 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here with MGRmusic.com and today we're going to be talking about another one of the Blackstar patents. Today we're going to be talking about the DPR. DPR stands for Dynamic Power Reduction. This is a feature that is built into certain Blackstar amps that allows you to have a cranked valve amp tone at bedroom level. If you already own a valve amp you'll know the best tones come when you really crank it up. That's when the amp really comes alive and the natural compression, tube distortion and sag from the amplifier being pushed starts to take hold. But that's not always practical. You might not be able to push 100 watt valve amplifier at home as loud as you want to. This is where the DPR comes in. DPR is a dynamic feature that reduces the voltage across the power section of the amplifier to bring down the volume. By doing so it reduces the output volume that you hear and it also introduces the natural sag compression and tube distortion that you'd expect from a crank valve amp. This gives you that great overdriven valve amp tone that you only get by really opening the amp up and it also introduces the sag and compression that we're all chasing but at a much more reasonable volume level. DPR works by allowing you to reduce your amp's output power down to 10% of the total value of the amplifier. This is typically found on the Series 1 amps so for instance if you have a 200 watt series 1 head you can reduce that down to 20 watts. The amp I'm using for this video is the HT20 Mark II. This has a DPR button which allows you to go from 20 watts which is the amp's standard value down to 2 watts which is 10% of its output power. On this particular amp we can only switch between 20 and 2 but on the Series 1 amps there's actually a dial on the back which allows you to continuously change the power level. This can take you anywhere from the full volume down to 10% so it means you can dial in a bunch of different headroom sag and compression responses anywhere from full power down to 10% of the total power. A typical guitar amp attenuator is placed between the amplifier circuit and the speaker. This means you're actually introducing a new stage to your signal chain which can actually change the tone the feel and the response of the amp. Because DPR is built into the amplifier this doesn't actually put anything between the amp and the speaker. This is true if you're using a black star combo or a head and cab with the DPR feature. Because the DPR feature is built into the amplifier it doesn't actually place anything between the amp and the speaker itself. This means that when you lower the volume using the DPR feature and you introduce the sag and the compression you don't actually change how the amp reacts with the speaker. This means you always get the truest sound possible. So to test this out I'm going to play a couple of different tones and show you the difference between the DPR switch being on which is down to 2 watt mode and off which is the amp running at its full 20 watts. So we'll start with a clean tone this is at 20 watts so the DPR switch is not engaged for this tone and I will engage the DPR and take this down to 2 watts. By doing so you'll actually hear the headroom of the clean tone come right down and there'll be a little bit more compression and it'll even break up a little sooner. Because the DPR feature also reduces the headroom of the tone it actually means that if you put a boost pedal in front it'll actually react differently with the front end of the amp. So here is the same clean tone but with the DPR switch disabled so we're back up to 20 watts and I'm going to kick on a very light gain overdrive pedal and then we'll do the same thing flip it down to 2 watts and see how it reacts. Now let's enable the DPR and take that down to 2 watts you'll notice the overdrive will actually hit the front end a little harder and will break up that little bit sooner because we're reducing the headroom. Now we're going to flip over to the overdrive channel and do exactly the same thing. So here's the overdrive channel at 20 watts even though the gain is only set to 3 here by enabling the DPR I'm actually going to bring that headroom down introduce the sag and the compression and it's actually going to make the overdrive tone sound a little more saturated. We can also get a slightly different response from the DPR by hitting it with an overdrive pedal so I'm going to use the same overdrive that I used on the clean channel earlier I'm going to put the overdrive channel on at 20 watts and also switch on that light overdrive and see how that reacts. And then once again using that pedal but now with the DPR enabled at 2 watts. So as you can see the DPR is a great way to get those cranked overdriven valve tones at a bedroom level by flipping the DPR switch on if you own a HD20 mark 2 or by using the continuous power dial on your series 1 you can scale the amp down to 10% of its total volume. Like I said this introduces the sag, the compression and the tube amp distortion that a cranked valve amp would have if really pushed hard. Thank you so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video please let us know down below in the comments if there are any other tones or features you'd like us to explore. Don't forget to check out the Blackstar Amplification YouTube channel for more videos just like this. If you're in the UK and you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area please check out MGRmusic.com we've got a network of great teachers all over the country just waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you soon.