Why do people HATE Blackstar Amps?

hi hello and welcome back to another video if you've seen any of my other videos it's very likely that you will have seen this black star amp that's been in the background but funny enough it's never actually been heard on this channel so let's get that out of the way first [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] because it's been in the background of so many videos from time to time i get comments about it and more often than not they're speaking negatively about the amp or black star in general which is strange because as previously mentioned i've never played it on the channel before so it got me thinking why do people hate black star why is there this dislike towards them there has to be a reason right and to make sure it wasn't just me i asked my followers on instagram what their thoughts on black star were you should follow me on instagram by the way but there were a lot of answers some were positive views some were negative views overall it was probably around three quarter positive one quarter negative which is still a lot of negative views where is it coming from some people had some theories that had something to do with youtubers and more specifically fluff and what they're referring to is the running joke that fluff hates black stars but i'm pretty sure that's all it is just a joke he stated multiple times that he doesn't hate them he just doesn't like how they sound which is fair enough if we all liked how the same amplifiers sound we'd all have the same amplifier and it would be pretty boring so it's really just a joke it probably has some effect on people who are very easily influenced but i highly doubt that one guy not liking an amp brand would have this big of an impact there has to be more people and there has to be a reason and i think i found it but before we get to that there's a little bit of technical jargon that we need to cover about amplifiers so this is a valve amp and there's four main parts to it that you can see on the top really only two of them are relevant to us but we'll cover all four because why not this is your mains transformer this is responsible for stepping up or stepping down the current from the mains to power your amplifier and then this is your output transformer this is responsible for driving your speakers but we're not really concerned about those two what we are concerned about are these these are your valves or tubes americans will call these tubes most europeans will call them valves means the same thing though and you'll notice that there's different sizes these four small ones are your preamp valves the best way to think about those are they're your sound they're responsible for your gain your base your middle your treble just all of your eq so it really is your sound in these ones but they're not loud so they need to be made loud or amplified by these the bigger ones they're your power amp valves these are responsible for making your amp loud and if you bypass your preamp section it's just going to be the guitar but louder so it sounds a bit like this [Music] but then when you put the amplifier together your pre-amplifier and your power amplifier to create the one it sounds kind of like this and that's the very core basics of a valve amplifier side note because i know people will say this a power amplifier does affect the sound of your amplifier too but for simplicity's sake on this video it's easier just to visualize that as your volume now total opposite of a valve amp is a solid state amp they've got the same core principles a preamp and a power amp but instead of using valves they use solid-state technology op-amps and diodes solid state is smaller lighter and cheaper to illustrate that point this is a 10 watt solid-state power amp it's light it's tiny and it costs pennies some amplifiers combine solid-state technology with valve technology together into one amplifier almost always in one of two ways either a state preamp with a valve power amp or a valve preamp with a solid state power amp and when combined these amplifiers are called hybrid amps so with all that in mind we can go back to blackstar i've waded through the depth of the internet to try and find what the main complaints seem to be against them i'm paraphrasing here but they seem to be as follows number one blackstar only makes solid state and hybrid amplifiers and solid state and hybrids are bad or just not as good as all valve amps and the second complaint is that blackstar don't make it clear that their amplifiers are hybrid in fact they do the opposite and falsely claim that some of their amplifiers are all valve so now that we know the main issues let's see if they hold any weight black star do make solid state amps i have one here this is the black star id core v2 had it for a few years and it's quite a nice practice amp [Music] [Laughter] [Music] um [Music] now technically that amplifier could be classed as a hybrid because it's got a modeling or digital preamp with a solid state power amp but either way it's still solid state in both parts so it's a solid state amplifier but it sounds pretty good for practice they also make straight ahead solid state amps too most recently with their silver line series but black star also have different lines of valve amps too they have the ht series the series one the flagship of which i have right here and they have the artisan series as well but here's the thing are they actually all valve it sounds like a simple question to answer but it's far much more subjective than you may think so let's take a look at this amp it's a series 1 200 watt head and on the surface when you look inside you can see that it's got preamp valves and power amp valves so it must be an all valve amp but that's on the surface there's a few things going on in the circuitry in this case there's op amps and diodes in the signal path going into the preamp and the best way to think about those is they're pushing your guitar signal into the pre-amp valves kind of like having a built-in overdrive pedal into your amp and there are pros and cons to this but overall it comes down to it does have an impact on the sound whether you like that sound or not is up to you [Music] [Applause] but does using solid-state components in an amplifier with a valve preamp and a valve power amp make it a hybrid let me know in the comments what you think personally i don't think so i'll go into more detail as to why i don't think so in a minute but let's say you do think that that makes it a hybrid amp well then the second complaint i've seen against blackstar comes in blackstar don't make it clear that their amps are hybrid in fact they do the opposite and falsely claim that their amplifiers are all valve now part of this complaint mainly hinged on the accusation that blackstar ran an ad for their hd5 amp stating that it was all valve but i've only heard talk of this ad i've never seen it i couldn't find it online and i even went through the trouble of going through a bunch of old guitar magazines to try and find black star ads and any of the ones that i could find weren't talking about anything all valve but even if they did and i just couldn't find it the ht5 does have a valve for a preamp and a valve for a power amp it has solid state components in between but it does have valve power amp and valve preamp but let's mention some other amplifiers that have the same type of circuitry that this one does the marshall jcm 900 used by john 5 and favored by jason becker during the recording of the david lee roth a little and enough album the martial silver jubilee used by slash and bonamassa and the list of valve amps that have solid state integration goes on there's a couple of pvs the mess of blue angel i'm pretty sure there's even a friedman with a switchable circuit so is this a bad thing no absolutely not in fact one of the most popular martial modifications was the jose mod due to steve vice marshalls that had a diode clipping and even if you're against all of that if you've got a full all valve amp and you put an overdrive pedal in front of it you're doing the same thing and should blackstar have to explicitly make it clear that even though their amplifiers have valve preamps and valve power amps there is solid-state components in the amp therefore it doesn't make it all valve i don't think so and here's why an all-valve amplifier would have to have an all valve preamp an all-valve power amp but it would also have to have a tube rectifier a tube phase inverter and if the amplifier had any effects like reverb or tremolo that would have to be tube powered too and i can think of a lot of amplifiers that don't fit into those categories to put that into perspective the only martial amplifier that i'm aware of that has a tube rectifier is the marshall jt m45 all the others use solid state rectifiers does that make the marshall jcm 800 a hybrid or solid state amp not from my point of view i think perhaps people are getting a little bit too hyper focused about what parts are in their amplifiers instead of how their amplifiers sound even take a marshall jcm800 and an orange rocker verb those are two el34 powered amplifiers but they don't sound anything alike marshall have a sound orange have a sound and maybe having solid-state components going into the preamp is the black star sound is that a sound that you like well that's subjective but it's an all-valve amplifier as far as i'm concerned all right that video got nerdy quick my overall takeaway is that black star seemed to get hate for doing the same thing that just about every other amp brand are doing which seems a little bit unfair um this is not a sponsored video i bought and own all the amplifiers i've shown in this i just thought it was an interesting topic also you're probably not going to see this amplifier in the background on some future videos because nothing to do with this video it's just incredibly heavy i'm gonna move it uh it's 27 kilograms that's 60 pounds it's ridiculously heavy so uh yeah that's the video thank you for watching like the video subscribe if you want i'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: KDH

Views: 392,237

Keywords: Blackstar, Blackstar amps, Valve amps, Tube amps, Blackstar series one, backstar ID Core, Hybrid amp, Solid state amp, Blackstar Hybrid, Worst amps, Best amps, KDH, KDHguitarTV, KDH Guitar, Blackstar amps bad, Bad, Bad amplifiers, Worst amplifiers, Blackstar amplifier, Blackstar amplifier bad, Fluff blackstar, Blackstar fluff

Id: VzGh1oBAIGg

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021