Blackstar Artist 30 v Marshall Origin 50 - pedal centric

gracefulswan

Any thoughts on the most worthy? Looking at reasonably priced pedal platform type amps.

McToot

Can't help on those specifically but you might also want to look at H&KL Puretones. Often sold pretty cheap and seem to get a lot of love as a pedal platform (a bit marmite on the eyes if you ask me, though).

I have recently acquired an Origin 20H and it seems fine with my pedals. 

kennedydream1980

I’ve got experience with the Artist 15. It had stacks of headroom and was more than loud enough in a band setting. They are designed to work with pedals so you can’t really go wrong in that respect.

The 15 is also relatively light for the size of it (it’s a wide cab). It also has the added bonus of being Cathode biased. So no biasing needed with matched pairs of 6L6’s. 

The only reason to go up to the artist 30 would be the extra speaker. I honestly think the 15 would be loud and clean enough. The 15 sounds big for a low wattage amp.

If I was to go back to a valve amp pedal platform it would be the artist 15. That being said I actually preferred the boss Katana amps for the ‘pedal platform’ purpose, but that’s another can of worms