 Blackstar is proud to introduce the HT Venue series, Mark II. After three years of intense R&D, they essentially answered all the requests from the guitar players and made an award-winning line of HT Venue series amps even better. What they really wanted to do was take that clean channel and really make it more powerful and more musical. So the clean channel now has knobs for bass and treble, so EQ, but it also has a voicing switch. Clean channel voice one is going to be a classic American sound, which is sparkly and clean. Voice number two is going to be a classic British sound, which has a little bit of break up at higher volume settings. So you can get super sparkly clean or a little bit of kind of an edge of break up clean on that single clean channel. Moving to your left, you're going to see OD1 and OD2, those are your two overdrive channels, each one having its own voice. Voice number one of those overdrive channels is going to be more dynamic and more responsive. If we switch over to voice number two, you're going to get more articulation and it cuts better. Moving to the left of that, you're going to see all of your EQ settings, the ISF, bass, middle and treble for your overdrive. You're also going to move to the left of that and see the master section. The master volume is going to be your overall output volume that controls all of your channels, but it's also going to have presence and resonance, which is kind of a master EQ that controls master top end and master low end for a little bit more clarity or a little bit more thump on the low end. Each of the Venue Series Mark II amps has a button that allows you to switch it down to 10% of its output power. Now it's not just practical, it's great that you can take a 100 watt amplifier and push a button and turn it down to where it lowers the volume but still keeps it responsive and musical. What it also allows you to do is to get the sound of a dimed amp with all the sag and compression and musicality at a much lower volume so you get the benefits of a loud cooking amplifier without all of the liabilities of the volume. If we turn the amplifier around, you'll see a handful of output options. The most common of course is going to be plugging into a speaker cab so you have a handful of outputs for any number of different speaker ratings but you also have a balanced XLR out. That allows you to go direct out to a recording console, front of house, direct box. You have a headphone line output as well. Something new for the Venue Series Mark II is a USB out. That allows you to plug directly into a desktop or laptop computer and get amazing recorded guitar tones silently and easily. You also have the Series FX loop which is a carry over from the Mark I version of the HT Venue amplifiers. That allows you to choose between instrument or line level sources so you can use pro outboard rack gear or you can use your normal stop boxes in that FX loop. On the back you also have lastly a switch to choose between light and dark reverb. The dark reverb is a room reverb and the light reverb is a plate version and then you can control how much of that you want on the front knob. Each of the amplifiers comes with a two button foot switch but there's an optional five button foot switch that expands the functionality of the HT Venue Series Mark II. Not only can you switch channels which you would expect but you can also foot switch the different voices of these channels as well. You can turn reverb on and off and then the five button foot switch gives you access to a master volume boost. It's not just sonic improvements that Blackstar made with the Venue Series Mark II. They made each one of the amps a little bit smaller, a little bit lighter and a little bit more portable. So overall, the HT Venue Series Mark II represents a groundbreaking leap forward in an already award-winning amplifier line. For more information on the HT Venue Series Mark II, check out blackstaramps.com.