 Season's greetings everyone, welcome to tonight's webcast from Blackstar HQ Northampton. I'm Steve and tonight really we're going to look at some different models in different ranges that Blackstar do that might be really good ideas for treating yourself or maybe treating a loved one. So we've got some high-end stuff that we do right down towards the very, very small entry-level price point gear. And I'm going to run through some of the features of each one and hopefully give you some really good ideas and incentives to try the gear or maybe treat that loved one as we said. So the first thing I'm plugged into is really where our heritage lies with Blackstar. It's the larger valve equipment. So here we've got a 50-watt Blackstar Series 1 head. It's four individual voices or channels with our own EQ section and Blackstar's patent ISF to get our British or American styles. We've got a master section and then a power soak, DPR dynamic power reduction which allows us to alter the wattage without changing your tone which is very, very important. There's not many products out there that will let you do that. Often if you switch it to a lower wattage, you will lose certain characteristics in your sound and DPR doesn't do that. It allows the sound to travel exactly the same at lower volumes. Now the interesting thing that we've got here, because of room this evening, we've got the Blackstar Series 1 here going direct into the desk. So the sound that you're hearing in a moment is a direct signal. There's no cabinet plugged in so you don't need any load to use this head. Now the cool thing is if somebody is at home, maybe it's yourself and you've got a small mixer and you do recording, whether it be the simplified version of recording on your iPad via Cubase or GarageBand or something, or if you're using more professional gear, it's possible for you to actually use the Series 1 without having a cab pumping. And at home it's not always advisable to do that so if that's being controlled through a small mixer, you can get everything that you would expect out of this at low, low volumes which is really, really important. So I'm just going to run through some of the tones. It's a very, very basic amp, very easy to use and you can get your sound straight away. So in the clean section we have two choices, a warm clean and a bright clean. The bright clean, as we've discussed many times, gives you more of a break up. It's more of a boutique style sound. Warm clean being more of a full bodied, modern sound. So I'm just going to run through those two at the moment with some strumming chords for you. So we're starting off on bright clean. Really nice sweet tone. On to warm clean, what you'll notice now is that we get a lot more low end and a lot more full bodied sound. Now one thing that not many people realise is that Blackstar, the innovation that goes into our amplifiers is second to none. I truly believe personally that we make the best amps in the world and we give you the most versatility. You can go from two cleans there and you can also drive them really hard as well. So if I raise the gain stage on those channels there, we get a lot more bite. So let's go for a bright clean and now try and imagine an old boutique 60s, 70s style amplifier. So we get a lot more of grit to our tone. If I go to my neck as well, it still remains quite clean. The guitar I'm currently using is a Fender Telecaster, just to let you know that this is a stock pickup. But this one is a Seymour Duncan little 59, so it's a stacked humbucker. So naturally on this position I will get a little bit more bite. But even on the neck pickup, I'm still getting that grit there. On the bridge, onto warm clean. So again we can really drive both clean sounds and that's really, really useful. You can get a lot more tonal characteristics sometimes if it's gaining a little harder. You can roll your volume back to clean up still. So when this is really pushing, you can get some wonderful, wonderful sounds. So onto the crunch channel on here. What we have now is again a volume and we have a crunch and then a super crunch. Super crunch being more of a full bodied crunch if you like, more of an up-to-date scooped sound. So this is more of the classic style. So you can see we're kind of starting off where we left off before with the cleans pushing really hard, which is really, really nice. So this is more of your kind of classic, I'll play some licks, put you in mind of it. Now this series one is using EL34s, which are inherently a classic British valve for your parent stage. And it gets that really cool classic British rock sound. So this is perfect for that as well as those maybe slightly more modern full bodied cleans that might be the other side of the pond if you know what I'm saying. Onto super crunch, you should notice quite a big difference here. I'm going to turn the gain up all the way so you can see how much we can produce. So a really, really nice singing lead tone. But the important thing here is that we've got the ISF all the way over to that British side. If we bring it over to that American side, we get more of the mid-scoop, the mid-cut, more kind of like an American sound if you like. Really cool, really versatile tones, nice and easy to use. And importantly as well, the clean channel on this side, especially on warm clean, is perfect for multi effects pedals and that sort of thing. So if you're a guitarist that might be using that on the floor, this is perfect for that as well. So this is kind of the guitar amp that would set you back roughly around that £1,000 mark. Obviously we can only speak at the moment for the UK, but around the world I'm sure you'll be able to find online your local pricing in local stores. But this is really the, like I said, the heritage of Blackstar. It's where we really started and began with large valve equipment which is historic and the sound of rock and roll. So we'll leave that alone for the moment and then we'll revert to the Club 40. Now this is mic'd up traditionally. We've got a condenser in the front there to get a good tone. On here we have two channels again, but importantly we have a voicing switch in the middle, so we can obtain everything that we previously talked about here. Clean, warm, clean, bright, crunch, super crunch. So you can get all of those style tones. Again, a three tone EQ, three band EQ there with our ISF on the end, our patent. This one has built-in reverb though. It's a digital circuit and it has two choices. On the reverse of the amplifier there's a button that will give you a light reverb and also a dark reverb for different styles. But importantly the reason the very, very clever guys here at Blackstar chose digital reverb as circuitry because spring reverb which is the traditional old-school way of doing things was very clumpy, very noisy. If you touch the amp or bang the amp you would often hear it moving around which was always a worry if you were carrying valve amps around. And also it used to work very, very good with cleans, but on overdrives and crunches it often got a little bit messy. So with the digital reverb it's a lot easier to control. So we'll run through that now. Okay, so currently I'm in the clean channel and my switch is actually out which means it's bright clean. If you own one of these amps or one of the Blackstar venue range just to let you know a very, very simple way to remember the voicing switch options is if it's in it's more of a modern sound. So bright clean, warm clean, semi crunch, crunch, super crunch. That easy way to remember it. This Club 40 is actually a special addition. We've got the basket weave on the front there. Hopefully you'll be able to get a bit of a glimpse of that on the screen. These are limited run. There's only about 100 in the UK. We're looking enough to have one here tonight to try. And also there's a vintage 30 1x12 speaker in there. Normally it's a Celestion 7080 for the guys that are into their spec. So the vintage 30 is a more sought after speaker if you like. You get a lot more low end and a bit more punch. So this is a special addition. And this is going to be around about the 700 pound mark somewhere around there. So yeah, we've got a little bit of reverb on there already. But let's choose a warm clean at first. Generous reverb, getting a little bit John Mayer-esque on you there. But that's a really nice warm clean full bodied sound. Really cool. If we go for the bright clean, you should notice again that break up. To the bridge pickup. Some Rolling Stones action there, but that really nice old school boutique thing. You know, you can hear it there. Really nice. So over to the warm clean again. Over to the crunch channel or overdrive channel. So here again we have the voicing switch. So the gain's quite far back there. If you were in the old school area of things, if you like, definitely be good with like a Les Paul style guitar, that kind of sound. If we go into the voicing switch, if I go from actually just let a chord ring out, hopefully you should hear quite a substantial difference there with the gain stage. So with the voicing switch out for more of an old school crunch sound, we get more pushed mids when it's in. We get those mids scoops a little bit. And with the help of the ISF, we can start to achieve those high gain American modern sounds. So if I go from voicing switch out, low gain, and I'll do a real big difference where I'll push the gain slightly, put the voicing switch in, take the ISF over to the US side, and you'll see the big, big difference. So again, two cleans, two crunches, really versatile. Really, really useful. So again, four tones. The clean warm on here is again great for pedals. So if you're a guy that uses multi effects or pedals, brilliant amp for that. So this is a 30 watts of Valve EL34 British power on stage. And again, limited edition. Check it out at your local stores. Okay, so onto some of the smaller products to look at. This first one here is the ID core. So this is more of definitely a home digital amplifier. We've got the original ID series, which I'll come to really last. I'm going to jam some tracks through there. But ID core is definitely built to be the home amplifier. There's two stereo speakers. So we have an option here for programmability. We can store six of our favorite sounds. We've got six voices, of course, to choose from. 12 super wide stereo effects that you can have three simultaneous. And it's a USB recording device as well. So we can send a cable here to an external device to record with. The same with our original ID series, which is very important. For example, I at home use GarageBand on my iPad, just getting ideas down, just take a cable, USB cable into that and away I go. Very, very simple. So I've got some of my presets on here just to give you an idea. But the really unique thing about this is, and you will hear a little bit of it on your headphones or speakers, because we've got the two microphones here, but because the stereo speakers, the super wide stereo aspect of this is awesome. It would make a great present for anybody at this time of year. We do a 10 watt, a 20 watt, which is this one, and also a 40. And they're all relatively quite small. But the unique thing about this is because it's linear speakers, full range flat response, you can play your games through here via a cable from your mobile device maybe, or you can listen to music that sounds just like a very, very good quality hi-fi, or boom box. So let me show you some of my presets and hopefully you'll get a really good idea. This is my clean warm. Really nice. Crunch. Super Crunch. There's some really expansive delay. Overdrive 1, more of a high gain sound. So that's some of the sounds on the ID Core Stereo 20. This is going to set you back roughly just over 100 pounds, less than 200. Put it that way. So onto here, this is our HT1, which is a very unique product. It's a one watt valve amplifier. So before we do a demonstration on this, we're just going to move the microphones over. You'll probably notice we've got two mics on the Stereo 20 ID Core, but we're just going to single out one of the mics for the HT1. Now this product is a one watt valve amplifier for practicing at home, for recording. Again, you've got two channels, but if you manipulate the gain and the volume, you can start to recreate some of the stuff we've previously talked about. You've got EQ, which is the ISF, so you can get the British or American styles, and then we've got a built-in reverb as well. So without further ado, this is basically our clean tone. And importantly, you can have any sound out of here at any volume. So valves give you a certain feel. If you're a guitarist that uses valve amps, you'll know. So if you're looking to buy somebody who's a pro musician, a small present, a small amplifier, this will be the perfect present. This valve still has that tonal characteristics that most guitarists will absolutely adore, but it's very, very minimal cost. Again, you're looking around about the £200 price point here. This is a HT1. So with a clean channel, you can keep the gain fairly low there, and the volumes are around about halfway. Now if we start to push that gain, we can get it to really drive like the boutique thing that we've been talking about. So more of a clean warm sound, more of the bite. Now if I put the overdrive select button in, we're now definitely in the realms of gain, high gain. So if we back that gain off, more of a classic sound. Really nice. Pushing the gain stage, high gain. If you notice, I moved the ISF around to the American side there, and I'll keep moving that back and forth between the USA and the British side so you can hear the EQ chain. So that's the HT1. Plenty of noises going on as far as cleans, crunches, high gains. At low volume, it's a one watt valve amp. Perfect present. So onto our brand new product, which is the Fly. The Fly is a 3 watt mini amplifier. It's a linear speaker. So importantly, we can play again music through here. We can also use it to play our games through via a phone, all that kind of stuff which I'm going to show you which is a really unique part of this product. Now this is going to be in stores December. This is an exclusive product. It's just been launched. It's battery powered as well as mains. And also here you might notice there's a little area where we can connect something else. There's going to be another speaker which is going to be available very soon that you can buy as an extra add-on that will make it into 6 watts, which is very, very cool. But we use in here, we've got six AAs. And I've got to say I've had this Fly for my car stock when I've been travelling internationally and around the UK for around about a month now and the batteries are still working. I've also used it on a couple of Skype Cores which again is a unique part of this product because it's a linear speaker, very clean, very crisp, very clear. So we have again a volume with an overdrive switch, so in that respect it's very similar to the controls on the HT1. We've then got ISF so we can get our British or American styles but also importantly we have a tape echo delay in here which is very, very cool. We can get some ambience at low volume. So this is going to be perfect for the home, the office. You can use this for your multimedia needs as well so you can connect your computer to this and have it for your computer monitors. Of course, when the extra one is involved as well, that will be perfect. So let me run you through some tonal aspects. So if we keep it clean at first, we can then drive the clean a little harder to get again the boutique breaker. Really nice for that. We can then add some ambience with the delay. So what we can do here, we have a separate time control and then a delay level. So if we keep the time fairly short, we can start to get that almost plate reverb sound if you like which is good for also country styles, blues styles, punk style. If we add more gain there with that style of reverb stroke delay, really quite cool and that was on clean still. Of course, I just went to the bridge pickup there to get a bit more grind. If we back the gain off and switch the overdrive switch in there, now we're in the realms of crunch of course. So there the gain is around about 11 o'clock so it's fairly low. The most gain we can get if we push it all the way, really something special. Now let's add some delay so we can hide behind those solos. So make it a bit more spacious, a bit more on the level. I'll give it a bit of a click so you can see where we're at. So that's a really, really nice ambient addition to your tone. Of course you can use that on the clean as well. Now I'm going to show you something really quite cool here. We're just going to play a little section of a track and also I'm going to show you something else here. Which will hopefully inspire you to think, actually this is a really, really great product. This is going to be around about £50. Three watt battery powered small amplifier that sounds like an amp. That's really important. A lot of the competitors products that are out there, they don't quite have that sound that you're after. So let's try some music through here. So just maybe some sort of backing track. So you can see there I was just jamming along with the song through there with my guitar and the music. So imagine playing along to stuff like YouTube and all that stuff. It's a really, really nice device. Also I'm just going to show you how nice it sounds with playing a game through there. So if you've got young children, they might be learning the guitar, but also most of them will be playing their games on their computers and smart phone devices. So you can hear... EA Sports. It's in the game. Sounds very good. So you can see from just that little clip there we won't play the game obviously this evening, but you can see how nice it sounds and how clear and responsive it sounds. So a very, very, very cool product, the Fly. Hitting the stores this December. So onto our last product this evening. But before we head over there, we're just going to talk about some of the other options from Blackstar as well. So let's just plug into the ID 30. We'll move the mic over in a moment. So Blackstar have merchandise for sale. T-shirts you can probably see behind me. We've got some really, really nice hoodies. T-shirts, beanies. We don't sell Christmas hats, but you can get those pretty much anywhere. But we have things like armbands, which are really cool key rings. We have lanyards. We also have some really nice caps going in, some plectrums, some really cool mugs for your cup of tea and your coffee. And we've got some sweatbands if you play tennis. Or if you want to wipe that brow if you've got a sweaty gig. So there's plenty of stuff on there, some really, really nice products for presents and ideas. And simply it's just blackstaramps.com forward slash store. And you can hit there, and we can send that directly to you. So you can get some really nice extras for the seasonal period. So make sure you check that out. www.blackstaramps.com forward slash store. So folks, make sure you check out the merch store. And also, you know, if you're looking to treat yourself, again, we've discussed it many times, but get into your local dealers and check out the fly. It's very, very cool. And also the smaller products. If you're looking to practice maybe late at night, if you've got neighbors, if you live in a small apartment, make sure you check them out because they're very, very good. And they offer lots of options. So lastly, we're going to go through the ID 30 here. Now again, this is a product that you could use at home, but also you could use for gigs. We have a very unique feature on here called True Valve Power TVP. And it gives you six choices of power amp options, power valve options, so on here you can marry the voicing with the ISF and the tube to try and recreate some great classic amplifiers as well as build your own and profile your own. At the moment, I've got a really nice super crunch which suits the sound of my neck pickup on the guitar, which I've previously set this evening and I've got a little bit of delay, a little bit of reverb and I'm going to jam along with the track because on my computer, I've got a software program called Insider Software. Inside of software we've discussed many times, but if it's new to you, it's a piece of software that's free to download from our website, blackstaramps.com. You'll find a link from there. And it's free to download and you can use it on Mac or PC. Now, there's one thing on there that you can use and you don't necessarily need to use it with a blackstar amp. You can use the phrase trainer. Now, if you're not familiar with what a phrase trainer does, it essentially allows you to import an MP3 file of music and you can slow it down and it won't alter its pitch. So it's brilliant for learning those licks that might be a little bit difficult or you'd like to jam along a little slower if you're a student or it's useful if you're a teacher as well. But the rest of the software, things like patch library, online sharing community, tuner, all that kind of stuff is used via either the ID series or the ID core that we were looking at earlier tonight. So you can get a grip of what's going on with that. If you download it, check it out. I've done a webcast before on the insider software as well. So make sure you check that out on the Blackstar YouTube channel. So we're going to jam along to end things this evening in a seasonal sense with Stevie Wonder. I'm Stevie and I hope I've been wonderful this evening for you, all sorts of. We're going to end with Superstition. I'm going to jam along and get a little bit more of a bluesy kind of vibe and any questions that you might have forward them to inquiriesatblackstaramps.com or if you need any further advice to what to buy. Some extended advice on the digital products. My email is steve.marksatblackstaramps.com Have a great, great Christmas and New Year. Remember to follow all the social media feeds as well, of course. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, of course, and our website to keep up with artist information and so on. So thank you very much for watching and I'm going to sign off now and hopefully play along to some track. So we'll see you soon. Keep it loud. Keep using amplifiers. Keep writing rock and roll songs. See you soon.