Product Overview
In celebration of 10 years of glorious Blackstar tone, their design team have created three new 10 Watt single-ended valve amplifiers, each drawing on the sound and innovation of iconic Blackstar lines: Artisan, Artist and Series One. Each model captures the essence and, crucially, the feel of the original flagship amplifier. Each amplifier has an elegantly simple arrangement of four controls, plus a switch to introduce an additional level of gain for ultimate flexibility.
This Series One 10 Anniversary Edition is a flexible, modern-voiced amplifier, which uses an ECC83 valve in the preamp stage. An articulate Overdrive can be engaged – either via the front panel or the included footswitch – taking you from dynamic, modern cleans to a tight high-gain overdrive.
Blackstar’s patented ISF control gives access to more distortion flexibility than any other single-ended valve amplifier on the market. Set counter-clockwise the ISF configures the tone stack to a US response, tightening the low mids and emphasising the treble and presence frequencies. Moving the control clockwise continuously varies the tone towards a more British response, where the low mids are emphasised for a warm, ‘woody’ clean or crunch reminiscent of classic British amplifiers from years gone by. Most importantly, ISF allows you to pinpoint your exact personal tonal preference allowing you to find the sound in your head.
Much of the distinctive character of a single-ended valve amp comes from the way its power stage responds, bringing out the nuances of the chosen power amp valve. This Series One 10 Anniversary Edition amplifier features a KT88 power valve – in keeping with the original Series One 200 – resulting in a tight, bold sound with a strong low end. The 10 Watts of output power driving a Celestion speaker makes this Series One 10 Anniversary Edition the perfect amp for practicing and recording at home or in the studio, and for smaller live performances.
Professional features such as a specially-voiced reverb, master volume, footswitching and an effects loop augment the sonic experience, making this amplifier fully equipped for today’s exacting performance requirements.
Completing the versatile feature set, a cabinet emulated line output is included for silent practice, recording or for supporting your live sound into a PA. The signal for the emulated output is taken directly after the power amp to ensure that you can capture and record the tonal characteristics of the Class A configured KT88 power valve and output transformer being pushed into saturation.
