Blackstar distortion pedals

[blackba]

Anyone have or had any of these Blackstar pedals, like the HT-Dual, HT-Distortion, or HT-DistortionX, etc?

What amps are you using them with? ARe you using them as a boost or into a clean channel mainly?

 

[Holtman]

I use the Distx in front of my Egnater Renegade 212. I set it to get the tone I want and toggle between the Distx and my Renegade Ch 2. I am able to get more usable gain and alot more bottom end from the pedal. If you are interested in this pedal, try to find some way to demo it, even though I am very happy and will never get rid of it, I believe I took a chance by buying just from reading reviews. IMO, it is a great pedal, BUT(here we go), it gets very fizzy, I roll back a bit on the gain and a lot on the treble and I am able to get they heavy but not to heavy dirt I am looking for. I have gigged with it and got good comments, my 2 cents!

 

[kasperjensen]

I own the HT Dual and the Blackfire (that one is limited model though).

They are both excellent pedals! I mainly use the HT Dual into a Fender Hot Rod, and get some pretty cool results. It's so versatile!

The Blackfire is pure evil.

 

[kasperjensen]

 

[Holtman]

Wish I would have known about the Blackfire! Seems like I always say that, "wish I would have knwn about that!" and this is why I am BROKE, oh well!

 

[university81]

after buying the HT dual - i got the blackstar HT-5 head for at home, really like the tone


i brought my amp head and gibson SG down to the store first to try it out,

I run it into a 70s Hiwatt custom 100 - set to clean with loads of headroom, sounds phenomenal imo, i also run it into a ceriatone OTS (6l6) based amp , it's a really versatile pedal, the ISF knob works wonders , i turn it more to the right UK side for EL34 amps and more to the left for 6l6 amps, works brilliantly , and the pseudo 3 channels are great (clean boost/crunch/hi gain)

I put a Jan-phillips 5751 tube in there to tame the gain somewhat and make it a bit more useable (to my ears of course), despite this on channel 2 i'm at maybe 10 o clock and it's plenty of gain for me

It does add it's own kind of flavour in part due to the EQ/ISF, which imo is a good thing, for me it's the only OD/distortion pedal i have that has serious balls to it in front of a clean amp, most other 9v pedals i've used don't have the thick/creamy crunch that the blackstar delivers

i've been trying various stackings of OD pedals for the last 4-5 months to various degrees of success but there was always something missing(stacking pedals has it's place but always lacked balls for want of better words) so i was looking for a high voltage/headroom or tube based od/distortion pedal and this one blew it out the park, the footswitch is a bit different to other pedals so you have to press it a bit harder but it's not really a complaint

it's the one pedal i can't live without on my pedalboard along with the barber tone press and tuner =)

so it gets my seal of approval, really worth it =0 and i think really good value for the price

 

[blackba]

I use the Distx in front of my Egnater Renegade 212. I set it to get the tone I want and toggle between the Distx and my Renegade Ch 2. I am able to get more usable gain and alot more bottom end from the pedal. If you are interested in this pedal, try to find some way to demo it, even though I am very happy and will never get rid of it, I believe I took a chance by buying just from reading reviews. IMO, it is a great pedal, BUT(here we go), it gets very fizzy, I roll back a bit on the gain and a lot on the treble and I am able to get they heavy but not to heavy dirt I am looking for. I have gigged with it and got good comments, my 2 cents!

I find most high gain pedals to be fizzy, I can usually hear this in the clips. Even the Barber Dirty bomb, I added a cap to tame the fizz, per instructions of Dave Barber. The HT-Dual has my eye the most. The DistX and Blackfire, I think will be too much gain. I haven't ruled out those completely though.

 

[blackba]

after buying the HT dual - i got the blackstar HT-5 head for at home, really like the tone


i brought my amp head and gibson SG down to the store first to try it out,

I run it into a 70s Hiwatt custom 100 - set to clean with loads of headroom, sounds phenomenal imo, i also run it into a ceriatone OTS (6l6) based amp , it's a really versatile pedal, the ISF knob works wonders , i turn it more to the right UK side for EL34 amps and more to the left for 6l6 amps, works brilliantly , and the pseudo 3 channels are great (clean boost/crunch/hi gain)

I put a Jan-phillips 5751 tube in there to tame the gain somewhat and make it a bit more useable (to my ears of course), despite this on channel 2 i'm at maybe 10 o clock and it's plenty of gain for me

It does add it's own kind of flavour in part due to the EQ/ISF, which imo is a good thing, for me it's the only OD/distortion pedal i have that has serious balls to it in front of a clean amp, most other 9v pedals i've used don't have the thick/creamy crunch that the blackstar delivers

i've been trying various stackings of OD pedals for the last 4-5 months to various degrees of success but there was always something missing(stacking pedals has it's place but always lacked balls for want of better words) so i was looking for a high voltage/headroom or tube based od/distortion pedal and this one blew it out the park, the footswitch is a bit different to other pedals so you have to press it a bit harder but it's not really a complaint

it's the one pedal i can't live without on my pedalboard along with the barber tone press and tuner =)

so it gets my seal of approval, really worth it =0 and i think really good value for the price

Great info, thanks. I have a few 5751 tubes sitting around that I can use.

I just read this review on Amazon, did you notice any of these issues: "This thing sounds great for anything from clean to hard rock. Really crisp and full of harmonics. The ISF is a great feature as well. This pedal doesn't really do metal but gets close. Problems: The stacked pots for gain and level have manufacturing issues. The top knob doesn't fit the shaft right, so they squish the shaft and it tilts the knob. This causes the knobs to rub and the bottom knob turns when the top one is turned. This can be fixed by the user. The switches feel cheap, I hope they hold up. Lastly, there is a short mute when switching between channels which makes it hard to use live. I'm glad I bought it...but there are some issues. "

 

[university81]

i did actually, but to me they're minor gripes as playing live you don't really notice the short/channel switch, it's like an amp switching but at least it doesn't pop

the knob does rub against the other one, which means adjusting the bottom knob can sometimes affect the top knob, however once you find your settings this isn't really an issue to me at least as once you've found your settings you just use the footswitch anyway

there is a volume jump between clean/crunch modes on channel 1 when you push it in, but the switch isn't there to be used on the fly anyway, you setup channel 1 either to be a clean boost or a crunch type of sound and go from there

channel 2 stacks quite nice with an OD/boost in front of it for extra gain =0 but it all depends on your settings, there's heaps of gain on tap even with the 5751 in there,

my settings if you're curious through a hiwatt custom 100

channel 1 gain: 11 or so
channel 2 gain: 10

bass: 1 o clock
middle: 11 o clock
treble 10h-11h
ISF: 2-3 o'clock

channel 1 level is maybe 3
channel 2 level is 2

this gives it a volume boost when putting on channel 1 and channel 2 is about the same volume, again this depends on the amp

 

[kasperjensen]

I use the Distx in front of my Egnater Renegade 212. I set it to get the tone I want and toggle between the Distx and my Renegade Ch 2. I am able to get more usable gain and alot more bottom end from the pedal. If you are interested in this pedal, try to find some way to demo it, even though I am very happy and will never get rid of it, I believe I took a chance by buying just from reading reviews. IMO, it is a great pedal, BUT(here we go), it gets very fizzy, I roll back a bit on the gain and a lot on the treble and I am able to get they heavy but not to heavy dirt I am looking for. I have gigged with it and got good comments, my 2 cents!

I find most high gain pedals to be fizzy, I can usually hear this in the clips. Even the Barber Dirty bomb, I added a cap to tame the fizz, per instructions of Dave Barber. The HT-Dual has my eye the most. The DistX and Blackfire, I think will be too much gain. I haven't ruled out those completely though.

The Blackfire is IMO only really suitable for serious metal tone.
I hardly ever use it.

I practically only use the Dual, which can cover a lot of ground.