Egnater Rebel vs. Blackstar HT-5

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mightyjoeyoungxnj

mightyjoeyoungxnj

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Has anyone played both? I'm looking for some convincing British tone without knocking stuff off of my shelves (like with my Plexi.) All of the Blackstar clips I've heard sound really nice.

Has anyone played either or both? Care to share your experiences?

thanks

-Joe
 
what little i played both, i'd take the Blackstar. dig the tone on the Blackstar more, as far as what it will do on it's own.


the Rebel is quite a bit more expensive and suspect it might be cool with a boost, but it's just too much money for a little feller for me.
 
Capulin Overdrive":1akkl23l said:
what little i played both, i'd take the Blackstar. dig the tone on the Blackstar more, as far as what it will do on it's own.


the Rebel is quite a bit more expensive and suspect it might be cool with a boost, but it's just too much money for a little feller for me.
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Thanks for the reply man. Could you go into a bit more detail on the Blackstar?? It seems to have a great Marshally tone for such a small package, and this was from crappy youtube clips.

I agree on the price, a bit steep for me.

Where did you play the Blackstar by the way? I think Guitar Center sells em? I'm curious for how much too. I can get it cheaper from Europe I think, even with the crappy exchange rate.

thanks

-Joe
 
i played both at the same time at a GC, and both through thier own cabs.


the whole Blackstar mini stack was $499. seems like the Rebel is $600 just for the head? i wish i would have bought the Blackstar, but i didn't really want the little cabs, just the head. they wouldn't sell the head seperate.



anyways, the Blackstar sounded great and felt damned good to play on also. just a great crunchy little amp, and instantly easy to dial in. it has enough gain to play without a boost. and yes, it is pretty Marshally sounding.
 
Capulin Overdrive":1oiwfj9h said:
i played both at the same time at a GC, and both through thier own cabs.


the whole Blackstar mini stack was $499. seems like the Rebel is $600 just for the head? i wish i would have bought the Blackstar, but i didn't really want the little cabs, just the head. they wouldn't sell the head seperate.



anyways, the Blackstar sounded great and felt damned good to play on also. just a great crunchy little amp, and instantly easy to dial in. it has enough gain to play without a boost. and yes, it is pretty Marshally sounding.
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Cool, thanks for the insight. I suppose I'll look online for one then - I don't really need the cabinets.

-Joe
 
The guy I talked to at GC says he has had 2 come back due to a noisy pot. Turns out that apparently one of the pots exhibits a noise, only while you are turning it, There is actually nothing wrong, its the type of pot they used. I guess this is similar to the output pot in a THD Hotplate, where it exhibits a little noise where the contact is rubbing across the windings in the pot. Danyeo was talking about this in another thread, and what he says makes sense. I would not worry about this, I was just bringing it up, becuse you may be able to get a deal on one that was returned by an idiot :lol: :LOL: The guy I spoke with said he had 2 in the back that he would love to sell Have not heard a blackstar at all - Jim :rock:
 
JTyson":2cj96mds said:
The guy I talked to at GC says he has had 2 come back due to a noisy pot. Turns out that apparently one of the pots exhibits a noise, only while you are turning it, There is actually nothing wrong, its the type of pot they used. I guess this is similar to the output pot in a THD Hotplate, where it exhibits a little noise where the contact is rubbing across the windings in the pot. Danyeo was talking about this in another thread, and what he says makes sense. I would not worry about this, I was just bringing it up, becuse you may be able to get a deal on one that was returned by an idiot :lol: :LOL: The guy I spoke with said he had 2 in the back that he would love to sell Have not heard a blackstar at all - Jim :rock:
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Are you referring to the Egnater that has the noisy pot or the Blackstar?

-Joe
 
I played them both, side by side. It was brief, but I preferred the Blackstar. I'm looking forward to testing them both further. I am interested in how the Blackstar takes pedals, and checking out the loop. I think it's a pain that Eggies need special equipment for stompboxes to work in the loop.

2 relevant things for me:
The Blackstar is cheaper, and it is made in Korea. The Rebel is made in china.
 
FWIW, I had the Rebel for a weekend when it first came out. Tried it at the local GC through the Rebel cab and thought it sounded good enough to take home. I noticed that the amp was not as gainy as I normally liked but the clean was quite nice and I loved the ability to switch between the EL84's and 6V6's. When I got it home and tried it more in depth, I found that it wasn't for me. The amp's gain when pushed was too forward/focused and not compressed enough for me. It's GREAT for classic rock (70's) but not beyond that. To be fair though, the amp is not sold as a do it all and what it does do, it does exceedingly well.

This past Saturday, I tried and ended up buying the HT5 mini stack. The gain channel is alot of fun and has plenty of gain on tap. It get's increasingly compressed as you turn it up past halfway. Responds well to the volume knob. The ISF feature is quite nice as it let's you get a good balance of mids based on your tonestack voicing and ISF position and it allows you to dial out some of the "squish" if you want to. The amp seems to be lower mid focused than the Rebel. Clean channel is ok and passable. It's not a Fender clean but it works. The loop works fine. Has a 4/10 dB switch and is pretty forgiving. I used a DD5 n the loop when trying it out at GC and am using some TC Nova pedals at home in the loop.

All in all, it's a hard amp to beat for $499 including 2 10" cabs. Just don't expect to be able to overpower a band with the volume.
 
I tried the Rebel but didn't care for it much. Didn't sound very good to me until it was quite loud. I was looking for a gainy amp that gave up the goods at much lower volume. I tried the HT5 mini stack and bought it on the spot. I have the Blackstar HT Dual pedal that the amp is based on. Not much more to add that others haven't already said. I set the amp for a nice crunch, run an old Ibanez delay in the loop and use a Plank Cranker for a solo boost and the tone is pretty good.

The 110 cabs are OK but a little on the thin side for my taste. So I use one of the cabs and an Avatar 112 cube for the other. Fills out the tone better to me. I'll probably try and sell the cabs. They make nice extension cabs for little practice amps such as the Vox DA5 or the microcube. There's a Celestion G10N-40 in each cab. Same speaker Orange and Laney use with there little amps.

I tried the line out into the lower input of my marshall 2204 into a 212 cab and got some killer high gain tones at very house friendly levels. That way you can crank up the HT5 preamp gain and control it all with the Marshalls volume. Really full and deep tone at low levels.
 
I wish they would sell the head on it's own. The mini stack looks cool but I would rather use my cabs.
 
Thanks for the responses guys!

Thomann in Europe sells just the head and ships worldwide. They are currently out of them though.

-Joe
 
fek":1vahdnak said:
I wish they would sell the head on it's own. The mini stack looks cool but I would rather use my cabs.
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The guy at GC that I talked to said Blackstar would not offer just the head in the US. Just the combo and ministack. Personally, I find that hard to believe.
 
So I'm probably going to order the Blackstar from Europe.

Will I need to change anything for it to work on American voltage? Just a fuse?

-Joe
 
can you guys link me to this blackstar amp? Only ones I can find on GC's site are 1100+ usd. I am curious about this mini stack.
 
mmorse":1em9ftpn said:
fek":1em9ftpn said:
I wish they would sell the head on it's own. The mini stack looks cool but I would rather use my cabs.
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The guy at GC that I talked to said Blackstar would not offer just the head in the US. Just the combo and ministack. Personally, I find that hard to believe.
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Maybe GC chose to just buy them packaged like that, so as not to end up with cabs without heads or vice versa? You can get them separate in Europe at least, so it's probably not Blackstar's idea to do things this way. I'd also much rather plug the head into a "real" 2x12 than to clutter up my place.
 
tweed":1sxel6y1 said:
can you guys link me to this blackstar amp? Only ones I can find on GC's site are 1100+ usd. I am curious about this mini stack.
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I haven't found the mini stack on their site either. I still want the head on it's own. If anyone see's them selling somewhere (in the US of course) please let us know.
 
I just watched a few vids on Youtube of this thing. Wow! I am really impressed. I don't have $500 though for the entire stack. Sell the head on it's own GC!
 
fek":3t2ds03i said:
I just watched a few vids on Youtube of this thing. Wow! I am really impressed. I don't have $500 though for the entire stack. Sell the head on it's own GC!
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Post some links of your fav vids of the HT-5
 
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