Blackstar ht-50

chrisj1602

I am using a Blackstar HT60 Stage at the moment, I have it on loan with a view to buying.  I haven't quite set it up exactly how I like it yet but it's a good amp.  I can't imagine the HT50 being that much different but I don't know.  I have owned Vox, Orange, Marshall and Fender amps and the Blackstar is up there in my opinion.  Opinion is the key word though I guess.

hywelg

A demo day by Blackstar at a local shop left me completely underwhelmed by the HT amps. Dry is what I'd call'em. The Series 100 was better and the Artisans very nice but I wouldn't touch an HT with a barge pole.

Danny1969

My clean channel sounds pretty good but I'm running the amp close to full belt and that's when you get the character
The other guy in my lizzy tribute had the 20 watt and he was never running it hot enough for the clean channel to have any personality
If you run the Hts on full whack or close it's a lot better and you also don't need so much gain then on the lead channel

ecc83

" Artisans very nice but I wouldn't touch an HT with a barge pole"

At the risk of being accused of "Going on" (defensively!) .......

There is no such thing as "an HT"!

The HT-5 was designed way before the others and by a different bloke.

The Stage 60/100s are beasts and the HT-1 is another animal from all of them!

The HT-20 and 40 ARE very similar except power output although even here the 20 is "mostly" cathode biased!

Dave.

longshins

Ok, I had a hissy fit and stropped off as I thought there was a company shill guy defending a poor product. I will try again and this time maintain a pure zen like state when people disagree with my opinions ( which in my head are facts). Still don't like the Blackstar ht-50 btw

ecc83

longshins said:

Ok, I had a hissy fit and stropped off as I thought there was a company shill guy defending a poor product. I will try again and this time maintain a pure zen like state when people disagree with my opinions ( which in my head are facts). Still don't like the Blackstar ht-50 btw

Heh! No worries, can't please all of the pe....! And Blackstar have made their share of publicity boobs!

You might like to know that the HT-50 is exactly the same chassis as the HT-40 combo! Yes, there might be some small voicing differences but the output stage, traffs etc are (still afaik) those of the 40.

Is this cheating? Calling  a previous "40 watt" design a 50 watter? No, I don't think so. The power output of a valve (especially) amp is very hard to define. Really the best you can say is "That set of valves, at THAT bias and THAT HT will produce about X watts".

But at how much distortion? Can't go by scope "clipping", in the eye of the beholder. An amp might deliver 40 watts at 3%thd but 50W at 10% . You will barely hear the difference in terms of loudness and certainly for guitar work (i.e. not hi-fi!) not in distortion.

Then one day mains in will be 230V (which is where all the speccs are measured) next 240 even a coruscating 253 volts is allowed!

I was once asked to test some 100W chassis for distortion at 120 W, looking for less than 10% at 230 in. They all pissed it!

Dave.