fly135

The HT-5 has a tubescreamer like diode clipper in the feedback loop of a op-amp, so by appearances the Blackstar engineers are not being truthful. But I never put a scope on the circuit to verify that.

IMO... buying small amps for hearing the tubes being driven is a waste of money unless you know for a fact that the sound it makes is exactly what you want. You can just get pedals that sound like what you want and attach them to any amp of any watts that you like.

If you ever do get the chance to crank your small amp, it is going to be totally lacking in balls (bass response). Yes it will be loud but it won't have enough power to deliver a balanced low freq response. IMO the HT-5 is nothing more than a Valve Jr with a distortion and eq pedal in front.

Also remember that the power tubes are not even real power tubes. They are just preamp tubes used as a power tube.

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Dave_Mc

yeah... to be fair there's no guarantee it is clipping- i've seen other circuits with what looked like clippers to the uneducated (i.e. my) eye but they weren't doing clipping.

that being said, the BS reply did say some other things that were iffy too (pregain and BS like that).

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Yngwie#1

This is one of the statements that released on other forum posts from coorespondence with Blackstar on the question of hybrid vs tube clipping:



Have you seen the insides of Marshall tube amps like the YJM100 and AFD100? Plenty of solid state circuitry doesn't mean solid state clipping.

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Fender Malmsteen Strat > Boss NS2 Noise Suppressor > NS2 Send > NeoClassic 3080 Compressor > NeoClassic 741 Overdrive > NS2 Return > NS2 Output > VHT Special 6 Ultra Amp > Amp Send > MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay > Boss RC3 Loop Station > Amp Return

Yngwie#1

For the owners of Blackstar HT1 and HT5 or those who can try them both out in a store (none of my local music equipment stores have them in stock) I'd still like to know the comparison of the gain and volume knob setting affecting the preamp and power tube saturation between the 1 watt and 5 watt versions (on both channels) to get similar loudness for practical home use. For example if the gain is half and volume is half on the 1 watt, what would yield similar loudness on the 5 watt amp with gain being the same?

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Fender Malmsteen Strat > Boss NS2 Noise Suppressor > NS2 Send > NeoClassic 3080 Compressor > NeoClassic 741 Overdrive > NS2 Return > NS2 Output > VHT Special 6 Ultra Amp > Amp Send > MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay > Boss RC3 Loop Station > Amp Return

Dave_Mc

(a) yeah i've seen that, and it doesn't make sense. what is "pre-gain"? Far as i'm aware, it's not a recognised proper electronic term. It also looked darn like a diode-based clipping circuit to me, not like what BS said (but admittedly I'm no expert).

(b) yeah i'm well aware of that, but that's not really what we're talking about here, either. we're talking about solid state amplification or clipping in the signal path, not random SS stuff elsewhere for switching, fx loop buffering or something like that.

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AcousticMirror

no the blackstar ht1 and 5 have op-amps directly in the signal path -> first stage is an op-amp

when you plug a pedal in and boost the signal, first thing that gets distorted is an op-amp.

there are also clipping diodes elsewhere.

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jpnyc

The HT-1’s controls have a very different response curve; gain and volume on both channels remain fairly low until the gain knob gets to around 2 o’clock. At around 2 o’clock there is a sudden jump in gain, and on the OD the gain ramps up very dramatically from here. The HT-5 is much more even and the volume on the OD channel ramps up a lot sooner.

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Proud Atheist Guitarist

Roc8995

That statement from Blackstar is tragic.

"The important thing is that we gave you all of the crappy input sensitivity of a SS amp but with all of the inefficiency of a tube output section. If we say 'limiting' instead of 'clipping' maybe you'll believe us when we say the diodes are only to gently massage the signal into the right form despite no other tube amp ever needing this kind of treatment. But they're totally not clipping. They're limiting. By clipping."

Clipping diodes at the front so the tube acts exactly the same no matter what the input signal, then a SS phase inverter so there's no dynamic range going into the tube power section. They're neutering the tube signal at every turn - they don't ever allow the tubes to actually interact or do any of the interesting things that they're supposed to. There have been some perfectly good hybrid and diode-clipped tube amp designs, but this doesn't seem like one of them.

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Hi, I'm Colin.

Ian_the_fox

Just get something along the lines of a Vypyr 30. Lower wattage doesn't equal better, and neither-


Oh wait, this thread is 2 years old. Nevermind.

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Dave_Mc

+1 min and colin

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