 So, I get approached by people, companies, making new acoustic amps, or sometimes just wanting me to endorse their old acoustic amps, pretty often. And it's really good as musicians to have endorsements and stuff. I've tried to work with things over the years, but I found it really, really tough. But when Blackstar approached me, they didn't have a product yet. So I said to them, I kind of went out on a limb and said, look, can I help you make it, because they're all crap. I was, can I help you a little bit? And so I went down to the Blackstar workshop a few times, as it turned out, over a period of time, to give my ideas and also point out things that problems, practical problems that all the other amps that I tried had. And then for testing, which was really fun. And particularly because of the way that I play, which is to kind of get all the different acoustic sounds out of an acoustic instrument and thing as well. It was, hopefully, I was quite a useful guinea pig for all the other musicians who eventually end up using this amp, because if I can get the sound that I need out this amp, then I don't want to say anybody, but a lot of people will be able to get their sound too out of it. So I'm working with Blackstar and helping them develop this amp, which I'm, you know, it was very, it was a lot of fun. I was really proud to do it. Learned some stuff about how they build these amps, which is different as far as I'm aware to how most people are doing it. And it works particularly well with this acoustic amp. So there's a port to let all the goodness out, the little hole there, for all that sub and bottom end to come through. And it's so important. It's all about the circumference and the depth of the tube in there. And you can tune it to get the particular low frequencies that you want to get. And that blows my mind. I thought that it was all going to be, you know, magic, digital stuff. But actually it's physical, acoustic design, acoustic engineering. And yeah, it's really, really clever because the sound that you get is nothing like you have heard before. So the difference is that this amp can handle more dynamic sound going into it and reproduce that. And what you get coming out is a really musical, quite kind of high-fi sound. And quite a big sound. I remember the first time I heard it walking into the Blackstar workshop before it was even in the proper casing that it's in now. It's kind of a prototype model. And I couldn't believe the sound was coming from just this little tiny box. It was just mind-blowing. And yeah, it's just completely different to anything else that I've attempted to use before. So the other thing that works really well is that usually I have a real problem with my bottom end. I have a lot of bass in my sound. OK, so I have this low string, which is currently tuned to a B-flat. And I tune lower than that sometimes. And acoustic amps that I've used, which are much bigger than this one, the note's not there. And then the kick drum is even worse. You know, it just doesn't exist. It just sounds completely all the guts and the richness at the bottom have been taken out of it. And that's because the other amps that I've used, you can hear that there's a high-pass filter set into the amp. So in other words, they only go so low in the frequency range and then it kills it on purpose. Because they kind of assume that you're not going to go that low. But acoustic guitars are incredibly big kind of frequency range instruments. They produce a lot of bottom end, even if you're not tuning low. That bottom end is still there in the box and they produce loads of treble. It's way more than an electric guitar amp. And so a lot of these guys make electric amps, transfer stuff over and it doesn't work. But you need that huge headroom to be able to provide that really low frequency. And this amp has a high-pass filter. So if you're unlike me and you don't need that, you can dial it out, which is absolutely criminal. And make it sound like another amp, if you like. But it's all there if I dial it back in. It's all actually in there, which is really, really awesome. And it's funny with the EQ, I have it flat right now because it doesn't need anything. I say flat, there's a shape button, which I have engaged, which is a preset contour with Magic Preset EQ, which is far cleverer than I could set up myself. So I do have that engaged. So it's not strictly flat, but I have the low, mid and high, totally flat. And the only EQ that I'm ever tempted to add in is to add bass, just because it's just insane that it's there. And it's way too much now for my sound, but I just can't believe that it's... I can't believe that there's so much bass in this tiny amp and it's just so much fun. So I sometimes just give it a little bit of extra bass just because I can, really. We have on the end here a little brilliance knob, which is very, very high top end. So beyond what you would get on a regular kind of treble knob. And the idea with that really is to give you that very high frequency stuff that brings out the sparkly kind of airy sound of an acoustic guitar. And if your strings are ancient, you can pretend you've got new strings, just turn that up. Or you can actually turn it down. It's something you can reduce as well. If you find things are getting a bit spiky and a bit toppy, perhaps you have a guitar with a pickup, which is a bit aggressive and trebly and harsh. You can dial it out. So that control is really, really useful. Okay. So there's two reverbs inside the amp. One of them I really like to use for a big, long, kind of epic sound. So it's really kind of spacey. That's really, really nice. And then there's another one, which is less bright. It's much warmer, which I would use for more of a kind of natural and in a room kind of sound. In order to achieve that change, I've changed the setting of the reverb to the different type and also reduced the time. There's a huge difference between that, very short and what they've added as the very, very long tails in the reverb. And they'll be useful for different songs and different moods, but some people are going to really prefer one to the other as well. There's some fun stuff on the back of the amp as well. We've got DI output and stuff that you would expect, but there's also a USB recording output, which actually can split your signals. You can remove the reverb from what you're recording. Just plug it straight into your phone, record it in whatever recording app you use, and then you can mix it afterwards. So it's something, if you want to record your own gigs as you're playing, whether you're using the amp as kind of backline in a band or monitoring as I would be using it for or to play a gig just with the amp, you can record what you're doing. Also something using them on a gig, which is interesting, is that this on the bottom, this screw in or screw out little extra foot on the bottom, which you can use to raise the amp to angle it up. You can actually take it all the way out and just screw the amp directly onto a speaker stand, which is absolutely ingenious. So when you're doing a gig, you can lift it up and I have tried them raised up in different ways. It doesn't affect the bottom end or anything, still all there. Yeah, so that's a useful little gadget. The amps have Bluetooth input, so if you want to put on music in between your set when you're playing in the pub, that's what I would use it for. Then that's particularly useful. I've tried it. It picks up my phone very quickly. There's no messing about. It's not one of those Bluetooth where you're like, can never, it just works quickly, so it's great. In terms of using these amps on their own as your amplification for, you know, a small gig or something, there's so much kind of tone and level available that you'll totally be able to do that. It's funny, as I was trying it when I actually got them into my house and was trying them at home, I just, my mind was wandering to all the stuff that I've got in the cellar. I've got discarded acoustic amps, two or three, and I've got two PA systems from which they don't get used that much anymore, but I used to play a lot of smaller gigs in pubs and stuff where I'd have to take my own PA. And I was thinking, if I was going to do that again at some point, the next time I have to do that, I won't take a PA system. This sounds better, and it's also about five times smaller and lighter, so it's much more fun, but it'll sound better. It's just a nicer, more dynamic, and even when one of the PA's got a sub, subwoofer actually is part of the setup, and it's still not as good as this. So yeah, so using two of the amps is useful from kind of a monitoring point of view, because like most, not all humans, I have two ears, so I can point one in each. It's a thing with performing live on bigger stages that you have, every night I've got different monitors pointing at me that sound completely different, and sometimes the mix isn't quite right, and I'm having constant conversations with a sound engineer, which isn't ideal. So with these guys, I can put them on their little kicks down underneath, and lift them up, point them in my ears, and if I need to change anything, I can, and I've got the same sound every night, and it's going to be, it's just going to make my life on stage much, much nicer. So what's happening right now is, with my sound, is the guitar has got three pickups inside it, which is a humbucker, little condenser microphone, and a transducer which is stuck onto the wood, and they come down my cables. I mix those in a little kind of mixing desk on my pedal board, and then it goes through my effects, but I actually was using the reverb in the amps instead of the effects, and yeah, so it's all pre-mixed, those three pickups, because that's how I have to do it, and I'll just be able to do a gig and send it to a sound engineer. So it ends up just in one cable, so that's my guitar, this one is my vocal, and yeah, so it's just one mono signal that comes out, which is a mix of all those pickups, so it's kind of a big dynamic sound with lots of bottom end, lots of percussive sounds, and it's very dynamic, and it's very, very demanding of what is used to amplify it. It's got to be good.