When Blackstar first debuted its product line in 2007, it was made up of several valve based Distortion pedals and a “Boutique” amplifier line. Since then the range has grown to a range of proffessional amps and also a mass market affordable series.

Blackstar are an interesting company started up by 4 very key ex Marshall amp employees, 2 designers and 2 marketeers. With start up costs running just too high to build a UK factory the range is all made by an OEM in Korea and quality controlled in the UK.

I tried a series One 45 watt 2 x 12 combo recently and was mighty impressed, but the product that has gotten the most acclaim from guitarists so far seems to be the HT Dual Distortion.

The HT Dual to me is a very interesting design, about the size of a housebrick. It has a small and compact footprint. So it would fit neatly on most peoples pedalboards. Looking at the design its clearly influenced by several other pedals, notably the Original Mk 1 Marshall “Guvnor” pedal which was solid state and the valve based Mesa Boogie V Twin. The 2 footswitchable distortions are set up for either a classic gain/clean boost setting on channel 1, or a heavily saturated modern drive on Channel 2. So running through a clean amp, this device effectivly gives you 3 channels to play with.

I mention the single channel Guv’nor as the Uk made originals had probably one of the best EQ sections of any distortion pedal ever made, while the now defunt Boogie V Twin offers 2 footswitchable valve driven distortions in one box making it more akin to a pre-amp than a fuzzbox.

The HT Dual runs a single 12AX7 valve at 300v in push pull which means it actually responds like the front end of a valve guitar amp. There are 2 stacked pots at each end for gain and volume. Then a master 3 band EQ and Blackstars own patent pending ISF control. The ISF control reminds me of a little bit of the filter control of a Pro Co RAT.

ISF is basically a fine tune tone filter that allows you to move between the tonal characteristics of an American (6L6 tubes) or British (EL34 tubes) sounding guitar amp. So anti-clockwise we are in Mesa Boogie/Fender territory, so the low end gets tighter and the highs more brittle turn the dial clockwise and it fattens up and sofens up for a smoother Orange/Marshall JCM type tone.

This all might sound like snake oil at first but it does actually seem to work, with the gain up and the midrange cut on ch2, I turned the ISF hard left and got a pretty good “George Lynch” type tone, like the one on Dokkens ‘Back for the Attack’. Blackstar themselves have marketed the amps as being able to give the guitarist the “sound in their head”. After a little adjustment to the EQ and with the ISF at 11 O Clock, I found my own preferences quite easily. It doesn’t really imitate other amps, more that it just gives you a greater choice of finding your own sound.

As Blackstar claim this is more like a valve amp than a fuzzbox I decided to run a Keeley modded Boss SD-1 into the front of channel 1, this gave me a rich sustaining creamy high gain sound with loads of expression and was easily as good as overdriving the front end of my usual Marshall.

After a short time with this pedal I’d found usable tones I was really enjoying myself just playing. I can see it replacing the front end of my rig and enabling me to have everything back on the board, which means I’ll have no more amp footswitches and fx loop cables running back and forth. This will (hopefully) equate to less possibilities for things to go wrong. That in turn means I can go to a simpler amp and perhaps something more lightweight.

I can see other uses too. If you were a guitarist running into a multi FX unit like a BOSS GT series or Line 6 Pod Floor FX, this could mean access to much higher quality set of natrualistic distortions at a very reasonable price, theres even a flat line out for home recording.

The best part of this pedal though is the price, At £169.00 RRP its about half of its nearest credible competitors. Im talking the Koch Pedaltone (too expensive & way too big), Radial Plexitone ( despite the endorsers I’ve tried it and its too overrated by far) & finally the Hughes and Kettner Tubeman. (I’ve used the tubeman extensively and the Blackstar has the edge for both tone and ease of use).

Although the included 16VAC adaptor looks a bit flimsy, at this price I’ll forgive them and buy a spare.

8/10

I guess my main amps for the last decade have been Marshall JCM2000 TSL heads with a 4 x 12 (in both 60watt and 100 watt varieties). The plus side of the TSL has been its ability to give me both an impressive jangly clean and a choice of modern hard rockin crunch type sound. However nothing is ever ideal, while the 60watt version has a brilliant transparent and footswitchable FX loop, channel 2 is on the whole rather undergained.

The 100 watt version has seperate EQ’s and master volumes for each channel, also the 100 watt has an awful 2 loop FX design that sucks tone from the amp in a rather blatant way.

The good thing about the TSL 100 is that all 3 channels are very useable, the channel 2 is basically a JCM800 sound, while Channel 3 is a little fizzy, but as I never run my gain beyond 1 o’ clock, its a perfectly usable beast, the mid-boost control on the clean channel has always been impressive, especially with my telecasters vintage style neck single coil.

But in a modern new build apartment space is paramount, so the head and 4 x 12 cab idea is gone for now. Sold to a lovely bloke in a hard rock covers band.

With the cash burning a hole in my back pocket, I made a decision to return to the 2 x 12 combo format.

In some ways the 2 x 12 combo is actually much better for smaller gigs. While a 4 x 12 cab with its air sealed back is very directional in its output, plus you don’t really get the sweet spot tonally unless your about 15 feet from the rig. A 2 x 12 combo on the other hand with its exposed back gives a nice even spread of volume across a much wider area, the sweet spots probably only 8 or 9 feet away from the amp. Theres also a psychological advantage when dealing with sound engineers, with its global master volume a TSL60 must be about the most quietest head Marshall currently make, but the sight of such a huge rig always encouraged the majority of sound engineers to tell me to turn it down. Often before I’d even played a note. I’d say the TSL60 was very much a sheep in wolfs clothing

With the decision made on a combo, there was then the question of which one?

At one point i’d decided to go for a single channel amp and just use pedals to get my sound. This would make for less cables and less time on setting up and breaking down. I’d seen some video footage of the band Fiction Plane (featuring son of Sting Joe Sumner) playing live in a club in Holland, their guitarist Seton Daunt seemed to have a very versatile rig consiting of a Vox AC30 or Two Rock head & Cab being fed from a comprehensive pedalboard made up for various Pete Cornish,Pro Co, Sansamp, Eventide and Dunlop pedals. Stylistically he seemed to go between Edge like textures and Frusciante type clean sounds. With the odd heavy moment thrown in. I could see that his solution was useful. Less cable and less faffing around.

Ampwise I was wary of Vox AC30′s. I did play a gig with one once in 1992 and it sounded heavenly, but I’ve heard so many things over the years about “reliability” that I had my concerns. The AC30 Heroes of Switzerland borrowed to make our album was a 1960′s one that had been extensively rebuilt. So again even with the new chinese made AC30′s coming onto the market at very affordable prices I wasn’t sure.

My next thought was a single channel amp like a JCM800 combo or even a 900, 800′s are becoming stupidly priced and I was unsure about finding a decent one. So I even looked at the Vintage Modern series amps by Marshall. But after trying one out I was underwhelmed. I love the look of the Bluesbreaker combo’s but again I wasn’t sure it’d do what I asked of it.

I then got to try a Blackstar series One 45 watt combo, which I liked, although the control knobs felt a bit cheap, it did sound good, but new they are like a grand. My Budget was £600. no more

I went to see the Cult with a friend of mine last month and during our pre gig pint I reflected over my choices. My friend (who’s a bass player) basically thought I’d gotten a great sound out of Marshalls over the last 10 years so why change. He felt the only time I had a bad sound was when I went down the rackmounted route about 15 years ago, when I was “trying to have a rig that was all things to all men”.

With that in mind I returned to the idea of the Marshall TSL, but this time in combo format. The Marshall TSl 122 is essentially a TSL100 built into a 2 x 12 cab. Theres usually a fair amount of them in the classifieds and Ebay. Prices range from around £450-700 depending on age and condition. I bought a cleanish one on Ebay for £450.00

The big problem with this is basically putting such a huge amp chassis into such a small cab. They weigh around 30+ Kilo’s so its not an amp for the faint hearted. In terms of playing round the house even with the master volume on 1, this is screamingly loud dumping its 100 + watts of sheer power into 2 x 8 Ohm Celestions, also the lack of space for the tubes in such a cabinet means it gets very hot, much hotter than the equivalent head as I recall.

My first thoughts on this amp are that I need to go back to using an Overdrive pedal as it doesn’t seem to like the Pro Co RAT 2 I was using for solo’s before, so my immediate thoughts are towards a Boss SD-1 or similar, maybe a Keeley modified one?

I’d also like to add a compressor pedal to the rig and maybe a chorus/flanger of some description. But my immediate thoughts are towards a new pedalboard. My Electro Harmonix Gigbag style has been ok, but in reality offers little protection and the pedals simply do not bond to velcro pads easily.

I’ll update when Im gigging next.

Im Jez……Im a….. a guitarist.

Ive been playing since I was 11, gigging from 17 onwards and for much of that time, like many guitarists Ive been on a quest for the perfect tone.

But Im also a pragmatist. Ive not lived the life of a Rock Star, there are no roadies or private jets for me. My equipment has to work and work hard. Ive always demanded maximum versatility from my set ups and also reliability. The kit I buy has to work…..RELIABILITY!!!!!

In the last studio project I worked on (the Heroes of Switzerland album), Ian and myself used the following amps we collectively owned

Marshall JMP 100 head
Marshall TSL100 head
Marshall DSL100 head
Sansamp Tri AC preamp
Plus Ians sizeable collection of boutique pedals and his Boss ME-10

We also borrowed…

Vox AC30
Mesa Studio 22 combo
Mesa DC-5 Combo
Coopersonics Audio Distortions

Now thats a lot of tones available to use.

Live however, we both used Marshalls. Ian started off with a JMP100 and a 2 x 12, running the ME10 in the front, but as he decided to move towards a more natrualistic guitar tone he later switched to a JVM410 head and 4 x 12, resigning the ME-10 for modulation and delay effects duties in the loop.

Live my rig changed during my time in the band. I’d started off with a TSL60 head and 4 x 12 and bought a TSL 100 on a whim, While the TSL100 had a slightly better clean tone and a brilliant crunch channel, I found the lead channel somewhat overgained and fizzy. But the big issue was the FX loop, it put a film around the tone as soon as it was engaged, even with no devices in the loop. Live it was noticable as soon as it was engaged. Wheras the 60′s seemed perfectly crystaline no matter if it was on or off.

After an experiment with using a DSL in rehersal led to much frustration. I went back to what Id owned previously.

By 2008 my rig was as follows

Guitar—–Cry Baby Wah Wah—–TU2 tuner—-RAT 2 (for solo’s)—–TSL60 (2 delays on the FX loop, my trusty green Line 6 Delay modeller and the brilliant, but badly laid out TC Electronics Novadelay) then out of the power stage into a Marshall 4 x 12

After I’d exited the band in Dec 2008 I decided to have some time away from the guitar. Now in Oct 10, Im starting to feel an itch to try and maybe play again.

One of the big plus’s of having time away from the guitar is that when you return it makes you come back to things with fresh ears. My early 20′s rig evolved out of my teenage set-up. Basically a multi fx pedal into a combo, with a secondary delay on the back end and a good quality Distortion pedal and my trusty 20 year old cry Baby Wah wah on the front end. Ive always found the distortions in Multi FX’s to be useless for a solid rock tone. So I would use them for either warm overdrive tones or special FX, feedback type things etc. The primary distortion device would usually be either a original Mark 1 Marshall Guv’nor, Marshall Drivemaster or Pro Co RAT 2. Every band I played in from 19-24 had a keyboard player and I found this to be a useful way to be versatile and it fitted nicely on compact stages. I build the whole rig into a board and it was quick and easy to set up.

Coming back to my 2008 rig, there were issues

1: Its big, a head and a 4 x 12 take up space and unless your standing 15 feet away from it you never get near the sweet spot. Wheras the sweet spot on a 2 x 12 combo is about 9 feet from the amp.

1a: Its difficult to store especially in a small flat.

2: FX loop and cables, theres lots with the amp footswitch and FX loop, more cables means more shit to go wrong.

3: Its not easily adaptable for others. At the very least Im playing a 3 band bill, sometimes 5-6 bands on and off one after another with no soundcheck, your tripping over each other, shit gets damaged and or broken.

4: Sharing gear, Ive lost count of the number of times Ive had to lend my gear to some pasty faced indiekid, they are always ungrateful and surely, but if you don’t you’ll get slagged off and people will think you are difficult. This is compounded by them trying to negotiate a 3 channel amp with several ways of controlling gain and volume. Sometimes I had to help them with getting a basic clean and dirty tone, showing them how the footswitch worked and perhaps adjusting their guitar strap.

This last issue has put me off gigging the indie circuit quite frankly. Im a rock guitarist, not a special needs teacher. I find this amateurism quite an English affliction. A hangover from Punk and the wanker journalists of whats left of the weekly press.

So my feelings are now that I want to work towards a simpler rig.

My first step was to remove the TC Delay, which thanks to a uk price hike meant I sold it on without losing money and I’ll probably replace that with either a Boss DD-3 or a MXR Carbon Copy, the TC was just too fiddly to use live, whoever designed the user interface has never gigged, every time I tried to change the presets I changed the tempo and viz a viz.

Ive used my Sansamp TRI AC as a backup rig with the TSL and its programmed up with a similar set of tones. So my simple live rig would have been

Electric Guitar—Cry baby Wah—TU-2 tuner–RAT2—Sansamp TRI AC—-Line6 DL-4—-simple delay——–into a single channel 2 x 12 combo running loud and clean.

With a decent pedalboard, this would be a simple and highly effective rig. Also if I had to borrow an amp, it would mean consistancy. If someone needed to borrow mine, it would be simple for them and me.

My basic idea was to use my Sansamp and RAT pedals for distortion and then direct into the 2 delays then into the amp.

So far so good.

In terms of a shopping list. My thoughts were in Staying with Marshall. I love VOX AC30′s I really do, but in terms of consistancy and reliability they have a long way to go, Ive not tried a chinese made one. But I prefer the devil you know. So that really means a Marshall, I loathe Fender amps tonally and didn’t fancy spanking £600 on a beat up Fender Twin.

JCM 800 combos are becoming pricey now, as are bluesbreaker reissues so its either a 900 or a more recent Vintage Modern combo.

So today I tried a VM2266C combo out and…

To say I was underwhelmed is something of an understatement. It sounded ok in terms of being a clean amp, the mid boost just muddied the sound. When I switched to the higher dynamic range though…..It just sounded awful. I know Marshall amps were based on Fender designs and they didnt switch over to EL-34 tubes til 66, but….

I just thought it was unuseable for me. I think that people will buy them and its a good concept, but not for me.

So this leaves me back at square 1 again……

Perhaps the TSL60 is just the devil I know, it has its shortcomings, I need more gain on the crunch channel and a mid boost on that would be handy too to make the crunch more useable…. but on a loud stage it does deliver. Id like to mod it, but here in the UK most people only mod older simpler designs, so my dream TSL is unlikely.

One interesting aspect of this is that the JCM2000 series is still on sale, yet the JVM and Vintage Modern are well established amps now. The JCM900 was out of production quite quickly after the 2000 series introduction. Yet here we are several years later and the 2000 series shows no sign of being discontinued. Perhaps that answers my question regarding the success of both the VM and JVM.

Radial’s Tonebone range are all over the press at the moment with some pretty big user names (Vivian Campbell, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, Kirk Hammett, the beardie guy who plays with Genesis etc etc).

I recently spent an evening with the award winning Tonebone Classic pedal, many cans of lager and 2 fellow guitarists (my brother Dom & our friend Nigel). We plugged a MIJ 62′ Strat reissue into the bone and then nto the clean channel of a Marshall JCM2000 head & 4 X 12. Heres whats happened.

The Classic is well made and has a basic level, Gain, treble, bass and a contour control, plus 3 mini switches controlling the EQ frequency curve and the level of gain. Its generally designed to give you that nice sweet Classic Rock Overdrive distortion. Y’know a JTM45/Hi-Watt kinda crunch

Passing the guitar around we got some quite nice sounds….I’ll repeat that again…..some quite nice sounds….. As this is the Classic pedal Nigel went off on a Diamond Head rifforama that made us all chuckle, I played the outro to ‘Who’s Crying Now’ by Journey. Meanwhile Dom gave it some Knopfleresque lead lines and……… it sounded ok nothing was earth shattering or award winning though. When playing staccato lines you could hear the preamp tube sag a little. It sounded organic yes and it was reasonably low noised given that we were playing a strat with stock pickups.

The problem here was that we were playing at sensible volume levels, so nothing the Tonebone did really cut the mustard. We got a nice creamy classic rock overdrive, but nothing better than a pro co RAT pedal, we got a nice lift to an already distorted amp, but nothing you couldnt get out of a Ibanez Tubescreamer or a Boss Super Overdrive.

Nigel was cynical of the 15Volt adaptor giving ther circuit enough juice in the first place. But it sounded okay…..not amazing…..or award winning…..but okay.

The problem is that this pedal costs £170 and I’ve just been comparing it to overdrive distortion pedals costing half as much.

I see what there trying to do, but if your spending this sort of money on organic valve tones with a traditional bite I’d personally go for the Coopersonic Twin overdrive this has had some good reviews and my experience of this was in the studio when I recorded some parts of the HoS album back in 2006, its far more convincing, sounds better, is better made and while lacking fancy endorsees. I think you’ll find it does what it says on the tin with far more aplomb.

The Classic’s manual was a triumph of marketing over common sense, it claimed that it was impossible to get a band sound out of it. Sorry Radial, Nigel found one very quickly and boy it sounded horrible as I played the intro to Journeys ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ if the knobs are turned the right way. Which begs the question, if you throw more money at Marketing and PR than on the actual design and technology, what gets you awards and endorsees????

I wouldn’t write Radial’s valve pedal concept off, the Plexitube and Hot British pedals look like they could be worthwhile. But I’m not sure who this pedal is aimed at. A studio would want something that sounds versatile & convincing at lower volume levels. A gigging guitarist may as well buy a cheaper overdrive unit. The price is Boutique, but I’m not convinced that the sounds are.

File under dissapointing

6/10

(my thanks to Nigel for the loan of the pedal)
Buy the Tonebone Classic Distortion at Zzounds