 Hi, I'm Paul Stevens, Chief Engineer for Blackstone Amplification and today we're going to be looking at some of the exciting features on HT Venue Mark III. If not known previously, HT stands for high tension, which is just another way of saying high voltage. We use that just to basically differentiate these products from other products which aren't high voltage, hence they run valves. The design philosophy of HT Venue has always been to provide really versatile products and we've basically taken that philosophy and taken it to the next level with more modern features and more versatility throughout the range. In addition to this, we've also upgraded the cosmetics throughout the range as well with a smarter, more modern look. We used Mark II HT Venue as the benchmark and then decided we want to add in some of the developments that we've been working on with other products since Mark II was released. We've done numerous improvements to other products as far as tightening up the sound, fine-tuning certain parts of the EQ and adding in modern features as well. One of the major features on Mark III cannot be seen directly from the front, it's on the rear panel, but this is the addition of cab rig technology. This is something we've introduced into several other products over the last few years and it's the easiest way to get great recorded tones out of your valve amp and also for live use as well. In addition to cab rig technology, we've also improved the actual electronics that drives these outputs. This is the headphone output, which has now been increased in level, and also the XLR DI output, which has been given a proper professional type balanced output. As well as improving the outputs of cab rig, we've also improved the analog to digital conversion which takes the signal from the analog world into the DSP. This is also helped with lower noise and just general better signal integrity. These amplifiers also now feature a USB-C output, enabling you to record four channels simultaneously. All of the HT Venue Mark III range feature switchable power reduction to go from full power down to approximately 10% power. This is a circuit that actually controls the internal voltages within the power amplifier rather than adding an attenuation after the actual power amplifier. So this means that you're literally turning the amplifier from, for example, 100 watt amplifier into a 10 watt amplifier. And it enables the connection between the actual valves and the speaker via the output transformer to not be messed with because it's really important that our valve amp actually drives the speakers in a particular way to get a particular sound. Adding an attenuation between these actually flattens out the sound which is another popular way of doing it but it just doesn't really sound the same. So this is a much more natural way of doing it to get a really overdriven power amp sound at a lower volume. All these products feature a series effects loop with a switchable level to enable rack use or pedal use. The send is driven from a low impedance source which means it keeps your effects loop nice and quiet. Other improvements to the DSP sections is the way that reverb is used. We have different reverb on the clean channel compared to the overdrive channels and using the architect software that you can connect the amplifiers to you can adjust the tower lengths of the reverbs and assign them differently for overdrive and clean channels and then save them within the amplifier itself. I'm just going to talk about the clean channel specifically on these amplifiers and it's got some quite unique features. There's two voices on all of these clean channels. The first is a high headroom American sounding clean channel very bright but with a strong bottom end. The second voice is more of a mid-60s British sounding channel so it crunches up well and has a looser bottom end and when you switch from one voice to another it isn't just some subtle EQ that is going on the whole of the actual tone stack is being shifted from earlier on in the signal chain which it does on the more American sound which means that it actually attenuates your signal and also prevents much overdrive and then when you switch to the voice 2 then it shifts the whole of the tone stack further on in the signal path so it's after the valves which allows the valves to overdrive a bit more and it also shapes then the tone of the overdrive more which is a completely different way of processing the signal just within the actual clean channel itself. In addition to that there are changes going on in the power amp as well as through the negative feedback to more closely simulate the tones we're trying to achieve. The overdrive channels on these amplifiers is based on the generic black star topology where we use cascaded ECC83 gain stages to produce all of the overdrive. It also features the ISF control on all channels of overdrive to have more control over the shape of your mid-range. Each of the overdrive channels also has two voice options obviously the voice 1 is a slightly less overdrive sound and voice 2 is slightly more overdrive but also again there are changes going on in the power amp with the negative feedback on each of those sounds as well so one is a tighter overdrive and the other one is a bit more of a looser bottom end. As mentioned all the overdrive channels feature our patented ISF circuitry which stands for Infinite Shape Feature. This is a special control which works within the mid-range of the tone stack and it basically shifts the sound from a more American sounding tone stack to a more British sounding tone stack with a continuously variable control enabling you to get any sound from one extreme to another. It's really helpful for dialing in the particular sound that you want your mid-range to be which obviously is really important within a mix for both recording and for live use and gives the basically the player a bit much bigger tonal palette to work with. All of these channels and voices are all very well but obviously you need to control them live so all the models come with a two-way foot switch to enable you to switch between the basic channels and most of the voices. However, using the FS14 enables you to switch between all of the channels all of the voices, the reverb and also the extra boost which works on all channels and all voices. This gives you a preset 6 dB boost which is really useful for solos. Due to the inherent safety systems built into amplifiers whereby they can be run on standby without being connected to an external load then any of these amplifiers can be used in a silent stage situation or for silent recording just by using them in standby and taking outputs from the cabrig outputs either the XLR or the headphone output. Other subtle design changes which aren't always noticeable when you're actually playing but are quite nice features to keep everything nice and clean is we've improved the switching noise on all of these products so it's as minimal as possible. During development of other products between Mark II and Mark III we've found certain circuits needed more upgraded components for more consistency so we've applied all of these changes throughout Mark III as well certain capacitors for example have been upgraded and you'll find that the consistency of tone will be far higher on these amplifiers depending on where you're playing what temperature, humidity, all sorts of variables so they'll be much more consistent. General design philosophy at Blackstar is to overwrite our components where needed to enable the products to withstand excessive use and excessive temperatures for example being played all weekend at a festival in a hot country like Mexico with raised mains, unpredictable mains situations and still be able to work throughout. Another electronic feature that's often reserved only for high end valve amplifiers is the use of DC heaters. We've used DC heaters for all of the pre-out valves throughout this range to keep all the noise levels down especially on overdrive channels. Speaking of valves, within the pre-amp on this range they are exclusively ECC83s which other people will know as 12AX7 and this particular range will come standard with EL34s in the output stage however the output stage on all models has been designed to enable the use of 6L6s if that is the user preference with merely a small change in the bias setting. All the speakers throughout the range are 12 inch Celestians.