Small valve head considerations

olafgarten

Another thing I just remembered was the Ibanez TSA15H. It's basically a blackface gender with an integrated tubescreamer. 

Never played one but it might be worth a try.

nickb_boy

Have you looked at the Matamp Minimat? I picked up a mk1 version off here for £200.  It's got a decent clean tone, has a footswitchable boost and master volume so can get break up at more sensible volume but still takes pedals well (especially fuzz).  
The circuits all point to point and the transformers are massive for such a small amp.  For the money I can't fault it at all.

Vinylfan

nickb_boy said:

Have you looked at the Matamp Minimat? I picked up a mk1 version off here for £200.  It's got a decent clean tone, has a footswitchable boost and master volume so can get break up at more sensible volume but still takes pedals well (especially fuzz).  
The circuits all point to point and the transformers are massive for such a small amp.  For the money I can't fault it at all.

I haven't yet - think someone mentioned it in an earlier post too.  Will take a look and see what they go for.

Thanks for the tip.

Dopesick

Victory Sheriff 44 (or the 22 if you want cheaper/less power).

Victory doing a lot of good stuff at the moment amp-wise.

Anacharsis

nick79 said:

Blackstar HT1 is pretty good. I don't like any of the others but that one sounds quite good to me. 

I'm such a fan of the HT-1R head that I ended up with three of them, each with their own 1x12" cabinets. I use them separately and as a pair or W/D/W setup. The wife loves them as well, because I can get sounds I like without disturbing her reading upstairs. The clean headroom isn't especially high, but they work very well for me for home recording (and I have other amps for headroom).

Vinylfan

Dopesick said:

Victory Sheriff 44 (or the 22 if you want cheaper/less power).

Victory doing a lot of good stuff at the moment amp-wise.

The Victory stuff does look great (and I'm sure sounds just as good) but well out of budget. The idea was to be able to use a speaker cabinet that I have lying around and just try out something like an all-valve head.

nick79

Anacharsis said:

nick79 said:

Blackstar HT1 is pretty good. I don't like any of the others but that one sounds quite good to me. 

I'm such a fan of the HT-1R head that I ended up with three of them, each with their own 1x12" cabinets. I use them separately and as a pair or W/D/W setup. The wife loves them as well, because I can get sounds I like without disturbing her reading upstairs. The clean headroom isn't especially high, but they work very well for me for home recording (and I have other amps for headroom).

I had one but stupidly sold it. Since then i've acquired an HT5, but i cant get on with it all, to my ears its not a patch on the HT1.

ICBM

nick79 said:

I had one but stupidly sold it. Since then i've acquired an HT5, but i cant get on with it all, to my ears its not a patch on the HT1.

The HT-1R is my favourite Blackstar by quite a long way. I *almost* bought one...

steven70

..

nick79

Thats exactly how i feel about the 5. Ive changed the speaker to a v30 which helped a bit but i still don't like it.

tone1

I had a Blackstar HT1R head through a 12” Tone Tubby and it was stellar. It sounds way above its price.

steven70

..

ICBM

steven70 said:

Interesting...I've also experimented with different speakers. Wonder if they changed something in the circuit?
Or if it's worth taking the back off and swapping some valves about...

I know this is probably not what you meant, but don't 'swap the valves about' - or at least, be careful. The power valve is a 12AU7/ECC82, and the preamp valve is a 12AX7/ECC83. If you put them in the wrong positions, you may damage the amp.

If you want to try different valves, the 12AX7 is safe to replace with any other 12AX7 or a 5751, and *probably* a 12AT7. The 12AU7 must only be replaced with another 12AU7, and probably won't change the sound much anyway.

You won't get enough of a tone change with any kind of 12AX7 to really revoice the amp and take away that 'Blackstar' sound, but you might with a 12AT7 - it does brighten and open up the tone of the amp noticeably, and reduce the gain slightly. Experiment at your own risk! The good news is that in the event it does burn out the plate resistor (not that likely, but possible) it's one of the few components in the amp that's easy to replace.

For what it's worth, I found I could get a better overdrive sound with the clean mode turned up all the way than the overdrive mode, and bear in mind that the 'ISF' control goes backwards compared to what Blackstar say... the 'Marshall' sound is on the left, not the right.

I still didn't buy it though...

steven70

..

 

ICBM

steven70 said:

Re the 'ISF'...now that makes sense, I always found it got less 'Marshall' as you turn clockwise, despite what the instructions said- thank you!

I'm really glad it's not just me... it completely baffles me how Blackstar can be so wrong about it - especially as the people that started the company used to work for Marshall!

kennedydream1980

The ISF always sounded to me basically like a parametric EQ, it’s just shifting the frequency of the mid band up and down. On all the Blackstar stuff I’ve owned in the past I’ve just left it in the middle, that includes the Blackstar HT Dual pedal I still own and use.

TTBZ

If you're only playing at home and don't need true cleans then the new Marshall DSL1HR is actually a lot of fun through a cab (the stock speaker in the combo does it no justice).

If you want a bit more wattage the 20HR (or 20CR with a speaker swap) is great - can be dropped to 10w too.

MentalSharps

How about a Jet City Custom 5? It's an inexpensive volume-produced (licensed) clone of a THD Picovalve. Switchable between 5w down to 2w, but also a cheap platform for modding and there are some interesting mods out there for it to change the sound up.

Or for an extra £20-50 depending which model you go for, you could get one of the licensed Soldano-designed 20w models and have loads more options (and better sound). (2nd hand you could pick one up for £100-150). There are loads of mod options available over on the Jet City owners thread, or mod kits you could buy or take it to a tech to fit - Plexi style, SLO mod, JCM800, Hotrodded Marshall etc (this is one of my favourite sounding: 

And to open up the master volume more for £85 you could add a Harley Benton attenuator (OEM version of the Jet City Jettenuator, or cheaper if you can find one 2nd hand or B-Stock) or there's a Rat Amps one for £45 I believe.

I just bought my first tube amp, and I looked at some of the low-watt style but just found myself a bit unsatisfied with the tone which was always compromised in some way, they seem to lack versatility and usually only do one thing really well. So I ended up with a higher-watt amp and Two Notes Captor reactive loadbox to let the power tubes open up. And that suits me well for being able to play on headphones in the middle of the night with the master volume on 6. 

ecc83

kennedydream1980 said:

The ISF always sounded to me basically like a parametric EQ, it’s just shifting the frequency of the mid band up and down. On all the Blackstar stuff I’ve owned in the past I’ve just left it in the middle, that includes the Blackstar HT Dual pedal I still own and use.

It's a variable frequency notch filter. As to which 'sound' is which? Don't have a Scooby but it is QUITE possible that the PCB  got "mirrored" on some later designs!

Re ICs caution about swapping valves around in the HT-1? No, don't put an '82 in the pre amp stage, never tried an 81 but it might be ok but, FFS don't fit anything BUT an ECC83 in that dual pedal! The anode loads are necessarily wee! In fact about the only resistor* I ever had to change in a Blackstar product was an O/C 100k in a pedal. No reason, valve was ok, just failed. One only of 1000s!

*I did change the 100K loads in the first triode of an Artisan because hiss levels were out of spec and they are those (silly IMHO) 'booteek' carbon comps. Fitted 100k MFs but it did not solve the problem, turned out to be a bad solder joint. Again a one off! This time of 10s of 1000s!

Dave.

rlw

Butting in to this thread as you've all managed to put me off power scaling and attenuators so I turned my thoughts to the HT1-R as a real possibility.  What cab works best with it? 1 x12", 4 x 8" ?