New amp range coming from Blackstar?

ecc83

bertie said:

Lebarque said:

ecc83 said:

Not my cup of tea at all I am afraid. Sounded very 'plummy' and 'boomy' (could be the room of course)

Interestingly, again no signal past 4.5kHz except the briefest single blip at 5.5kHz...seems guitar amps/speakers just don't go past that?

So, the search for ICBM's missing HF goes on! Nothing has any top!

Dave.

This is the sort of tone I like:

 that was a bit "thin and tinny"   for me - and I actually tend to like "higher" end tones, not bassy

if that was a "sales demo" it would put be off getting a Lazy J ,  


great we're all different tho  

Indeed. I thought the Gibo was nice and the spectrum better balanced than that "lard" Fender.

Dave.

ICBM

ecc83 said:

And yes WE know amps are best raised but he has no transport so, amp in right, Rikky in left, no way to carry a stand as well.

That’s what chairs are for .

bertie

ICBM said:

ecc83 said:

And yes WE know amps are best raised but he has no transport so, amp in right, Rikky in left, no way to carry a stand as well.

That’s what beer crates are for .

FTFY

TTBZ

All the demos I've heard of this sound pretty flat/thin and uninspiring to me tbh, both mic'd up and through the cab sim.. And yes I'm listening with decent headphones. If I wanted a super light portable amp with built in DI capabilities I'd probably be going for one of those new Victory pedal amps, they have sounded pretty consistently good in all the demos I've seen. Plus they're £200 cheaper and have the proper Two Notes stuff built into them.

Joey2014

Played through both of the combos today and felt that the EL34 model was better. The best sounds were found (IMO) with the master and channel volumes on full in the 'Sag' setting. Using the gain control as a 'volume' control, the amp sounded clearer/less wooly/compressed. Overall, the 6L6 model seemed lacking in definition which, being the higher gain option, was disappointing. 

An odd feature I discovered was that the amps start to sound drastically more open with the treble around 2 o'clock or thereafter (they didn't sound great any lower than that). Pretty loud on full blast too!

PAL

They look really good but if you check Blackstar amp repairs on YouTube you might have second thoughts as Blackstar
  surface mount components on some of there amps and so serviceability could be a problem further down the line !
  Check out a guy on YouTube "Psionic" He is an amp tech and explains most of the issues on modern day amps in regards to
   repair and design ! The best advice I would give regarding guitar amps is buy something that is hand wired  with either
   point to point or turret board construction and the more basic the better after all most of us use pedals to hone our sound
   circuit board amps to a lead free solder and heat from tubes are responsible for a lot of problems.
   There are some good companies who do it better but they are more expensive the choice is yours.
   I do have some Fender combos Princeton/Blues Jnr/Pro Jnr they seem pretty good at the moment !

bertie

PAL said:

They look really good but if you check Blackstar amp repairs on YouTube you might have second thoughts as Blackstar
  surface mount components on some of there amps and so serviceability could be a problem further down the line !
  Check out a guy on YouTube "Psionic" He an amp tech and explains most of the issues on modern day amps 

there's actually one or two on here

ICBM

It’s fair to say that surface-mount parts are difficult to repair for most old-school techs who have grown up with valve amps, and valves can be unknown territory for younger ones who know about SM work… but there are quite a few now who have learned to combine the two, so it’s certainly not true that SM parts make an amp unrepairable - you just need someone who isn’t going to dismiss it out of hand.

In fact, many older through-hole PCB amps have issues which can lead to serious difficulty in repairing them, which are nothing to do with the way the components are mounted, but with bad board design and layout (eg Marshall JCM2000s, Fender Blues Junior) or poor physical design and component choice (eg Trace Elliot valve amps, Marshall JTM30/JTM60/JCM600), all of which often end up with burned boards.

ecc83

ICBM is right, I am not familiar with many of the older amps as he is but 'domestic' electronics went SMT long ago and was a challenge and even before that TV PCBs were mainly ***t especially poorly bonded, dual sided GEC boards.

I have done a very small amount of SMT work, a struggle in your 60s with dodgy minces!

But! It is YOU the customer that is the reason for SMT made gear. Even for a 'valve amplifier' if you want multiple channels with fast, near silent switching, reverb, comprehensive tone stacks, FX loops and DI emulated outs you have to go solid state and that means SMT if the cost is going to be acceptable.

Sure! You can do all that with valves and tanks but the cost would be enormous and people want cheap kit. Then, people not only want to buy cheap kit but they expect it to be UBER reliable (not much ever was) and they NEVER want to pay a service tech a decent wedge to fix it.

That last is the crunch point. If techs can make a decent living they will invest in the tools and training to service modern gear. The problem is there is no longer any service infra-structure which, in my day started with small family businesses supported by the electronics industry and local technical colleges.

Some 4 years ago I recall a guy came to service a gas fire. He was in the house just under an hour and used no parts. 80 quid. I recently had a tree removed from my back garden. It was over 20 feet tall and about a foot in diameter. 3 men and a chipping machine, again about an hour. £550. Ok, those charges hurt but I cannot really say they were unreasonable.

Dave.

LastMantra

There's also skinflints like myself. Most of my amps were bought as spares/repairs and were simple enough even for me to have a go at and probably cost less than a tech would want to fix.

Edit-  Or maybe it's just me 

Modulus_Amps

I suspect if you want a well built amp that does not use SM parts with all the modern features you will end up paying the sort of price the small Suhr PT head goes for, this blackstar product clearly looks to be a product for the masses and anything to make it cheaper wins.

SMPS power supplies are fine if they are standard off the shelf units you can buy from RS or aliexpress and can easily be replaced with a screw driver and 5 minutes. But if it is some custom item that is built into the main board that would be a design error IMO.

bertie

LastMantra said:

There's also skinflints like myself. Most of my amps were bought as spares/repairs and were simple enough even for me to have a go at and probably cost less than a tech would want to fix.

Edit-  Or maybe it's just me 

humbug

jeztone2

My problem is the EL-34 has that hideous biscuit coloured covering. Why can’t it be blue or racing green. It looks like you’ve plugged into a buy to let. 

LastMantra

bertie said:

LastMantra said:

There's also skinflints like myself. Most of my amps were bought as spares/repairs and were simple enough even for me to have a go at and probably cost less than a tech would want to fix.

Edit-  Or maybe it's just me 

humbug

Just poor 

Danny1969

ICBM said:

It’s fair to say that surface-mount parts are difficult to repair for most old-school techs who have grown up with valve amps, and valves can be unknown territory for younger ones who know about SM work… but there are quite a few now who have learned to combine the two, so it’s certainly not true that SM parts make an amp unrepairable - you just need someone who isn’t going to dismiss it out of hand.

In fact, many older through-hole PCB amps have issues which can lead to serious difficulty in repairing them, which are nothing to do with the way the components are mounted, but with bad board design and layout (eg Marshall JCM2000s, Fender Blues Junior) or poor physical design and component choice (eg Trace Elliot valve amps, Marshall JTM30/JTM60/JCM600), all of which often end up with burned boards.

Yes this is very true. I originally started out repairing TV's, car radios and hi fi's which were all through hole components. Then in the nineties I got into PC repair then laptop board repair which was all surface mount. I had to learn to use a hot air gun and learn how to solder under heavy magnification. The skills are actually pretty basic and certainly easy enough for anyone willing to spend a few weeks desoldering chips from junk boards and soldering them back on ... which is how I learnt. 

@PAL ;
I respect Psionic's knowledge of valve circuits and have watched quite a few of his videos but I laughed when he mentioned the SM section  on one amp being hard to repair,  Because I could see the SM pitch was massive to anyone who works with modern stuff like laptop boards and phone boards. Trying to get a QFP 0.4mm pitch chip centred correctly while you tack one leg is tricky, replacing surface mount SM caps, inductors and resistors on an amplifier board isn't really. In many cases it's actually easier because it's all topside work, you don't even get the board out. 

PAL

I think the point Psionic was making was it's not impossible but can difficult and there are specialists who like you say work on
  laptops and do this all the time. Yes I agree working topside does make things a bit easier. I should point out I no am tech !
  I can manage a bit of PCB but I'm lost on surface mount I leave that to people who know how to do this properly !

impmann

PAL said:

I think the point Psionic was making was it's not impossible but can difficult and there are specialists who like you say work on
  laptops and do this all the time. Yes I agree working topside does make things a bit easier. I should point out I no am tech !
  I can manage a bit of PCB but I'm lost on surface mount I leave that to people who know how to do this properly !

TBH Psionic needs to leave SM to those who can do it properly… 

Ive been keeping out of the discussions for the obvious reasons - I’m not here to represent Blackstar. 

The SM thing though is something that annoys the crap out of me. So much BS - usually spread by old school techs who rather than try to understand what’s going on say it’s inferior and only done for cheapness. Actually, a properly designed and implemented SM PCBA will be more reliable, more consistent and less noisy than a through hole. FACT. I believe in science and you can scientifically prove that - and step outside the YouTube bubble of guys making videos in their basements, there’s a lot of written research to prove it. So no it’s got absolutely nothing to do with keeping prices down.

Can you rework a SM PCBA - of course you can.  You don’t even need specific tools although they help. You can fault find an SM PCBA using exactly the same techniques as a through hole - you may need a magnifying glass if your eyesight isn’t great, though and the probes on your meter need to be small. I have guys working for me doing this every day - working to component level on SM boards. 

So let’s cut the crap about SM - it’s actually very reliable when done correctly. It’s not about cheapness. If you want something hand wired, point to point and with an all valve path, go right ahead. They sound great when done right - although not all do. But you won’t be physically able to build such an amp with the technology built in that these, and other modern amps do. 

YouTube is full of entertainment, but also gives people with soapboxes and half the facts a voice - listen to them by all means but don’t believe every word verbatim.

Danny1969

One thing that does make SM construction less reliable for amplifiers is vibration. Modern multilayer ceramic caps are very prone to cracking if there's any movement on the board caused by vibration. Recently I repaired a class D amp that had one fail because it was too near a large inductor and the tiny amount of vibration over a period of time had caused it to crack and when they do they fail shorted rather than open. This shorted 2 current sense resistors which stopped the power supply starting. 
I'm sure Blackstar have some clever guys who spec the correct resin flex or similar caps, cut vibration slots into the board around sensitive areas etc but I'm seen other amps that don't have these precautions and they will fail after a few years of hard gigging. 
The point I'm making is the actual physical construction of the components is what can cause some to fail, not the fact they were operated too near their max voltage limit or had too much current dragged through them. This is something you generally don't see with thru hole components unless they are left dangling in the breeze and the legs fracture. 
Thankfully with most amps the pitch of the SM components is quite large due to the higher voltages so it's not the huge issue it is on laptop / phones etc. 

ecc83

I agree with Impmann when he says SMT is very reliable and also his point that it is Old Guard that are agin it.

I find it a little bit hard to take "Not done for cheapness" OK, "cheap" is probably not a good choice of word but it is plainly obvious that is you use LESS of something to achieve the same (maybe better!?) electronic result, it is going to cost less. What many of the cork sniffers don't want to understand is that amp companies have to SELL the bloody things and if Joe Pub sees more facilities for less money, THAT is the way he will jump.

'People' don't like change. Twas ever thus in the consumer electronics industry. When I started, valves were king, there was nothing else, at least not in radios and TVs. We had to come to grips with 'upside down' Germanium technology. Horrible, noisy feeble things. Silicon was better but R&TV was mostly still valve and the early printed circuits were real crap.

Service techs moaned about integrated circuits..."Why aren't they in sockets?" ICs proved to be extremely reliable and so socketing would have made for a more expensive product with no advantages.

Danny's comment about vibration is well taken. One area where PCB construction fell down in TV 'chopper supplies' was solder joints on inductor pins drying out due to 'Magneto-striction . vibration at ultrasonic frequency. If the feedback winding went O/C for just a nano second...Blammo! total semiconductor destruction. Often took out line stage components as well.

Unless they have changed tack, I know someone at Blackstar is doing their level best to destroy those amplifiers and I am pretty sure THEY are sure they are as reliable as they can reasonable be.

Dave.

fretmeister

stonevibe said:

Still a little odd that the weight is the main selling point.


https://blackstaramps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/new-weight-graphic-export.png

No it isn’t. Weight is one of those things that doesn’t matter to the young and the strong, and then matters to everyone at some point.

It will matter to you one day too. Either that or you won’t be gigging anymore and you can remain blissfully ignorant as to why it’s important.

You could also spend some time on the bass forums. Weight of amps and in particular cabs has been a massive selling point for years.

Guitarists have always been behind the curve compared to acceptance of new ideas in equipment.