Post by DefJef on Jan 13, 2019 18:04:11 GMT
I got one of these yesterday. Good price, £62, for a mint looking second hand one, still in it's box with all the booklets and power supply etc.
My reasoning? Well, the valve driven, dual cascaded, high voltage, triode stages. Having tried a Behringer Vintage Tube Monster, starved plate one, very harsh and not dynamic in its response, I thought I'd go the whole hog and get this three channel box.
It gives a choice of clean with some gain or crunchier with more gain in channel one and a full distortion overdrive in channel 2. But what it doesn't do is really compress or go creamy in its overdrive. Like everything Blackstar, it seems to just do unpleasant, harsh distortion. Even the clean with some gain was more distortion than overdrive and had no dynamic response to it at all. I reckon the valve is doing nothing in achieving any overdrive. I compared it to my solid state Joyo Vintage Drive and the Joyo sounded better even if it has fewer knobs to play with. It even did what the Blackstar couldn't which was clean up using the guitar's volume knob so that it was only just breaking up if strummed hard. The Blackstar finds it impossible to go from clean to breakup using the guitar volume knob or more aggressive playing.
I've listened to a few YouTube clips and assumed that YouTube's compression, mp3 downloads and other interfering things had resulted in a kind of brittle harshness, but no. That's what this pedal does in spades. It's an absolute dog of a pedal. You'd think that, with it's three channel eq section and their silly 'patent applied for' ISF control you'd be able to find something usable tonally, but the best it can do is exactly whatever you can find on YouTube. Nastiness.
Here's a clip which is exactly what it sounds like (I don't expect anyone to survive till the end, let alone past that godawful shredding bit):
I did get one clean sound from my Fender Champ 25SE that was lovely and chimey. I thought I'd started to get somewhere and I'd be able to build on that, only to realise I'd switched the Blackstar off.
I think I'm done now with overdrive pedals. They just set my teeth on edge and give me an intense eyebrow ache. Think I'll take to my bed.
My reasoning? Well, the valve driven, dual cascaded, high voltage, triode stages. Having tried a Behringer Vintage Tube Monster, starved plate one, very harsh and not dynamic in its response, I thought I'd go the whole hog and get this three channel box.
It gives a choice of clean with some gain or crunchier with more gain in channel one and a full distortion overdrive in channel 2. But what it doesn't do is really compress or go creamy in its overdrive. Like everything Blackstar, it seems to just do unpleasant, harsh distortion. Even the clean with some gain was more distortion than overdrive and had no dynamic response to it at all. I reckon the valve is doing nothing in achieving any overdrive. I compared it to my solid state Joyo Vintage Drive and the Joyo sounded better even if it has fewer knobs to play with. It even did what the Blackstar couldn't which was clean up using the guitar's volume knob so that it was only just breaking up if strummed hard. The Blackstar finds it impossible to go from clean to breakup using the guitar volume knob or more aggressive playing.
I've listened to a few YouTube clips and assumed that YouTube's compression, mp3 downloads and other interfering things had resulted in a kind of brittle harshness, but no. That's what this pedal does in spades. It's an absolute dog of a pedal. You'd think that, with it's three channel eq section and their silly 'patent applied for' ISF control you'd be able to find something usable tonally, but the best it can do is exactly whatever you can find on YouTube. Nastiness.
Here's a clip which is exactly what it sounds like (I don't expect anyone to survive till the end, let alone past that godawful shredding bit):
I did get one clean sound from my Fender Champ 25SE that was lovely and chimey. I thought I'd started to get somewhere and I'd be able to build on that, only to realise I'd switched the Blackstar off.
I think I'm done now with overdrive pedals. They just set my teeth on edge and give me an intense eyebrow ache. Think I'll take to my bed.
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