Has anyone ever dimed a blackstar ht5r head ?

Telejester

I keep one in the bedroom with a zilla 1x12 cab that has a greenback in it for home practice with my mp3 player connected. Seems like a loud enough wee bugger and because its at home i cant turn it up. To anyone who has dimed one, were you surprised by output for a 5w rating ?

Danny1969

I've played hundreds of gigs with one, yes very loud little amps into a sensitive cab and closer to 10 watts of clipped output 
A tip with these amps is to put something in the loop that raise the level, whole nicer sound when you do that. I use a GT10 and even with no effects, only signal gain it makes a huge difference 

Telejester

Danny1969 said:

I've played hundreds of gigs with one, yes very loud little amps into a sensitive cab and closer to 10 watts of clipped output 
A tip with these amps is to put something in the loop that raise the level, whole nicer sound when you do that. I use a GT10 and even with no effects, only signal gain it makes a huge difference 

In front of mine i have my cae wah, maxon od808 set to clean boost and diamond cpr1 compressor, in the loop its mxr 234 analogue chorus only and its surprising how much ground such a simple rig covers. The life and soul of the tone is the diamond cpr 1, its the one that holds it all together, last compressor i will ever need.

ecc83

I knew putting a boost in the FX loop of the HT-20 was said to be a good idea, best if it can be a few dB at 2-3kHz I understand. I have not heard of a similar practice with the Five but since is uses pretty much the same MOSFET PI, makes sense. And yes, even though the amp only just manages a fairly clean 5 watts, because it is push-pull, fixed biased it can put out a rather dirty 10 watts!

Dave.

timmysoft

I maxed one out once, into a Mesa 412 and it sounded fucking horrific. I think the ht5 is the best amp blackstar make, but anything over half way on that amp and it just turns to shit. 

ThePrettyDamned

I found it sounded kinda bland quiet and pretty crap up loud. I wound up buying a Mooer amp! It did sound nicer than a 5 watt Cornford I tried on the same day though... 

I had the ht dual and ht metal pedals (which, like a fool, I sold) and to be honest if you like the blackstar sounds, and have the dollars, you'd be better off getting a decent budget amp and a ht dual. The ht dual absolutely gets the same tones, but also allows you a third tone in the amp itself. 

Perhaps it would have benefited from an eq or boost in the loop but I wound up using a ht pedal I to a peavey bandit for a long, long time and was very happy. 

richardhomer

Is 'dimed' American for 'cranked'?

kennedydream1980

I gigged a HT5R head into a victory 1x12 cab (Celestion vintage 30 speaker) for a while and it sounded great wound up. I used to run the volumes at about 3 quarters up, 2-3 o'clock. Sounded great to me.

rico

richardhomer said:

Is 'dimed' American for 'cranked'?

I would also like to know this. 

professorben

timmysoft said:

I switched one on once, into a Mesa 412 and it sounded fucking horrific. And I think the ht5 is the best amp blackstar make....... 

FTFY

not_the_dj

rico said:

richardhomer said:

Is 'dimed' American for 'cranked'?

I would also like to know this. 

10 cents in a Dime, amp on 10 = dimed, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere...

timmysoft

not_the_dj said:

rico said:

richardhomer said:

Is 'dimed' American for 'cranked'?

I would also like to know this. 

10 cents in a Dime, amp on 10 = dimed, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere...

11

revsorg

Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder?

rico

revsorg said:

Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder?

This one goes up to 11

redrighthand

I've played a ht5 combo live, at an unmiced gig. It wasn't loud enough. miced it would have been fine but without one it struggled.

ecc83

redrighthand said:

I've played a ht5 combo live, at an unmiced gig. It wasn't loud enough. miced it would have been fine but without one it struggled.

The original Five used the G10N-40, a 95dB/W/mtr speaker. Many people, including some reviewers who should have had enough technical smarts to know better, complained that it did not have enough 'clean headroom'. It was FIVE watts ffs!

Most folks know that ~30W into a 100dBish speaker is needed as the minimum for cleans in decent sized pub and bigger venues, 50W and up.The Five r has a 12" 'custom designed by Blackstar' speaker in it, don't have the speccs but I bet no hotter than 98dB/W/mtr.

Since its inception (which spawned a myriad 5W coat tail jumpers) the amplifier has been highly praised and vilified in some ratio  people will decide depending on their personal view/ opinion. I don't know the current situation but for many years, B's could not produce them fast enough so they must have been doing something right!

Perhaps because in almost all aspects save power output, size and weight it 'looks' like a 'proper' guitar amplifier*, full tone controls, switchable clean/OD channels, multi Z speaker jacks, FX loop (with the then almost never seen, two OP levels) people forgot about the power restriction and thought they had a 'Twin' they could take to gigs on a bike!?

*Five watters at that time had just Volume and top chop and were single ended OP stages and a bit hummy.

Dave.

TTBZ

I liked my HT5 and thought it was just about loud enough for band practice but would have wanted to mic it for gigs. Didn't care about true cleans but I found it really unresponsive to guitar volume adjustments for "clean" so I got rid of it. Like someone else said it's probably my favourite BS amp out of those I've tried.

usedtobe

Classic 30's go up to 12...

Telejester

usedtobe said:

Classic 30's go up to 12.....

,.......when they arent on a tech workbench

usedtobe

Telejester said:

usedtobe said:

Classic 30's go up to 12.....

,.......when they arent on a tech workbench

There is that..!