BLACKSTAR'S MAGNUM OPUS of Practice Amps! (the perfect cheap practice amp)

[Music] foreign s welcome back to the guitar Max channel so one of the questions that I get all the time is hey has anybody ever told you that you look like Danzig well that has nothing to do with this video but another question I get all the time is what is a great affordable practice amp well these days there are many good options but just recently black star has released a couple of really affordable amps that I think might go right to the top of the list these are the Black Star debut series amps and there are two different amplifiers with slight differences but they cost right around that 80 to maybe a hundred and ten dollar range right in there and I have this one right here which is the larger of the two amplifiers and just look at this thing look how cool this is now just to be clear I bought this amp they did not send it to me but if you've been watching the channel for a while you probably know that I already really like the the Black Star brand and so when I saw this when when they announced these and I saw them I just immediately jumped on it and I bought this one now in some ways this is a traditional practice amp but it's got some really interesting key features that make it really really cool and of course it's really affordable this would be a perfect first amp or just like a practice amp where you don't want to plug into your rig of Doom okay so what makes this so great well first of all just look at it it looks really cool and these actually come in a couple of different colors but I love the gray tolex on this one it looks like it's made out of rock but also they have a tan one if if you want a more vintage style okay but obviously it's not just the looks but let's take a look at the controls up here first there's a gain control and right next to that there's a channel switch for switching between the clean or Distortion channels then you've got an overall volume control and then you've got a couple of tone controls one is just a straight up tone knob and the other is the Black Star ISF control which basically controls the sort of the the overall character of the amplifier and it's kind of surprising but between just these two knobs you can get a really wide variety of tones out of the amplifier and you'll hear that in in a minute here when I get into the demo right next to that we've got a tiny little effects section and there's only one effect on this amp but it's delay and so you can you can toggle the delay off and on then you've got this knob here to control the the level of the delay and also the speed of the of the delay to a certain extent and uh yeah I mean it's kind of interesting but I've always felt this if you were only going to have one effect like and the first effect somebody should get in a rig I think is delay and what's cool is you can use this in different ways like you can have it set just a little bit and you get the sort of like a slap back delay effect you can crank it up and you get a longer more powerful delay which is great for lead guitar work you know solos and that kind of thing and if you just have it just a tiny bit it almost becomes more like a mild Reverb and and that you can just sort of leave it on all the time okay and then next to that there's two more really key features here one is a line in Jack okay if you want to plug in you know like going out of your phone or something like that or maybe a drum machine you can plug it into here and then you've got the headphone jack which doubles as an emulated output so overall this is a very simple amp yet it actually has a lot packed into it okay now the other thing about this and this is going to seem a little weird but the other thing I love about this amp is the power cable now you're probably thinking look Dan's it's a power cable what's the big deal okay look at this cable this is like one of these standard three-prong cables that you would plug in your computer with or something like that and this amp the power supply is built into the amplifier and then you just use a standard cable to plug it in and a lot of the other practice amps even some of the older black star little amps like the ID Core Series they have an external power supply and so you've got this power adapter that you have to Lug around with the amplifier if you lose this you can buy one of these cables just about anywhere for like a few dollars those other amps if the power supply breaks or you lose it or damage it or something you have to order an entire new one it ends up costing a lot more so this might seem like a weird little detail but I actually love the fact that they use this power cable okay but it's an amplifier obviously and we want to hear how it sounds and I think as cool as the features are and how it looks and everything the best thing about this amplifier is how it sounds and yeah for a little practice amp it sounds awesome but let's go ahead and get into the demo so you can really hear it now of course I'm going to use this amplifier I'm also going to use my halo Claris for the demo here I have not busted this out in a while love this guitar so this will be a lot of fun but yeah guys real quick if you enjoy videos like this checking out cool new affordable gear and you have not already subscribed please consider subscribing right now okay let's go ahead and plug all this stuff in and listen to how it sounds thank you foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] all right [Music] hahaha [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] [Music] okay guys so yeah I mean let's talk a little bit more about this amplifier but first of all just the sound of it I think is great I mean so many of these little practice amps they don't really sound that good and you end up just sort of settling for anything that will make noise and is convenient and is cheap right but this amp and really the Distortion right the High Gain sound is actually surprisingly good I mean it sounds really really good the other thing that really impressed me about the amp is how powerful just these two knobs are to uh to get different tones from the amplifier between the gain and then the tone knob and then the ISF and not even getting into the delay and the effects and everything but just those three knobs give you this huge range of uh you know a huge range of tones right all from this little 15 watt solid state amp also this thing sounds really good through the headphone out Jack right it's like a speaker emulated output that you can use for headphones or you can even run like a little eighth inch XLR cable or something like that you could if you wanted to you could plug this into an interface for recording and use that emulated output or you could run into a mixing board or a PA so just having that little emulated out Jack there it gives you so many more options with this amplifier the line in Jack I mean I personally don't use it very much but it's still nice to have that if let's say you had like some backing tracks on your phone or something like that so you could run a little auxiliary cable out of your phone headphone Jack and then into here and then play the tracks through there and play along with them having that capability is always nice on on a little practice amp like this now the other thing that's cool about this right is so many of these these sort of modern practice amps are app dependent meaning you know you connect your phone to the amplifier and you got to update the firmware and you know there are a lot of cool things you could do like loading different sound patches and maybe having more effects and things like that but there's a lot of people out there a lot of guys you know old school guys that don't want to screw around with software and phone apps and Wi-Fi connections and all that stuff and this to me this is like just a great combination of an old school traditional practice amp but with a few modern day features and a great sound that just pushes it into the modern era and yeah I think I bought this amp for like 85 or something like that and again this is the slightly larger of the two amplifiers there's a 15 watt version this one and then there's also a 10 watt version which is a little smaller and I think it um I think it it maybe doesn't have an independent gain control uh it just has a volume but it still does have a distortion Channel but anyway I think for the price difference you know you can probably find this amp for 85 90 95 dollars right in there and the other one is a little bit less expensive but for the price difference I think this is the one to go for you know if you can cough up an extra like fifteen dollars definitely get this one and guys for a sub 100 amp this thing is solid I mean this thing feels really good the knobs feel good all the switches it just it feels like quality it's got some weight to it you could sit on this you could stand on this and not worry about crushing it right you know if you get locked out of your car this could easily break a window now one of the amps that I've talked about in the past I want to say like I don't know like three four years ago from Blackstar uh is their ID core amplifiers and these are in most cases uh little combo amps like 10 20 31 watch they had different sizes and so forth and those are really great little amps and they've got some of the the similar similar controls as this one although maybe um a little bit more in terms of the the tone options and that kind of stuff but the deal with those amps you know they used to be 110 120 bucks the prices of those amplifiers in the past like three four years have gone up considerably and so now you're looking at like a couple hundred bucks to get one of those ID core amplifiers and don't get me wrong there's still good amps but maybe not everybody wants to spend that much money and they also have that other little issue where they have the external power adapter right so if you're looking for you know a sub hundred dollar practice amp that sounds really good I think this one really is going to become my like go-to recommendation for people this is like the perfect amp to have in your apartment where you've got the guitar hanging up on the wall and your buddy comes over and he's like oh hey you play guitar and you're like yeah check this out check out these riffs and you plug into this amp and the amp sounds impressive right it just sounds good it makes you sound good just the perfect amp for that okay guys that is it though that is the Black Star debut 15E that's this particular model here and then I think the debut 10 is the the smaller one but I'm going to have links for all this stuff down in the video description below the amps uh and also the guitar I was playing which again is the Halo Claris let me know what you thought of this guys and if you have any other suggestions for like really affordable practice amps I'm talking like right around a hundred dollars or less let me know down in the comment section below okay guys that is it for this video I hope you enjoyed the video if you did please give me a thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already and I'll talk to you very soon thank you [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Guitar MAX

Views: 78,791

Keywords: blackstar id core v3, blackstar amplification, blackstar, blackstar id core

Id: dKe8S8xG4Uc

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2023