Blackstar HT Club 50 BLACKSTAR HT Club 50
This new addition to Blackstar’s Venue Series offers a whole lot of tone for a very reasonable wedge of cash…
Words: Tim Slater
British-based amplifier brand Blackstar is seemingly bent on filling every possible niche from tiny one- watt practice amps to fully-fledged stacks up to 200 watts! Don’t forget that every single amp in the Blackstar range features tube circuitry in one form or another too and the new HT Club 50 is a two-channel tube-driven 50 watt head that Blackstar claim is designed to offer working guitarists a versatile yet user-friendly platform for live and studio work.
Features
The HT Club-50 is the newest addition to Blackstar’s Venue series and it duly contains an almost identical feature set as its stable- mate in the range the HT Club-40 combo; i.e. footswitchable clean and overdrive channels and a built-in digital reverb. Driven by a pair of EL34 output tubes and two ECC83 preamp tubes, the HT Club 50 displays the well-finished look that always helps Black star amplifiers to stand out. Everything from the tidy and secure looking chassis layout to the distinctive leatherette vinyl covering the birch play enclosure evokes a reassuring sense of quality, you just itch to plug in and get playing. When you do plug in, the HT Club 50 presents a practical and great looking control panel; chunky control knobs proliferate (much nicer looking and more tactile than those horrid knurled steel knobs used on the Artisian and Series One Blackstar amps) and the feature set is very clean and simple to navigate. Voicing switches on both channels toggle the speaker’s damping factor, enabling the guitarist to set
either channel for bright and glassy sounding ‘Vintage’ tones with a low damping factor, or else increase the damping factor for chunkier ‘Modern’ clean and overdriven tones with a much tighter bass response. The fact that you can set either channel’s damping factor independently on either channel contributes to the sense that the HT 50 is a very versatile amp whilst definitely remaining very simple to set up. The tone stack also includes Blackstar’s nifty Infinite Shape Feature, a global rotary control that allows the user to adjust the amp’s overall tonality between what Blackstar describes as a brighter ‘American’ sound (fully anti-clockwise) and a darker ‘British’ (fully clockwise) tone with slightly more emphasis on the midrange whether or not the amp is in clean or overdriven mode.
ISF seems to interact with the midrange frequencies in particular and it definitely seems to come more into its own when the amp’s overdrive channel is engaged. Let’s say, for example, your tastes run to the slightly scooped modern high gain tone used by someone like Joe Satriani or alternatively you might prefer a more old school British rock sound then the ISF helps the player to nail the target tones quickly without need to compromise their favourite EQ settings. It definitely sounds very effective, although I found that my taste naturally tended towards setting the ISF control in the middle with just a very slight emphasis towards the ‘American’ range. Call me Mr. Compromise, but this particular neutral tone worked best for me on clean and overdriven sounds.
36 3
www.playmusicpickup.co.uk SHOULD I BUY ONE?
Competitively priced and apparently built like the proverbial tank, the HT Club 50 presents itself as a very practical solution for the guitarist seeking an affordable tube head. I quite like the fact that the HT Club 50 doesn’t pigeonhole itself as an out-and-out rock virtuoso’s amp; you gain the impression that this amp will deliver the goods regardless of what type of music you may be into.
Whilst taking into account that a combo will always be more portable, for many guitarists only a head (and it’s attendant flexibility regarding your choice of speaker cabinets) will do. I’m seriously thinking about buying one of these Blackstar HT Club 50 heads, and I’d recommend that you take a good look, too.
THE GOOD BITS: SRP: £499.00 Contact: Blackstar Amps-
www.blackstaramps.co.uk With a workable set of clean and
overdriven tones set up, the digital reverb adds a bit of extra depth, with a choice of ‘Dark’ or ‘Bright’ modes that offer a choice between the crashy sound of a vintage spring reverb or the silkier tones of a modern digital reverb. The rear
panel houses the series effects loop Send and Returns and the signal level switch that attenuates the loop for stomp boxes or line level rack mount effects processors; plus there is also a pretty decent-sounding speaker emulated DI for sending the output direct to a mixing board. PM
THE NOT SO GOOD BITS: Still a lot to lug about.
Versatile, great sounds & price.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60