 Hi everybody, welcome to this evening's webcast from Blackstar Headquarters in Northampton, England. We're joined by a very special guest this evening, the boss, Mr Ian Robinson. Hello. Welcome, sir. Thanks for coming down, having a little bit of a chat with us. We've got one of our newest products here, the Artist 30, of which there are two in the artist range. There's a 15 watt on a 30 watt. Lovely amplifiers, but Ian's here this evening to tell us a little bit more about what's behind it, the design of it. So can you tell us a little bit about the concept of the artist, mate? Yeah, I think a good place to start is with the lineage of the product. I think it's fair to say that we borrowed a lot of ideas, sonic references from our artist and product, which was the first product that we ever designed. Funnily enough, back in the garden shed days, 2004, 2007 kind of time. And the idea behind that product originally was to kind of have a really boutique amp but with a high degree of flexibility and also finding all the sweet spots out of a lot of different old boutique amp designs, because you're probably aware a lot of these really revered old products. They tend to have a few sweet spots and then quite a lot of sounds that aren't very usable. So I think we did a good job really nail those products. Absolutely, yeah. And then we've kind of progressed. We came out with Series 1, we've done Venue, H1 and 5, we've done obviously had great success with the digital products. But an area that we haven't really expanded on is that sort of clean channel and crunch channel flexibility. That pedal platform almost. Well, exactly, yeah. I mean, and that's the other thing. Those products, the artisan products, are very called upon by a lot of our artists, a lot of players in general because they take pedals so well. So Ian, this has got 6L6's in the param stage. Yeah. Can you tell us about why you chose those files? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a really good point actually because the whole sound and feel of this amp is so governed by the param response. And that sets the overall flavour of the amp. Yeah. 6L6's we chose because we wanted an amp that did clean really well. And we liked the high headroom dynamic response of the 6L6. But we do do things slightly differently than you might expect. 6L6's obviously been associated with Fender for the longest time. What we do is you run the power valves without any feedback on which is very typical of a class A amp, which may be more like a boutique matchless or an old fox or something like that. So what you get is you get in this product, you get the combination I'd say of that really dynamic sort of funky clean, but you also get that nice break up that you get from a class A amp. Sure. And that's because we're running 6L6's but we're running them open loop without feedback which is really fundamental to the way the amp sounds. Right. And there's two channels on here. So it's not your typical clean and dirty that people would tend to expect from a two-channel amp? No. It isn't. Both channels can be used essentially for clean or mild crunch, maybe sort of mid gain crunch. So it gives you a huge amount of flexibility for clean and crunch which is another reason why it works incredibly well for pedals, you know. Let me tell you about the two channels. The first channel, you've just got basically a volume and a tone control. What that implies is there's no mid-dip, okay? So it's basically you've got a treble control and a level control. And it doesn't break up at all, does it? It will break up if you push it on humbuckers. Yeah, on humbuckers for sure. The great thing about that is that you get a really broad band response so you get a really nice, thick, warm mid. And all the shaping actually of the tone, effectively, is done in the power amp. So, again, coming back to that 606, run without feedback and you've got the broadest possible signal really unaffected from the clean channel, really natural sound on that first channel, works excellently with pedals. Then the second channel, this is where you've got, you have a full tone control. You have more than the regular tone control because obviously you've got ISF on there as well. So you've got the bass, middle, treble and ISF. So what that means is you can get a full range of British and American crunch and clean sounds. Again, a reason why it works so incredibly well with pedals is because depending on the tonality of your pedal, especially your overdrive pedals, it means you can really match the amp in terms of mid range to the pedal. So you're not just relying on a mid range level, you can move the mid range around in the very natural way that ISF does that. To tell you the truth, that's completely unique on Blackstar Amps. And that's part of the reason for wanting to do the artist series is because ISF for clean players is as effective if not more effective than it is for the overdrive players. All those guys out there who feel there's something maybe missing in their clean sound, they should check these amps out because you have a high degree of flexibility to really nail the exact sound that you want the sound in your head. And typically, with a lot of Blackstar stuff prior to the artist, ISF was more associated with the overdrive channels, wasn't it? And the clean was just, you know, it wasn't really usable on there. No, I was thinking about this the other day. Funnily enough, the series one original heads and the S145 combo, you had an ISF effective because on the S145, that's a shared EQ. So you could do that. But the great thing about this is you've really got, you know, you've got the ISF dedicated to the clean channel effectively, which works really, really well. And also that's a great feature on ID series that not many people realise that you can actually alter the ISF for your clean voicing as well. I mean, that takes it to a whole different level because you can have infinite amounts of tone control variations on our digital products. Absolutely. The flexibility of this is just for clean amp possibilities, the flexibility is stunning in it. And it's how natural this product sounds as well because we're talking a lot about pedals, but at the end of the day, I mean, just sounds great as an amp on its own. And there's a lot of players, especially with that kind of strong, classic rock style. I wouldn't put myself in that category because I struggle without a pedal, but for those guys are really strong picking technique. Let's pull straight into the into the into these amp sounds absolutely amazing. And then they're so responsive to the volume control. So you can get all that great bluesy lead stuff and back it off your rhythm. I mean, a lot of players and a lot of players, like even some of our sales guys out on the road who are like great blues players, they love this amp. It's so easy to demo in terms of, you know, being just a great crunch British crunch sound. So let's take a actually let's take a listen to some audio clips with Les Pauls with strats and see how it sounds. So Ian, can you tell us I'm intrigued actually how you come up with the ideas for all the different products? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, there's there's many, many amplifiers out there that you plug a lead into and you get a sound out for a guitar. So what inspires you and how do you come up with all these new ideas? I think it's something that sets black star pie is the way that we do that. We're extremely fortunate that we have a team of 40 people now, more than 30 of them are guitarists, you know, and there's a constant dialogue and ideas within the business about about what we should be doing in terms of new products. I suppose we're quite fortunate as well in that the four directors and founders of the business are all musicians, guitarists, and we're really passionate about that, especially passionate about getting a really good sound, you know, and then between us we're also passionate about the way it looks and all that stuff. But I think we have that internal dialogue, but we also talk to our customers out in the field a lot. So we're constantly talking to guitarists, whether that's visiting stores, whether that's talking to our customers and distributors, or whether, you know, we have artists in here on an almost daily basis. So we're constantly talking to people about what they want. And that's around the world as well, isn't it? It's not just UK. Absolutely. I mean, you do loads of travelling yourself, you know, and we're constantly, you're feeding that back into the team about the products we need. Jay Hayes, our US and Asian product specialist, he's constantly feeding into us about what's happening in the market, what trends we're seeing, what people need. You know, and also it's half that and half it's, you know, innovation. It isn't just reacting to what people want, it's maybe trying to set some trends as well, which is something we're always trying to do. You know, some of the new products we've got coming down the pipe and we've got some really cool features that again people haven't done before and that's something that we always really want to do. Absolutely. You know, and I think it's, I think it's, we should be really proud of the fact that every day a black star, the three or four of the founding directors sit with the R&D team and talk about products. You know, we still find the time to do that, you know. We're all, we're still working with the guys on the voicing, we're still working with them on how the products look, you know, we're still very hands on in that way. They're still very passionate about it. Very, really important, you know. Yeah. I mean, I know you're heavily involved in the engineering side, but did the artist offer or pose any challenges for you when you were building it? You know, I think it's interesting you say that because with it being, we had a really strong starting point, I'd say, in terms of artisan and we had a good idea of what direction we wanted to go in. But I think that type of topology, whilst it's very simple, does have some of its challenges of its own. So I think getting the power amp right was really important. You know, like I said, the whole footprint, the whole signature of this amp is all about the power amp. And it took us quite a while to get that topology just right. We had to go through a number of transformer iterations, which we didn't anticipate just to absolutely nail the tone of the output transformer reaction with the speaker and with the output valves. And a lot of that was to do with the fact that you were driving those power amp valves really hard to get the crunch out of the back end rather than that of the preamp. So that gave us some interesting challenges, which the guys, you know, we had our best guys on this and they absolutely nailed it. Another area that we didn't anticipate there to be, you know, too much to really look at, which the cab, we spent a lot of time tuning the cab, trying different materials, we mentioned we've got birch ply. Also, things just as simple as speaker spacing on the baffle. Obviously 30 watts got two speakers. And how close they are on the baffle really has a big effect, especially when you're tuning something that's so natural. It's, you know, it's quite a natural sounding amp. It's all voiced by output transformer, output valves, the cab. And all those things become more dominant maybe than in something like a high gain amp or a digital product where you can maybe work with the electronics a little bit more. The electronics in here are pretty simple. So everything else has to be just so. And that's kind of, a lot of tweaking was involved. It took, you know, 18 months or two years to really get the product that we wanted. And that just reiterates that every black star product is designed from the ground up. It's not just a template for where the speakers go or the baffle or the cabinet design. Everything is designed individually, isn't it? Yeah, and these things are absolutely played to death during development, you know. It's interesting actually. I was talking to somebody just the other day who owns a guitar company. And he was saying, in his business, if you hear somebody playing guitar for more than two minutes, he says, you're not working, you're playing guitar. And it's like, I have to say, having come from, I used to design guitar amplifiers. So I kind of know, sometimes you've got to just play these for a long time to really unearth the nuances of where you can improve. Absolutely, yeah. So the guy behind the camera over there, Alex, who does a lot of our voicing, sometimes I hear him playing for more than two minutes from time to time. But at the end of the day, I know it's all really essential stuff because I don't know if it helps them. It's a really bloody, silly thing to say. A pretentious thing to say, you could say. But I feel it does almost start to bring them to life, these products, that you have to play them. You have to tweet them. You have to live with them. You have to go back to them. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. You can make a decision one day. You know this. You make a decision one day. That's all right. You come back the next day, you think shit actually needs a little bit of this. And because we all understand that, we allow that to happen at Blackstar. And that's that iterative part of the design process. And I'm glad to say that everybody's given the time to make sure that they're right. Because we never, ever release a product that isn't absolutely right. And if it takes longer, then we're happy that it takes longer. It's important that the customer picks it up, plugs in, and he's absolutely thrilled to try the product. Well, mate, it gives you confidence as well when you're going out talking to people about the product. I mean, I just returned from a very successful time at the Great British Guitar Show in Birmingham last weekend. And we had an artist 15 and an artist 30. And there was a lot of faces being pulled. We had some pedals going through the front, some LTs. I put the boost through there. Were they good faces? They were good faces. It was kind of a face. It was a very noisy event. And if you weren't there, why weren't you there? Look for it next year. But it was great to see people actually trying these for the first time in some cases. Already, there's a lot of artists using the i-Series out there as well, isn't there? We've had some TV coverage. Absolutely, mate. We've got Warren Haynes, Albert Hammond Jr., Tom from The Enemy is out on the road currently. And also The Cause as well, the backup band. How cool is that for four artists there? You've got your alt indie guys. You've got your Brit guys. You've got a really respected American blues guitar legend. And then a pop band. Very talented musicians in their own right. That goes to show the flexibility of the product. I think it's just the beginning really. For this product, in terms of artists, I know our guys, they're showing this product to a lot of players at the moment. And we're just getting nothing but really good feedback. So it's really made for that kind of arena. We've touched on the subject of the vintage look of the artist and the modern features under the hood. A question that I get asked a lot about when I'm out on the road doing training and seminars is the reverb being digital. Can you give us a bit of background on why we didn't go for spring reverbs and we went for digital circuitry on them? Well, it's certainly not because of cost. It's because of sound. If I'm honest with you, I think, obviously I've been doing this for a little while. And when I started back in the 90s, digital reverbs weren't of great quality down the sort of price point where you could include them into a combo. But as time's moved on, as we know, technology has really moved on. And we actually very much like the sound of the digital reverb that we use. To be fair as well, it isn't quite an off-the-shelf reverb. So there's quite a lot of voicing around the reverb in the product. So it isn't just an off-the-shelf when you plug it in. There's a lot of on the input and on the output and how you drive the digital reverb also has an effect and how you mix it into the signal. So there's some skill to get it right. But for me, it's always been about... The thing I didn't like the early day digital reverbs was that kind of graininess where you can almost hear the notes and want. However, this isn't like that. It's a very, very smooth tail and as you say, it's very, very natural. So if I was honest with you, I think I'd struggle, I think we'd struggle to get as good, deep and rich reverb with the spring. I know people still like them and I would never rule out that. We wouldn't use spring reverb in certain instances. I still enjoy using them in some of the amps I've got. But practically speaking, I don't think there's anything really they do that the digital products don't do if they're applied properly. Absolutely. We've already talked about the cabinet a little bit, but these babies host Celestium V-Type speakers. Can you tell us a little bit about why you went down that route for those? Yeah. Well, we tried loads of different speakers in here. We tried probably a dozen different drivers. One of the things we wanted from these products was that they'd be practical in terms of their portability. And something about the V-Type, they're a slightly smaller magnet structure than say something like a vintage 30. And vintage 30 is obviously a reference for all of us in this business. And it's something that we've used a lot. For me, the V-Type stands up on its own. It's a slightly smaller magnet structure, but I think that has some advantages because it has kind of a softness and a compression that perhaps you don't get with some of the bigger Celestions and some of the other products that we tried. So it was done very much on tone and the fact that we wanted something where when you dig in and you overdrive, you start to have some real give and compression. And that's really important, again, where the sound and the feel is so dependent on the power valve, the output transform and the speaker. Getting that right was really important. And I really like those speakers and I'm sure we'll be including them in vintage designs. Also as well, it is considerably light considering some alternative combos that are out there, 212-112. You literally can't lift them. We won't mention names, but this is... There is a surprise look on a lot of end-users' faces when they pick this up. What's that face like? It's quite similar to the happy face you had earlier. I'll tell you the other cool thing as well with these is we've got two products and they're in the same family and they share a lot of the same features and signature sound. But I think you'll agree because you're playing them a lot. They also kind of have their own personality. So the 15 has kind of... It's got a really lovely kind of... How can I put it? Focused mid-range. It's still open, but it's very focused and natural-sounding. And it just crunches up really nice, but it's just so well-suited to that smaller gig where you want things under control. It's kind of got much, for me, a much wider sound, a much broader bass because of the two speakers. Whether it works so well in a very small gig, I don't think, because this maybe needs to be on a bigger stage and wound up a little bit more. I personally love the 30, but our UK sales manager raves about the 15, so that just proves it. Every guitar player has a different taste. And I'd say you should probably try both. Even if you're in the market for the 15, try the 30, if you're in the market for the 30, which is very much a personal taste. And that's to do with, for me, it's probably mostly to do with the box size and the speaker configuration as much as anything, but it really does have an effect. Actually, the voicing's a bit different as well. It might not be a question you'd be able to answer, mate, but are there any plans, do you think, eventually, to expand on the range? Well, funnily enough, we are getting quite a lot of requests at the moment, actually. And we're constantly updating, re-adjusting, reconsidering our plans, but I think there's every chance that there may be some more products coming down the track. Exciting stuff. Maybe some more powerful ones and maybe some less powerful ones. Interesting. Cool. Also, mate, something that might be of interest to people out there watching is, what's your personal favourite amplifier from the Blackstar range? What's the one that you'd go to if you had the big gig come through? Oh, my God. Artist 30. It could be. I'll tell you what, probably my favourite sound is an Artisan 15 head on a 4x12 with a pedal. Would probably suit me, because it kind of indie rock with lots of notes in the chords, you get loads of clarity but you back it off and it's very clean and then you kick a pedal and it's so natural it's got a really nice mid. Ironically, it probably our simplest amp. But again, that is reflected, that kind of tone is very reflected in these sounds. So, mate, thank you very much for your time. I know you're a very, very busy man. Oh, don't silly. I'm sure it's of a lot of interest to the folks watching. Just say thanks to everybody who tunes into these events as well, because the guys worked really hard to put them on and we're really pleased that we get loads of great feedback and it's really essential that we're able to talk to people out in the field and really look forward to always getting your feedback and comments, because we take them very seriously. Absolutely, yeah. That leaves me with just to say thank you very much for watching as well. Please remember to follow all of our social media feeds, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and of course you can get us on enquiriesatblackstaramps.com. We've got some lovely merch on the website. Check it out and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. Thank you.