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!

Gibson Nighthawk

This one almost escaped my gearlust radar, Gibson have done a limited run of the Nighthawk which as you can see is one sexy-yet-unusual looking piece of candy. Interestingly it has the Burstbucker 3 pickup at the Bridge and a P-90 at the next, same as the recently reviewed Dark Fire, although without all of that Robot gubbins so no risk of it overthrowing humanity. The Nighthawk has had a few incarnations now and each time the pickup combination seems to change but this currently configuration would be ideal for some fat blues/rock sounds.

Needless to say, I want one and if someone could kindly lend me a grand and let me know which UK dealers have got them (I foolishly didn't think to order one for my own shop for some strange reason... I ordered a holy explorer instead, obviously didn't have my ready brek that morning) then I might just have to pop and try one out!

For Sale: My Awesome Musicman Stingray

Sadly, dear readers, I have decided to sell my bass because it is currently 'surplus to requirements'. You can check out all the information at the gumtree ad here: http://www.gumtree.com/london/13/45186513.html

Please stay tuned for more exciting Guitarism blogs including my review of the awesome new Blackstar Series 1 amps which have to be some of the nicest high gain amps in ages!

Review: Ernie Ball Wah

Just before my birthday this year I decided to treat myself, I also decided that I couldn’t possibly call my serious guitar player unless I owned a wah pedal. Now as you may have read before choosing pedals isn’t an easy business for me because I am, in short, a complete snob. This means that I have to wade through heaps and heaps of boutique models before I finally settle on the pedal I think I want, right?

Well not this time, choosing the Ernie Ball was easy because it’s far and away the best wah pedal I have ever heard. The other models I looked at were things such as the EVH wah, the Buddy Guy Crybaby, the Crybaby 535Q and the Fulltone Clyde Wah but these all had funny controls and extra knobs that meant I had more chance of ruining my sound through over tweaking. The Ernie Ball Wah is simple, it works using the same mechanism as their great volume pedals which of course means that it also has the same great sweep and glide action as the volume pedals. It also has two great big green LED’s on the side so you know when it’s on, this is handy for the player who like me enjoys to knock back a beer or three before hitting the stage and sometimes turns the wrong pedal on altogether.

Sonically the EBW (as it shall henceforth be known) instantly hits the sweet spot that you could send years searching for tweaking your deluxe Clyde wah only to loose when you sneeze whilst turning a knob. Through a clean amp it adds character and definition to your sound whilst retaining the intrinsic qualities that made your tone sound great to begin with. Give it a little overdrive and it sings without ever becoming too harsh on the top end or muddy in the mid to low range.

There’s little more I can say about this pedal other than get out there and try one, even better compare it to a standard crybaby (come in my shop I’ll happily set it up for you to try!) and hear the massive difference in the quality of sound. Yes they might be pricy but you only need one wah and it needs to be this one.

Review: Gibson Dark Fire

After what seemed like months of waiting a batch of Gibson’s almost mythical Dark Fire Les Pauls finally arrived at my store last month. They were originally due to arrive way back in December 2008 but the boffins at Gibson refused to release the stock until they had got it just right, well, apart from those over in the States that were allegedly released and then recalled…

It took me ages to unpack it, first I had to tear past the industrial sized staples and cut through the heavy duty security tape on the outer cardboard box, one of those plain brown affairs that gives very little away. From this I removed the inner box, a smart black number with the Gibson logo emblazoned on the front in giant lettering. Within this box were two packages, one was the glorious white Gibson case that boasted the fact that it was a limited edition first run (of 4000) guitar and the other was a smaller black box containing a few goodies such as the RIP interface which I’ll speak about later on and the charger which needs to be employed before the guitar can be used.

I gently lift the guitar out of it’s case and hold in my hands what feels like a hybrid in terms of Gibson design. The top is a nice piece of book matched figured maple stained a beautiful glossy blood red and bound with black binding. The mahogany body and neck is left with a satin finish and is painted to look as if at some point in it’s life it had been set on fire (see what they did there) which of course it hasn’t because that would be quite foolish. The headstock looks great with the flaming torch logo from the old jazz models of yesteryear but I found the red metallic red truss rod cover a little garish, a black one would have been smarter. The carbon fibre style inlays on the ebony fretboard which also adorns the pickup covers looks great and adds to the modern ‘supercar’ feel of the guitar.

It didn’t feel too heavy despite all the extra gubbins inside, the body is chambered and the overall weight of the guitar is very well balanced with no drooping headstocks to be found. The neck is big and chunky which suits me and my oversized palms but several wimpy UK players prefer the pansy thinner 60’s neck and I’m sure they’d moan about that given the chance.

First of all I tried to use it without reading the instructions, 15 minutes later the guitar was back in its case and I had declared it to be the shittest thing ever. Two days later I read the instructions and it all made sense. The guitar offers 18 different tunings from standard to delta blues all the way to drop B sharp for the beardiest among us. The guitar tunes itself using 6 tiny piezo sensors under the bridge (which you also use to get the guitars acoustic sound) which pick up the vibrations of the strings and then tells the guitar to tune it using 6 motorized machine heads. What’s clever about the Dark Fire is that it can tune all 6 strings at once very quickly where the original Robot Guitar tuned 3 and then the other 3 a little bit slower. The guitar I tried was having trouble with its intonation but you can use the same on board technology to intonate the guitar but this seemed quite time consuming so I didn’t bother, it was time to rock.

Plugging into a Marshall JVM410 Head I quickly tested the clean sounds of the guitar. Gibson opted for a Burstbucker 3 humbucker in the bridge which is supposed to sound like an overwound PAF and it gives a full rich ‘hot vintage’ clean sound with plenty of bite and just sending the amp into a nice warm overdrive when I roll up the volume control on the guitar. The neck pickup is a P-90H which is a stacked version of the standard P-90 single coil, essentially this means it is one P-90 sitting on top of another and the second coil acts as a hum canceller without affecting the sound. The tone is essentially P-90, fat, round and clear like a transparent hippo (the African savannahs biggest killer) and when overdriven gives wonderful clarity and bite without the usual hum associated with these pickups.

When I switch the amp onto one of its overdriven channels the sounds are unmistakably Gibson but my ears tell me that this guitar sounds a touch more open and modern than a Les Paul Traditional for example but yes, it’s definitely a Gibson.

Pulling up the Master Control Knob or MCK activates the guitars Robot controls which operates tuning but also lets you activate the chameleon tone circuit which gives you access to a host of other sounds. The first of these is the acoustic sound from the piezo sensors which you can cleverly blend in as much or as little as you want using the pickup selector switch (however this control did feel a little flimsy). Through the Marshall stack the acoustic sound sounded weak and glass like but through a DI box into a PA system it sounded quite pleasing and useable but I do think it would have been nice if the piezo had a separate output so that you could send your electric sounds to your amp and your acoustic sounds straight to the front of house. Still having it wired the way they do makes it very easy to do a stirring rendition of Pinball Wizard.

Finally I tested some of the chameleon tone settings which include options such as metal, blues and twang etc and if I’m right works by re-voicing the pickups somehow. Still, twang didn’t sound quite like a Telecaster and L5 seemed to just sound like the acoustic setting but the sounds were definitely useable but surely if you were in a studio you’d just use a different guitar?

The one function I didn’t have the opportunity to test was the RIP interface which is a firewire audio device that not only is a good sound card and an easy way to record this guitar to your computer but also uses the output of each piezo transducer to record the output of each string individually. Now I didn’t see this work but combined with the free Guitar Rig 3 software (excellent amp and effects modeling package from the guys at Native Instruments) you could get some seriously crazy things going on and really does give the recording musician some interesting options when recording guitar! Imagine being able to play a staccato chord and then manipulate the audio so that it sounds like an arpeggiated chord, genius! Or you could just play an arpeggio like you wanted to in the first place, it’s your call.

So all in all I do think this is a very cool guitar but if I had this kind of money to spend on a Gibson I’d much rather have one of their historic custom shop models. I don’t think I’d have the confidence to gig this guitar either but for the avid guitar collector who also fancies himself as a bit of a studio wizard this might just be the guitar for you, maybe.