 Hello and welcome to tonight's webcast from Blackstar HQ in Northampton, England. I'm Steve and we're here in our beautiful Tone Lounge. I've just returned from a very enjoyable tour of Australia and New Zealand for all things Blackstar, but it's good to be back for July's webcast. This month we decided to do something a little different by asking you, the guitarist, what you'd like to see and hear about and our HT venue range came out on top. These versatile amps have a wide variety of tones and they're the ultimate working musicians amplifier, if you like. There are key sonic elements from our series one and artisan ranges from boutique cleans right to super high gains. Complimenting the feature set is a dual level effects loop, a speaker emulated output and a digital reverb circuit. They're all under the hood. Now, for the head designers here at Blackstar it's imperative to have a thorough understanding of what makes traditional guitar amps sound the way they do, especially if they were to improve on the performance of those classic designs from years past. And also to offer players something new and exciting. Making Blackstar HT amplifiers the ultimate tools for a guitarist's self-expression is as important to us as the technical excellence on our products. These amps were sonically developed and voiced during literally hundreds of hours of critical listening tests. You have no reason to know this but there are almost 30 guitar players of various styles that work here at Blackstar and this is very important we feel to the success of our products. Each model in the HT range has its own sound and feel and each amp was designed from the grand up. It's not just a template in a different box with a different wattage. The overdrive on a Studio 20 combo for example will act a little different than that of a stage 100 head. The main aim of HT venue amps was to have the perfect balance of a product that's not going to cost you an arm and a leg meeting the requirements of the modern guitarist out there and having the flexibility without confusing the end user. HT stands for high tension and this is another way of saying high voltage basically. The HT range uses some up amp circuits where there is a tonal or reliability advantage for example some pre distortion gain and some pre amp filter circuits. There are pre amp valves in here of course as well which are usually ECC 82s or 83s and the output valves are normally EL34s giving us a classic British tone. The more recent HT metal range which has a bit more sting in the tail uses 6L6s. Our circuitry innovations add benefits to a traditional amplifier design. So let's have a listen and I'll run you through some really really cool tones. So that current sound that I was using there is one of the voices on the clean channel. So let me break this down for you. On the clean channel it comprises of a volume and a tone and a voicing switch. That voicing switch is really really important and it lets you switch between a warm clean which is more of a full bodied sounding clean, lots of headroom, great platform for pedals and then also bright clean which is more of a boutique clean which has got an earlier break up. Sounds a bit more gnarly and having the choice of two cleans on there is really really a great thing. Onto the overdrive channel we have a volume and a gain and again we've got a voicing switch. Now the voicing switch will let you go between a classic crunch if you like to a super high gain with a slight mid scoop to it. Now here we have our tone stack so the clean has its own single tone control so you find your sweet spot on there. But now on the overdrive on the HT venue range we have bass, mids and trebles and then we have Blackstar's patent ISF which allows us to shape our tone stack from more of a tighter mid scooped American sound to a more open pushed mid British style sound and the infinite shape feature is a really really cool part of Blackstar. We then have a master volume and a reverb control. So in effect we've got two cleans, two styles of overdrive or crunch and on the reverb we've got two choices of reverb on the reverse of the amp between dark and light. Dark being slightly dimmer sounding of course and then bright being a more modern shimmering reverb if you like. But the fact that you've got all that control within these products is a big deal. It's a lot of bang for your buck and this feature set will be on things like our club 40, stage 60, all through the ranges, HT5, the small mini 5 or amplifier and so on. So from going from that bright clean sound I'll play another little bit on that for you and then I'll go to a clean warm just so you can hear that dramatic difference. Of course I'm using my reflex music man but if you see me switching here it's between single coil and humbucker so it's a series and parallel switch so I'm going to give you a variety of tones if you like. So let's see what we can come up with with a single coil sound, bright clean with a little bit of reverb. Quite a nice sound then that was just using single coils on this guitar I was just backing off the volume a little bit back and forth just to show you that difference in clarity and feel between more of a gnarly sound and more of a cleaner sound and clean bright. I'm running the volume at full there so you can really hear that classic boutique sound. So to go from that to a clean warm as soon as I add the voicing switch in maybe just back off the volume a touch we should get a rather nice more full bodied clean sound. Lots more headroom, lots more warmth, a great platform for pedals. If you push it of course still on the actual volume of the channel you're still going to get that more of a kind of aggressive clean tone which can work for many styles. If I go to a humbucker we'll get even more growl. So you can see there I'm getting a really wide tonal palette just from one channel, one volume, one tone and one voicing switch, really really unique. Across to our overdrive channel so at the moment I've got the voicing switch out with the gain fairly low. My EQ is fairly standard and I've got my ISF over to more of the British tonal characteristic. So now we're looking at more of a 70s kind of classic rock sound if you like. Great for blues, great for rock. If we go to the humbucker which we're on it should give you a good idea of where I'm going with this. Really nice classic rock sound great for blues as well you know. If we take it to the next level by pushing the voicing switch in giving it a little bit more sting in the gain stage you should definitely notice more of a mid scoop and a little bit more fees, a little bit more saturation. So we'll try that now. So this is the previous sound voicing switch out. Quite a dramatic change there but if you take into consideration the ISF and now we can turn it more to that US mid scoop tighter sound it really works well with the higher gain stage. So here we're ticking the boxes of the likes of a classic British 70s 80s sound and then a more modern high gain American style sound. So I'll do both in order. So you can see there we've got a lot going on for a two channel amplifier. I've created some real classic tones from that. In order to show you the difference with the reverb what I like to do when I'm visiting stores and training is give the reverb level a bit of a push and just simply just snap a muted guitar and you can really hear that change. The dark like I said is more of a vintage style reverb. The light is more of a shimmering reverb. Now the reverb circuit as I previously mentioned at the beginning of this webcast is a digital circuit so it's a little bit more controllable. I don't know about you folks out there but certainly for me over the years of trying many many amplifiers and using many amps if you have a spring reverb you can tend to get it sounding really really good for your cleans but when you come to use your overdrive it's usually not matching where you want to be so you tend to back it off and you can't really work with both that easily. The digital circuit in here allows us to have more control and certainly it works well for both clean and overdrives. So I'm just going to snap at the guitar like I said and we'll switch between the two. So that's our dark and our light. So again a really really nice feature. Something you may miss if you're trying it in a store you know. So that's our Club 50 head. Some other interesting features before I leave this actually is the emulated out on the back is a really really great thing to be able to utilise. It allows us to take the head direct into a mixer, a sound card, a PA system anything like that and what we can do when we do that is if we put the amplifier into standby the actual speaker that you're using if it's a combo or a head on a cab will be muted but the emulated line out won't be. So that allows you to concentrate solely on getting a really really good sound from the emulated line out. At the same time if you maybe live in a small apartment or you've got next door neighbours that don't like loud guitars you could use it late at night. You could use a 50 watt valve head direct into your sound card or DAW without running a load of cabinet. So you can get all your high gain sands, your valve sands without having the neighbours knock on the door which is something I do quite a lot and also I utilise both at the same time occasionally. I've used a HT5, our small HT5 combo for a small show actually a couple of years ago and it was just a last minute guitar dip and I did both. I took a cable from the emulated out and mic'd up the combo as well and took two signals and panned them a little left a little right and it really gave me such a huge spread of sound. It was amazing and we were playing a corporate gig to 200 people or so. So to use a 5 watt amp for that is really really great. Another cool feature is that if by any chance the amplifier is on, run in and the lead gets pulled out, the amplifiers on the venue range automatically go into standby mode, safe mode. So there's no sudden sounds or nasty noises or anything like that, no damage to the amplifier. So you don't get any push-pull sound. If I put it back in, again nice and silent but I've still got my guitar ready to go. Really really cool feature. So the aim of the HT venue range is to make your guitarist out of their feeling inspired again. Lots of tone at your fingertips if you like. So I encourage you to go into your local Blackstar dealer and try them out. There's combos, everything from really really small to really really big stage gear. Something to suit every budget. Just at the end here we've got the HT metal range which is more of a recent addition to the Blackstar family. We've got some additions in the HT1 and HT5 area which are voiced a little differently than the original. So they've got a bit more sting in the tail suitable for the metal player or the high gain guy. But the larger stuff we have a 60 watt 2x12 and 100 watt head and it's just on a 4x12 here currently. The differences with the HT metal range on the largest products is that we use 6L6 for our power stage instead of EL34. 6L6 is a more inherently an American type valve if you like. There's more headroom there, really really good for cleans and there's nothing constricting your sound so much. EL34s have a certain British rock sound to them if you like. So the cleans on here are stunning and also the high gains are great. But it's not just a metal amp, it can be used for blues, rock, anything like that if you back the gains off. And again, encourage you to try them, really really good. Let's run you through some tones on there. Really beautiful warm clean there so that's the voicing switch in on the clean channel. On this particular 100 watt metal head we've got a bass and a treble control as well as opposed to a single tone. But I'm really getting some great great feel from that sound. So let's have a look at clean bright. Quite a dramatic change again. You know two cleans really useful. Let's look at the OD1. Now if I back off that gain and maybe switch to a single coil, we're definitely not in the metal territory. Let me show you that. So you can see where I'm going with this little demonstration here. The product's called a metal. It's a metal 100-head HT. But it's not always the case, you know. There's more than meets the eye to, so to speak. If we go over to a humbucker now onto OD2, which has got a little more saturation, a little more fizz, more bite, then we'll play something a little heavy to suit that sound. Get a bit carried away with some rock there. Really cool. Again, very versatile. We've got our tone stack the same as the rest of the HT venue range. ISF just for the overdrives. And built-in reverb again with a reverb switch. Really, really cool product. Let's convert our attention to more of a smaller product, the HT1. Okay, so now I'm plugged into the HT1. And this little baby packs a punch, I can tell you. The focus of this product was to give you the guitarist a valve amplifier for use at home, really, for recording. Because the traditional sound of a valve amp is ultimately very different than a digital sound or a solid-state sound. So, as guitarists, we tend to prefer having that valve feel. And being a one-watt, you can get, again, many different tonal varieties out of this, but you get that sound, you get that feel under your fingers, that push and pull. Typically, most small amplifiers and low wattage valve amps use a single ended tube. But through innovation and what the guys here did at Blackstar, we came up with the dual triode tube, which is pushing and pulling and giving you more saturation, more of a sound of a high-gain stack at lower wattage. So, there's really clever innovations going on inside this. So, I'm just going to run you through four really good points of reference for tone and sound. One thing I'd always encourage with Blackstar products is, right from the get-go when the guys began the company, the dream was to give, like we always say, you the guitarist as many sounds as we could in one box. And there's some points of reference that I'm going to refer to here. So, we've got a nice kind of clean sound to start off with. But my ISF is going to be more on the American side. And we've got the gain and volume here as well with a little touch of reverb. But we're looking at the American kind of nice, warmer clean sound. If we push the gain stage and maybe take the ISF over to more of the British side of things, we can start to get that boutique 60s British kind of sound. And that's just the clean side of things. So, you can see we can go from real nice cleans to slightly more pushing boutique cleans. If we back the gain off now, stick on that British side on the ISF and we can turn the overdrive button on. We're kind of starting off where we left off with that more boutique clean, so we've got a bit more distortion now, saturation. Over to single coil. If we push that gain stage, we're kind of somewhere in the realms of a slightly more modern British high gain sound, if you like. Then we can take the ISF over to the US side and get that modern American high gain sound. So, a very versatile product. Get that valve sound at home. Perfect. For recording, you can even plug this one watt HT1 into a 4x12 and it sounds killer. So, the venue range is your working musicians amplifier. We've got everything from small to large to suit any budget. And there's lots of inspiration there. You know, lots of colors to paint your own picture if you like. So, make sure you get into stores and check out our HT venue range. Thank you very much for watching this evening. As always, you can contact us at inquiriesatblackstaramps.com. I've been Steve Marks and I'll see you out on the road, hopefully. And follow us on all our social media avenues, Instagram, Facebook. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and keep rocking and rolling. Thank you very much for watching. See you soon.