 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MGRmusic.com and in this lesson we're going to look at the difference between a real tube amp versus a digital amp and how they take boost and overdrive pedals. So the amps I'm going to be shooting out in this video are the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 and the Blackstar Silverlander Lux. I've got both amps mic'd up with the same microphone which is an Aston Origin mic. I've got both the amps also dialed in as close as I can tonally. The Silverlander Lux is set to a 6L6 setting to match that of the Studio 10. I've tried to get the EQs as close as possible and the built-in reverbs as close as possible too. Many guitar players both in the studio and on stage will pair their amp with boost and drive pedals. This is to get different textures, different levels of boost, different levels of gain and also to push the preamp a little bit harder on your amplifier. This is something that is typically favored by guitar players that use tube amps because having a boost in front of the amp, like I said, will hit that preamp a bit harder and it'll bring the amp a little bit closer to saturation. But what if you're someone who has just bought a digital amp like the Silverland beside me? What are you going to do with your pedals? Will they work in the same way? We're going to check that out in this video. So like I said, I've dialed in both the amps as close as I possibly can and I've kept the volumes as equal as possible too. They're both running totally clean and the reverb you're hearing is coming from each individual amp. On the Studio 10 it just has a single tone knob which I've got set at midnight and on the Silverland Deluxe because it has a little bit more of an in-depth EQ. I've set this so that we're on the 6L6 response on the clean bright voice with the ISF dialed over to the American side and I've kept the EQ as flat as possible but I have brought the treble down a little bit and brought the bass up. That's because this is a little bit of a brighter amp than this is. So my guitar is running through the two pedals you see beside me here. I've got a clean boost and a tube screamer style pedal. Both of those are running into this whirlwind select the switch which is just an AB between the two amps. So first of all let's check out the clean tones between the two amps. So first up is the Studio 10 6L6 completely clean and now the Silverland Deluxe. So the first thing we're going to explore is the impact of a clean boost into each type of amp. So I'm going to select the Studio 10 6L6 again and turn my clean boost on. So let's hear the difference now between the clean amp and the boosted amp and now the boost pedal into the front of the Silverline. So when we boost an amp in the front end what we expect to hear is a little more harmonic breakup from the preamp. So this definitely works better with something like the Studio 10 6L6 because this is a much lower headroom amp because this is only 10 watts and this is 100 watts. We're actually going to force the preamp in this amp into that saturation and break up a little sooner especially because it's also a two-bamp. Two-bamps definitely respond a little bit better to boosts in the front end. That's not to say the Silverline doesn't sound great with a boost in front but we're not going to get as natural a breakup because this is a 100 watt amp. If I was running perhaps the 20 watt Silverline instead of the 100 we may get a little bit of that simulated breakup but it's definitely going to be something that works better with a two-bamp. So now I'm just going to play a couple of chords and bounce between the two amps so you can hear the difference with starting with the Studio 10. Alright so next up we're going to talk about overdrive so I'm going to start off with the Studio 10 once more with an overdrive pedal switched on. This is going to introduce some breakup and distortion to the amp so there's none coming from the amp because it's running completely clean so all the gain is coming from the pedal. Now the overdrive into the clean Silverline deluxe. So what are the big differences you can hear there? Once again there's a harmonic distortion thing going on because we're hitting the preamp of the Studio 10 a little bit harder than this amp. This amp is definitely distorting and it's bringing in the characteristics of the overdrive pedal but we're not getting as much of a sort of preamp style or sort of pushed clipping sound because this amp has so much headroom. So if I was going to be using this amp with a distortion pedal or an overdrive pedal I definitely want to be running a lower wattage one to get the same type of clipping. It's definitely a different sound but it's still a great sound. So now I'm going to look at stacking the two pedals together. So we're going to go back to the Studio 10 and I'm going to put the clean boost back on. So now I'm putting the clean boost into the drive, into the amp. And now the boost and drive pedal stacked into the Silverline deluxe. So once again you can hear some different tonal characteristics and some different kind of clipping things going on there. Once again we're hitting the Studio 10 that little bit harder so we're getting a bit of preamp distortion and power amp distortion from the amp as well which we're not getting from the Silverline because it's got the higher headroom. So there is a little bit of what to expect with using overdrive and boost pedals with your Blackstar amp whether that be a small low wattage tube amp or a big 100 watt digital amp as well. They obviously have different vibes there when you use different pedals. You can really see the interaction between the pedal and the gain stages of the amp. When you play the Silverline with those pedals on you still get the drive tones, you still get the boost tones but they're cleaner because we're not getting that power amp compression and we're not getting that sort of preamp distortion that you get from hitting a small amp hard. Whereas on this amp because this is a 10 watt amp it's got a much lower headroom we're bringing in some of that preamp distortion and we're also compressing the power amp and getting a little bit of that sag as well. So they're definitely both great tones they both react differently and there's definitely something in either one of those for everyone out there. So where do you guys stand on the difference between boosts and overdrives into a low watt tube amp versus a high headroom digital amp? Let us know down below in the comments and let us know which pedals and which Blackstar amps you guys are using this concept with as well. We'd love to hear about that. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video I can't wait to hear what you guys are using with your own Blackstar set up down below in those comments so don't forget to get involved and don't forget to check out the other videos on the Blackstar YouTube channel as well. There's plenty more videos where we go in-depth about pedals and amps and how you guys can use your pedals with your Blackstar products to craft that perfect sound in your head. If anyone out there is looking for a guitar teacher please head over to MGRmusic.com and check out the database of music teachers all around the UK waiting to take you guys to that next level. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.