Review: Blackstar Series 1 45 Watt Combo

For those of you who haven’t already tried Blackstars frankly stunning gear already, I’d advise you do so right away. You may have heard of this British valve amp company thanks to their stunning HT-5 valve amps and their HT series valve pedals or possibly for their super loud, handwired Artisan series of amps which made ‘boutique’ tones available to a wider market last year. You may also have seen that they have been throwing gear at artists left right and centre and their products have been seen on stages with Paul Weller, Funeral For A Friend and Razorlight to name but a few.

What you might not know is that Blackstar are in fact a bunch of guys that up until a couple of years ago worked for Marshall but just weren’t happy with the way things were going so decided to ditch the big M and start their own amp company with blackjack and hookers. Card games and prostitutes aside they have just unleashed their next series of amps, the formidable high gain, multi channel ‘series 1’ range. The series 1 consists of three amps; a 200 watt head (last seen on stage with James Hetfield of Metallica) a 100 watt head and a 45 watt 2x12” combo which is what I’m going to be reviewing today purely because it is my favourite of the trio.

The interesting feature that these amps provide is a built in attenuator (which they call ‘Dynamic Power Reduction’ or DPR for short) that you can use while this amp is active which can take the amp to a tenth of its power or anywhere in between basically meaning that you can take your carefully honed super loud stage tone into a much quieter environment such as the studio or rehearsal room and believe me these amps pack series tone.

The Series one boasts 1xECC82 valve (12AU7) and 2xECC83 valve (12AX7) in its preamp and a duet of trusty EL34’s within its power amp stage which drive a pair of 12” speakers and is all wrapped up in a weighty birch ply cabinet. Sensibly they’ve decided to include two recessed carrying handles either side so lugging it in and out of your tour van is not too much of an issue. The control panel is mounted on the front of the amp as opposed to being slotted into the top which in my opinion makes it much easier to tweak presuming you have it raised to a sensible height off the ground to start with.

The spec sheet says that the amp has two channels, a clean and a crunch although closer inspection reveals that each channel has two separate modes. The clean channel offers up a ‘bright clean’ which has a classic USA sparkle to it (think fender twin) and provides highly satisfying sounds, rolling the gain down and the volume up gives you plenty of headroom for ultra clean spank but backing off the volume and cranking the gain gives you a much more satisfying edge of break up sound that is easily cleaned up by backing off the volume on your guitar. The ‘warm clean’ is where the action really is and you can feel the very sinew vibrating in your gut as a gorgeous Marshall ‘plexi’ tone emanates forth, this sounds especially good on lower wattage settings for extra breakup.

The overdriven channel offers you up ‘Crunch’ and ‘Super Crunch’ which essentially gives you a Clark Kent and a Superman of overdrives. The crunch channel is ideal for mild mannered, thick and throaty blues tones and even when the gain is pushed never sounds harsh and always sounds musical, the clarity when playing open chords is superb and even when switching from a Mexican standard telecaster to an SG standard the tone never became muddy. Super Crunch does indeed offer up some seriously juicy distortion but it does not distort to the harsh extremes of say a Boogie Dual Rectifier or Peavey 6505. Some metal players have actually complained that this amp does not have enough gain, I dealt with these people by throwing a tubescreamer in their general direction which works as a superb top boost for this amplifier.

The 45 watt combo only has a single EQ section for its two channels but it’s a superbly musical and easy to use interface with the obvious bass, middle and treble allowing you to sculpt a wide range of sonic textures. The real genius here is the inclusion of Blackstars patented ‘ISF’ (Infinate Shape Feature) which essentially changes the voicing of the amp from USA (think Mesa) to UK (think Marshall) and its effect is even more apparent when used on higher gain settings. I can see that some may complain that the clean and dirty channels don’t have separate EQ’s but this amp has such a ring to it that it’s not necessary (the 200 watt head does indeed have separate EQ’s for each channel if you’re interested.)

The master section provides you with a master volume and a presence and resonance control which are essentially treble and bass controls that allow you to smooth of your tone, add insane top end cut or wonderfully boomy low end to taste. The final control is the DPR which proves itself to be insanely effective. In all honesty the amp was so damn loud I had it on 4.5 watts almost the entire time only moving it up to the full 45 watts when I wanted to see how loud it goes, the answer is very.

A special mention must also go out to the included footswitch which offers switching between all four modes essentially giving you four channels at your feet and connects to the amp using a 15 pin connection like your computer monitor uses, screws and all, meaning that it’s very unlikely that it’ll accidentally get snagged out whilst rocking out. For the rack boffins out there the amp also features MIDI capabilty but I'm a simple man with simple needs and don't have time for such things...

So all in all a superb trio of amps from Blackstar, in fact I’ll even go so far as to say that it’s a modern classic to rival such legendary amps such as the Fender Twin and the JCM 800, it’s really THAT good. So good in fact that I’m sold out until November!