 Good evening everybody, welcome to tonight's webinar here at Blackstar HQ I'm Steve Marks the product trainer for the UK and tonight. We've got a very special guest with us. Mr. Jamie Humphreys Good evening everybody. Everybody knows Jamie's face. I'm sure from working with Blackstar and many other things along the way. So tonight really we're looking at Blackstar's heritage products being Artisan and series one and Tonight, we're just going to really kind of try and put it back at the forefront of everyone's minds because it's We've got a lot of artists that use both products and it really is both a fantastic sounding amplifiers So I guess really the best place to start is Artisan which was the first product to really hit the marketplace for Blackstar along with our HT Valve pedals and I remember working in a store at the time And when I first heard an Artisan 30 which is the the amp I'm currently plugged into an Artisan 30 combo with a HT drive pedal I remember thinking at the time I couldn't stop smiling because of the sound and the tone and That became known widely, especially in the UK for that the Blackstar smile as our sales worldwide sales manager put it Keith But really when everybody heard Artisan they knew that Blackstar the company meant business Really, it's a it's a hand-wired boutique product. It really is the highest level of craftsmanship and with an emphasis on Simplicity but sonic purity. So it's a great clean sounding product But also you can get some great just on the edge sounds if you really crank it so it's kind of like Pete Tann's End and Angus Young mixed together in a blender if you like it sounds very very cool And obviously it's a match made in heaven for our for our valve pedals Series one came shortly after Artisan You've got a little bit more versatility as far as valves are concerned with the artisan. It's all EL 34 valves Series one the majority is EL 34 We've got a 6L 6 option as well, which will get Jamie to run tonight for us as well, but I mean Jamie's actually used both widely. Haven't you buddy? I mean you've you've used them on tour many times both yeah, I did a I did a few tours out in Sweden and The the tours that I've been doing never it was a Queen tribute tour wasn't anything associated with we will rock you or anything like that and Obviously on that tour there were there a kind of signature tones that you're That you're trying to recreate And obviously, you know playing the Brian may guitar is gonna is gonna really kind of help that The first time I went out and did the initial shows I used An artisan 30 combo and I used one of the the boost pedals in front of it So which was a nice combination of I've always been a fan of of as Keith always laughs I called it the blue boost, you know, I've always always really liked that pedal anyway and I Used I used it on that the first sort of performances that we did and it was it would work great it was a great sounding amp and Pedal combination, but then the next time we had a performing at Hyde Park and There was a lot of other artists on that day So it was a bit of a the gear on a sure on a you know roll-on roll-off sort of thing So again, I went for simplicity, but I ended up actually using an artisan 30 watt head and a 4x12 With the with the the dual pedal and that was that was that was a killer sounding set up again Really really natural as you saved it really sort of pure Just a chorus pedal and the and the dual pedal. Yeah, yeah, just any great stunning And I saw you on the on the anthems to we brome and carry Alice and in Birmingham that time and you were using series one then yeah, it was Obviously sort of being involved with black star and and having the relationship that I've had with black star since God This I think this is my sixth year. Yeah of now playing the equipment. I'm obviously quite spoiled in the fact that You know, you get the opportunity to play everything and you know if you want want to try something out and I was doing the the Frankfurt show and There was some additions to the the to the series one range and I'd always use this and I'd use the 200 watt on gigs But for the the style of playing that I play it was a little bit. It was a little bit too much for me and I'd used The 45 watt combo and really love the voicing of the 45 watt combo and I still you cut through man Yeah, yeah sounds killer. So when I saw the the 50 watt head I instantly fell in love and because of the the size of the tour because we were doing there was some bigger venues and Obviously the nature of it was you know kind of gear in gear out night after night I decided to go with a rack system for my effects Yeah, and one of the things that I wanted to be able to do was have a stereo setup and Have certain effects in an effects loop which obviously, you know with with the series one You've you've got some slightly more modern features. So my choruses and my delays were in the effects loop Yeah, and then Having the two of them I would basically send from my send effects That's always send from my master amp if you like sure into the into the the input of the The send effects and then come out of the output in stereo and go to the return of both heads Why so I was using the preamp and power amp of one head And I was just using the power stage of the other two heads two cabs and you had them on two 12s Yeah, I two 12s and I've got to say it looks smart on stage either wicked. Yeah Yeah, you know the other there's a few gigs the sort of the rack was there But otherwise it was kind of tucked out of the way and just had the two heads and the cabs And the other great thing was I was using a swiss chin system nothing custom built It was all you know off the shelf stuff, but it just meant that on the floor on my board. I had a volume pedal With a tuner From the tuner out of the volume pedal. Yeah, and I had my controller board and The great thing is is because these these heads are midi I Could do I could hit one switch on my on my board and it would route any pedals So my boosters and stuff were in the rack It would route that it would change patches on my midi gear And it would also select the different modes on the heads as well. So I mean coming back to what you just said I mean that the heads are very modern design, but it's also very traditional on the front panel You've got your clean channels. Usually there's two voicings clean bright and clean warm Clean bright for that kind of class a boutique and they're warm for more full-bodied Modern clean sound and then you usually you've usually got crunch super crunch and in some cases Overdrive one and overdrive two. So there's so much versatility there and I think that's why a lot of I mean generally black star Series one stuff gets put in that metal bracket, doesn't it? But you get people like the rascal flats using series one the Luke Bryan band in Nashville right over to You know demuborgh in Norway doing the darkest metal Yeah, and it really fits in with a lot of genres and that's the beauty and on the back Like you said, you've got your effects loop emulated. Yeah, yeah loads of cab options Yeah, but like I said all of those but the midi thing for me was just the selling point because with my previous amps I'd always had to I could use the switching system But it was always like I had to use loops out of my switching system to be able to Do the channel switch it was complicated. Yeah, it was one. It was a midi lead That was it and the the other thing that you know I want to point out to people watching I've always favored 50 watt heads and If you're looking for something that you know, you want to upgrade your rig You want to get an amp that's you know got a wide variety of sounds and move obviously would demonstrate some sounds in a Moment the other thing I love about this is the fact that it's got the Like we said the emulated out on the back of it Yeah, so if you're doing like a little gig and you want to just get a little bit of spill out the front or a big gig Any gig, you know, you can just you can just come out of the emulated out and go into the Into the PA but also if you're at home, you know And you get in that black star sound that you love when you're on stage and when you get home You know, whatever your your kind of living Situation is, you know late at night. It's not always ideal to have a 50 watt head cranked up in your house So you can actually run these amps on standby so Without a cab plugged in and you can go straight into your sound card or a mixer or whatever and you can get great Died guitar sounds as well. Yeah, and it's silent, you know You can be wearing a set of headphones Even if it's plugged into the cab if you switch it to standby and mute to the cab, which is great. Yeah I mean the dual patent as well, which if you don't know much about what that is it to get a patent on a product Easiest thing to do and series one have to ISF, of course Which I'm sure you're all familiar with our infinite shape feature so we can get more of a an American tighter Sound right through to a more kind of open British sound And you can really find that that sound that you're looking for as the sound in your head Is what black stars all about really and also DPR dynamic power reduction Which is it's a lot of people think it's a power soak, but it's not it changes the voltage To your power tubes so it's not affecting any Tonal characteristics of your sound isn't so you can get the the sound of 10% of what the amps Achievable so with the 50 head you'll get you know a 5 watt, you know It's interesting you mentioned the DPR and that people always go. Oh, it's got it has power reduction You know, it's it's just another For me. I see it as another kind of tonal feature If I go on to the warm clean This is one of my favorite settings is to go on to the warm clean and I've got the game cranked all the way up and I've got the ISF Sort of more into the to the British side of things Yeah, and then I've got the DPR drop right the way down to five watts I'm not using very high output pickups on this guitar these Very very low output. I'm not one of those guys that likes to drive the front end of the amp I want to be able to get the amp doing some business and then drop the volume down But if I I'm on a clean sound, I'll just turn the delay off It's almost like the amp is just starting to yeah to break up low volume. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally Which is a great tool for recording as well. Yeah, and moving on if I select the the the bright clean then you're more I If I go on to a single coil sound Like you were saying before Steve that a lot of people tend to put the series one into the sort of category of being very metal Yeah, it does everything. Yeah. Yeah, it does everything It's I mean a lot of black star product does do that You got to really check it out and for any of you guys that work in stores A very cool thing to do the series one when you're demoing and I found out recently this works very well for me in the UK Is to demo it first of all for a customer at low volumes because when you've got a really high gain setting and the master down And you're adjusting the dynamic paradox in the DPI you can really feel a lot of resonance kicking in. It's not just a volume Squelch if you like it's a really good thing to show a customer because at loud levels when they're not used to it It's very hard to distinguish what's going on but for a pro guy then they would but at low volumes Anybody can tell what's happening to the kind of dynamic push that you're giving me am taking it from five What's the 50 watts for example Going back to the artisan really I mean it is very very basic you can see I've got a little patch cable here blending Two channels together so you get that really so much tonal variety for two channels to be blended You can go from a very warm clean which I'm currently I'm in the artisan 30 currently Cranked on my volume maybe on a like a humbucker I can really dig in and get that EL84 compressed, bouncy tone it's just phenomenal And when you put a pedal through the front it's great for you guys out there that enjoy your distortions and overdrive pedals There's no send and return on artisan it is very classic it's simplicity it's old school isn't it There's a really cool feature on a lot of the products as well with artisan it's like a bass response So you can increase the and get more modern bass response from very vintage bass responses as well I mean I've currently got one of our HT distortions going through so this is the kind of sound that I first heard When I first heard a black star so you can get a real good idea of that so Really smooth singing distortion it's just a stunning setup to have and I mean some of the artists that use artisan You know people like the Manic Street preachers James Dean Bradfield, Richie Sambora uses an artisan The 1975 we're currently making a lot of noise on the scene It's a great sort after product for a lot of artists out there and definitely worth checking out Because artisan is really coming back into the market again So I mean let's hear Jamie crank some sounds through the 50 and then we'll maybe move to the 606 to give you an idea of what that's going to achieve Well at the moment I'll go on to the crunch setting so and also I should point out because I'm such a coward I have to have a bit of delay and you know just to make things nice and easy basically And the delay pedal that I'm using at the moment is an HT delay, it's a black star delay This is, it has a valve within it, an HT circuit And the cool thing about that is at the moment I've got there's a saturation control Which I've got pretty much off because I'm using a linear delay which is a digital delay so want it very pure as you can hear It's a nice kind of high-fi sort of sound but if I went on to use you know maybe a tape echo I could push the saturation up and you'd start to get the valve would start to overdrive And you get a bit more compression and a bit more degradation to the sound of the tails of the delay So we're not here today to discuss the pedals but I think it's worth a little mention and a little bit of love Because it really is a very very versatile pedal So moving on I'm using, I'll turn my safety net off because otherwise people will be going, turn the delay off We can get, obviously I got that crunch sound, I have my clean sound where it was just kind of on the edge What I'll do actually, I suppose I better just go back, I'm going to drop the gain down And so I've got a bit more headroom so out of my cleans You can hear your old school kind of boutique As soon as I engage the warm clean button on the front here Obviously all of this can be done with a foot switch that comes with the amplifier Or if you're using any form of midi board or if you've got any kind of floor mounted multi-effects unit that you like to use You can operate all of the modes, the channels and the modes with that board You don't have to have the foot switch as well If I go from that bright clean and now pushing the warm clean You can hear we've got a much more of a kind of a scooped tone stack So there's a bit more bottom end and top end accentuation So if I go, let's do that again It's really warmed up, if I go on to the neck Probably rich clean sound There's not many amps out there that will give you two cleans No, no, and I'm literally just switching the controls on the front I'm not adjusting any of the tone controls And you can do that on a gig, you can go from that sort of almost sort of old Beatles kind of Very thin sounding class A So having a nice kind of rich more modern clean tone On to the crunch, I backed off a bit of the gain here And I can get a crunch sound that kind of picks up from where we left off when we were pushing the clean Here we're getting that almost sort of pseudo angus young sort of sound out of it I can push the gain control up and get that more saturated It's starting to sound a little bit more hot-rodded And then if I go on to the super crunch Now we're getting a lot more saturation I actually did it live And just one other thing Obviously the kind of sounds that I like Sick It's because I'm getting old I'm turning into a beat Oh, I've fully fell off the amp I'm turning into a beat It's all going wrong now It was all sensible a moment ago If I turn the ISF control round More into the American side And push the gain And pull out a little bit of mids I'm not going to go too mad on that That seems to be a little bit to 90s now To have too much mid taken out But you can hear Even with the lower output pickup I'm pushing a little bit more top end into it You can hear that it's got more Totally more of an American tone Yeah, much more American tone So we've gone with this one head From getting sort of pseudo 60s beatles Kind of clean jangly Or your jangly indie sort of thing So modern, warm, clean To the kind of old school AC DC Sort of crunch Slightly more saturated To really quite sort of full on Sort of sound Should point out as well That this is EL34s in this amp as well Yeah, so I mean just a quick run on the products Artisan wise We've got a couple of combos A 15 watt and a 30 watt The 30 being switchable as well So you can lower the wattage on this one Down to like 10 watts Which is pretty cool A 30 head, 100 head And then we've got of course 2x12 cabs 4x12 cabs With the series 1 Only the one combo So we've got a series 145 And then we've got the 50 head The 100 head The 200 head as well Which we haven't got here this evening But that's killer And then of course The 100 watt 6L6 And we've got the Gus G signature as well Yeah, definitely more of a modern Modern thing going on with series 1 So you've plugged into the 6L6 now Yeah, I just thought while you were chatting I did So for an alteration The 6L6 valves are more Of a common valve That you'd see in an American amp So there's quite a lot more head room There for the cleans But definitely for the high gains It really works well to get that Metal American sound I can't As soon as I turn that on To It's done that Yeah Very pure Yeah, yeah And it's automatically got more Of a sort of a tighter bottom end Yeah To it That was the This amp's got This is quite full on Probably Steve You'll probably have to correct me on some of this Because I haven't played one of these in a while We've almost got like We've got our clean section here Our clean channel Which again Has another There's a little control in the middle here Which gives us our bright clean So again, with this head That very sort of class A Sort of a slightly thinner More boutique sound I believe that that was voiced Similar to an artist's Yeah, yeah And then if we push in The warm clean control now That more modern sound And then we've got A crunch channel here And I'll leave that button out We've got We've got two rows of EQ So basically this is Like that part of the amp And then we've got Another row of EQ here Because we've got the We've got OD1 and OD2 So it's incredibly versatile In terms of we can start to match You know, I can get a rhythm If I push this control Little button in the middle here We now get a super crunch So this is still the crunch channel We can kind of match that When we go down to OD1 I believe, isn't that correct? But it starts to push Someone's been naughty They've got the gain all the way up And the bass is up And we know what's been going on here So here's our OD1 Starting to get more saturated And then we've got OD2 which is just Really saturated Yeah, lots going on Again, DPR, dynamic power reduction Incidentally you were running that at 10 watts then 10 watts to the power tubes, amazing So much tone for that So yeah, not much you can't do with that really No, no That's the thing I sort of I own three of these That's how I like them And I sort of get very settled with this I can't So I was having this conversation With earlier on actually It was us See Not only do I start liking more Classic tones But I had just had a senior moment there With my brain So when we were talking earlier on A lot of my recording that I've been doing Recently I've moved away a little bit from the HT5 And I've been doing more stuff Using this amp at home But it's funny, you know, I love this amp And then all of a sudden I play that I think, oh, hang on a minute Yeah, it's just great tones, man Very, very cool Just before we leave you this evening We've got a new product coming out We may have seen some YouTube clips And it was released at NAMM In LA Two, three weeks ago And it's called the ID Core And really it's Entry level price points Little practice amps, there's three in the range But they're all stereo speakers Full range speakers And we've got six voices And 12 effects, studio quality effects You can store voices and connect it to you You know, your DAW record By USB It works with Insider software Which is currently available for the ID series Really, really cool product It's going to be hitting stores in about a month's time And it won best product at NAMM Which is no easy task really And that's very, very cool news for us So I'm just going to play a little bit through there And then we'll end on a jam And we'll let Jamie choose Whichever head he's going to go through And we'll go back to the 15th He's gone back to his favourite 15th So hopefully you can see a visual Of the front of the amp So the differences between this And our ID range Our initial ID range is there's no true Val power, no TVP So it really is entry level prices But everyone I've shown so far on the road Have been absolutely blown away So I'm just going to run through Some of my presets if that's okay So, yeah Let's get out of there for a moment So as I said the six voices But you can also store six And you can obviously include effects On that as well Starting off with a clean warm To certain presets that I've done on there Just to accent the super wide stereo Because it really is out of this world When you try it So that's our clean warm So clean bright Coming back to what we were talking about earlier With series one products Your boutique Thinner sound So more of a classic sound And I've got the gain pushed really hard So on a single coil sound To get that kind of sound out of a smaller Product is fairly unheard of So versatility is still there With our core range Nice reverb on there Crunch I've got a nice long delay And also a tremolo to accent some of the Modulation effects In kind of 80s rock-esque sound OD1 The delay on this one Great for the metal guys And then lastly a really big Multi-tap delay on OD2 Just to really give you the idea Of the super wide stereo Really really great products Really excited about it And it's going to be in your stores Very very soon at not much cost So grab one Get into your store And come in and try it out We'll end on a little bit of a jam I'll go back into my HT Distortion And Get myself back on the running And we'll let Jamie do his thing Thanks for being here dude Thanks for having me mate I've got to do my thing Make something up then