. I guess the skeptic in me comes out when I start seeing "deal of the decade" declarations being bandied about.... :whatever:

[tunghaichuan]

I agree with you. I totally bought into the hype, that is until I tried one. I mean the Blackhearts don't sound bad per se, but they also don't sound as good as the hype machine would have you believe. When I played my stock Version 3 Valve Junior against the Blackheart, the VJ ate its lunch in the OD department, although to be fair the Blackheart did have more clean headroom and a better clean sound.

What the Blackheart does have over the VJ is a better chassis, better cabinet and better iron. But it has to be modded.

Except there is that fragile PCB issue. Apparently the pads lift off of the substrate pretty easy and the holes are not through plated. There is a pad on each side and soldered on each side. That means for every lead you remove you have to remove two solder joints. Not good for modders. The only solution is to yank the PCB and put in an eyelet board. That might mean buying a board from Mojotone :whatever:

Overall, I'm not disappointed, I plan on gutting my two Blackheart amps and rebuilding them as something else.

tung


Am I just hopelessly jaded & cynical, or does it occur to anyone else that--just maybe--you might not expect to get a completely, er, objective review from a guy who knows the amp's designer personally and actually had him do a mod on it??? :thwap:

The clip sounds pretty good, but I'm not blown away, by any means. I think these are good little amps and great values, but the hype is getting kind of out of hand. I guess the skeptic in me comes out when I start seeing "deal of the decade" declarations being bandied about.... :whatever:

[duhvoodooman]

Except there is that fragile PCB issue. Apparently the pads lift off of the substrate pretty easy and the holes are not through plated. There is a pad on each side and soldered on each side. That means for every lead you remove you have to remove two solder joints. Not good for modders.
This is one of those headshaking moments. A two-sided board without through-eyelets?? I just don't understand some of these design decisions. What would the extra cost have been to do it right? Another buck, maybe? Geez.... :whatever:

Of course, the Valve Jr. v.1 kind of set the standard in that department--terrible grounding design/errors, AC filament heater traces running side-by-side with the signal path, that weird OT choice, etc. They fixed those problems is subsequent revisions, but it doesn't seem like rocket science to get such fundamental things right the first time around. :thwap:

So maybe the BH v.2 is worth waiting for? ;) :D

[tunghaichuan]

This is one of those headshaking moments. A two-sided board without through-eyelets?? I just don't understand some of these design decisions. What would the extra cost have been to do it right? Another buck, maybe? Geez.... :whatever:


The profit margins on those amps are so thin that they have to cut costs anyway they can. $1.00 extra x 50,000 amps costs them an extra $50k. I think it sucks, but I can see why they do it.



Of course, the Valve Jr. v.1 kind of set the standard in that department--terrible grounding design/errors, AC filament heater traces running side-by-side with the signal path, that weird OT choice, etc. They fixed those problems is subsequent revisions, but it doesn't seem like rocket science to get such fundamental things right the first time around. :thwap:


I don't think modern Electrical Engineers understand tube guitar amp circuits unless they go out of their way to read old texts. Guitar amps are more Black Arts than anything else. Tube amps don't make sense to Engineers; they distort, which is a bad thing to Engineers.

I think the original VJ was designed by a committe: they were able to purchase a bunch of chassis, and so-so transformers and slapped in a quickly designed board. It was never meant to be anything more than a beginner's practice amp.



So maybe the BH v.2 is worth waiting for? ;) :D

When I start modding my Blackheart amps, the first thing I'm going to do is pull the board and make a replacement eyelet board template. As I keep saying the amp is ripe for rebuilding: the chassis is heavy duty, the cabinets are well made, the iron is sufficient, and there are three holes for a TMB tone stack. Heck I may even replace the OT, I have an Edcor 5k OT that I was planning on putting in a VJ. What concerns me is the power transformer: it has a 275v secondary which puts way too much voltage on the EL84. The tube recto is a band aid approach to lowering the voltage.

tung

[duhvoodooman]

The profit margins on those amps are so thin that they have to cut costs anyway they can. $1.00 extra x 50,000 amps costs them an extra $50k. I think it sucks, but I can see why they do it.
Oh, believe me--having worked in manufacturing for the past 27+ years, I understand WHY they do it. But there are smarter ways to save a buck here and there than shoddy design choices, I would argue. Ah, well--it's not like my indignation is going to have any effect here, is it? ;)

[Tone2TheBone]

:munch: I just love all this technical stuff. :)

[Katastrophe]

I personally have no idea what y'all are talking about, but it sure sounds cool.

Carry on, I'm gonna go play with sticks and rocks. If I bang them together, it makes cool sounds (shuffles off, knuckles dragging the ground);)