 For those of you that don't know who I am, I'm a vet of about 35 plus years, I've worked with the likes of Erklund and Fire, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, started out with Ray Charles, I've also worked with Christina Aguilera, Maxwell, and many many jazz artists. Hey, I'm Morris Pleasure, my friends call me Moe, known as Moe Pleasure, and we're here today with Blackstar checking out this incredible amp series, the Elite Series U700 and the U115. And I'm so excited to do a little of playing and talk to you about it. I also love the Blackstar system because I can actually take my head in a carry bag and put it over my shoulder and I can pick up the 115 easily with one hand. It's definitely the lightest setup that I've ever had and the confidence of going in there with something that's easy to carry, easy to transport. I have to take Ubers a lot and other kinds of transportation that's not necessarily reliable. And there are smaller cabinets as well so if I want to do a smaller gig I can take a smaller cabinet. But the fact that you can carry it in one pass, I can literally have the base on my back, the head in one hand and the cabinet in another hand and walk in and do any gig that I need to do. That's beautiful. I can take this and I can play a club, a jazz club and I can also take it on the stage and play a stadium if I want to. I would love if I was doing a stadium gig, I would use two of these, two of the 115's. But certainly one is going to give you enough power with the head. There's so much power in that head that I'm like I will never ever turn it up to ten as we say. But just knowing that you've got it there and that you've got clean sound all the way up is awesome. Also the response switch is awesome, I love that because it's kind of like very reminiscent of the amps that I've played growing up throughout the 70s and 80s including like the Basement 10 and the SVT, the Ampeg which I just love as well as like a B15 type situation which is my favorite. And that works for studio and live. It's nice to know you can get that sound but also have the power you know in a live situation. So I've played bass guitar, upright bass as well and I play keyboards and of course synth bass and all those good things. I play some trumpet as well. But my influences coming up were mostly bass oriented. Verdean White from Earth, Wind and Fire is my biggest influence on the bass as well as Larry Graham, Jaco Pastorius and all of those great bass players from the 70s. I love bass gear and there's a lot of different sounds that I do like I have a few different choices for bass. I had to cover a lot of different territories so the great thing about the Blackstar amp is it does all that. If I pull out my fret list it gets that growl that I need. If I'm pulling out my my five string and my fourth string and I want to do some slapping and popping with it. It pops, it's punchy, it has an impact on it. I use the chorus on you know fret list and beautiful kind of lyrical sounds as well as funky popping. This chorus adds a lot to it and of course I use the octaver for many things as well and that's just bass lines, insongs, but also for soloing. A lot of times I'll sing and play my bass at the same time and use the octaver and that in itself creates like a pretty cool sound. Absolutely. First of all I love the way it's set up because it has multiple outputs in addition to my speaker hats I got a direct out which is awesome in the studio and the sound is so good but it also has has a direct out that can go USB as well so if I'm in a situation where let's say I even just have the head and I want my sound I can just go directly from that with a USB cord into my DAW and whatever situation I'm in and get the sound that I want. Well I like a really big sound James so I'm always looking to get that you know on whether that's on tape or on audio recording or whether that's live I wanted to feel it. I wanted to kick drum and the bass to be feel like they're one thing so I really need something that's got some girth to it. I absolutely love everything about this setup I have to tell you I haven't even talked about the overdrive features which is you know if you want to get out there and do a solo or if you want to just even add just a touch of grit to you know whatever you're doing whether it be a rock tune or maybe something funky I absolutely love that and everything is completely responsive so if I'm if I put my finger on the low knob and I just touch it that much I'm gonna tell it to be able to tell a difference. Everything about it I absolutely love I would I do a lot of synth bass playing so a lot of times I'm coming out of the same amp to do my synth my mode bass playing as my bass playing and it'll be I would love it if it had two inputs other than that that's the only thing I can think of I think it's definitely got power we've got the compressor on it we've got the effects there's actually an effects loop in the back as well so if you're using pedals or anything like that or a pedal board there's a loop that you can just plug right into it's got everything that I need for my outputs for studio playing and and that's it I absolutely love the design of it.