Why do people HATE Blackstar Amps?

I'm pretty sure that it was mostly the HT series that drew the hate towards Blackstar. Those amps are mediocre amps with a deluxe skin, and back then were wayyyyyyyyy overpriced for what they offered. In my city a lot of rehearsal studios had those HT amps and their sound was so boring and unremarkable. I also vaguely remember that the rise in popularity of the HT series coincided with a boom in the 'affordable all tube amp' market (brands like Bugera et releasing products like crazy)., and people started to get very critical about amp prices. SO Blackstar HT became the 'rich-guitarrist-that-doesnt-understand-anything-about-amps's go-to amplifier. The Series One (the all tube series) was hardly commercialized anywhere, they were as rare as custom made amplifiers.

I hate em because the quality is crap. Bought 2 new ones in a row, both failed within 3 hours of use. I'll never buy Blackstar again.

Blackstar makes plenty of great amps. Personally I'm so glad there exists this drama in guitar world. Gear snobs everywhere. So I just looked and I can get a Blackstar Artist 30 212 combo ALL TUBE barely used like new for $350. That is a steal. Gibson snobs I love you too, I can get a Eastman SB59 that will destroy all of your LP's for about $1200. Keep the hate coming, I LOVE IT!!

They sound farty and their equalizer is goof as f...

I have one reason for hating blackstar. And that is the fact that i actually love the ht dist pedal i have, but it stopped working. And getting a replacement power supply is a pain in my nuts. Being electronically illiterate i would appreciate any advice from anyone who can be arsed! The power supply i bought is variable so i can select the voltage. The LED glows as does the tube. But it doesn't change when i press the button and no sound goes to the amp either way. I'll probably end up having to bin it but it would be nice if i can get it working. Does anybody know the likely problem?

The only Amplifier I own by Blackstar was the ID260 solid state amp and to me it sucked balls! I'm not really sure if it was because of the speaker being those crappy Seventy 80's or not. I got rid of it very quickly. I just went back to my Marshall head and Marshal cabinet tubes. I always wanted to try this head you have there. But I do everything I pretty much need on my DSL 100 HR. I also changed my speakers to a V30 and a Creamback H in the 2x12 and it just shines.

I owned the Black Star ID Core V3 20 and it was even worse than a Line 6 Spider. Fucking hated that thing.

Make what you want of it but IIRC Jonnie Walker interviewed Don Felder and the conversation got round to guitar amps and the interaction of guitar and amp. In terms of modern amps he rated Blackstar highly.

Terrible sounding amps. They belong in the trash can.

Great vid. My thought was that for the same money I'd rather have four preamp tubes compared to two. As a layman, that meant something in my little brain. I avoided Marshall for the same reason.

My one experience will be the last. They are 100 percent junk if anything goes wrong. Your tech wont even touch it.

screw fluff😂use your own ears and brain.

BlackStar best affordable amplifiers EVER! made. 👍

I get a Blackstar S1-45 for 10 years and I love it. It is very versatile, it can be used in many styles (for me heavy blues, southern rock, hard rock and classic heavy metal), and it delivers a wide range of sounds, with ISF, 4 channels and a good eq section. And the power reduction is great at home. The greatest is the 2×12 speakers. Just a headphones output is missing and I'd like a separate clean/crunch eq and a separate crunch/super crunch gain. But it's really a killer amp. Perhaps the only reason why some guys don't like it is that it doesn't have only one typical sound. It does a lot and does it well.

They sellend me an amp with dfects and i am done with blackstar .. I hope thier company will burn to the ground because of this, they selled me an amp of this brand and power supply stopped working, after that blackstar didnt have the right powersupply and that thing was 6 weeks old and they have no parts ?.. I fixed the power supply and the on and off switch was broke after i fixed that switchthe connection with the PC was lost so i tried another cable and it was not the cable ... Why nobody gave me a new amp ? WTF ..

I have a little blackstar amp for practice (and the only amp I could sfford at the time) and its prett darn good it works fine for me its a decent little box with some kick

The HT-5 is all-valve. Their is solid state that controls the signal going into the valve preamp, but the solid state does no clipping of the signal - it's all done in the 12AX7.

I can only speak for me; Looking forward to buying as MK 20; tried it out. clean channel amazing….2nd clean channel the eq set it apart and was amazing….the stock rising all the time. THEN I switched to the overdrive. What a pice of dog sh**. As I was told by a tech later, it’s because it’s built in China with crappy capacitors. There was no WAY I could get a solid, crunchy tone without sounding like some Pantera/Metallica rip off. Couldn’t turn the gain down far enough to get rid of that amazingly crappy annoying distortion. Might as well buy a Big Muff. I couldn’t get away from that thing fast enough….what a piece of crap…

I've had a few blackstar Amp id15, id30, and a ht5 mini stack, none of them I've 100% happy with, they put a premium price on them, I've has fender modeling amps mustang 1, Mustang v2 1,2,3, gtx50, gtx100, Marshall DSL100H 1960A & 1960B CAB, TSL60H 1960A, DSL20H, ORIGIN 20, Bugera 6262 lin6 412 cab, out of all of them the fender was better than the blackstar ID amps, the HT5 was the worse sounding valve Amp I've ever heard the DSL20H is the best sounding small valve I've played the TSL60H Was the best sounding full size I've heard, I'm glad I found this because I sold all my gear due to health issues and I'm all good now and I was going to buy a blackstar debut 50r now I'm not so sure I've got nothing against blackstar but I've never like their sound

This guy just seems to make stuff up for fun

you are horrible!

Stupid clickbait title.

Who's listening to black or white in 2023?! Your old Peavy, uh?! Ask Laura Palmer why we had anti fog on the 🔙🔚. Namastè.

Because they SUCK

8 minutes mark is one badass tone

Which tuning are in ?

I have an HT stage 60. I Love the way it sounds so I used this amp to record with. Used it on stage once.I don't use an electric on stage anymore I play acoustic guitar Any how.......The amp started to crackel and just quit working. Mind you the amp hasn't been used more than 25 hours at the most in the time I've own it. I bought it new......not happy at all with that......I just wanted an amp that would last. I've owned amps that needed repair before. Those amps were 10+ years old and had 100's of hours play time on them. Not happy that this amp only lasted such a short time........

I have a id:core 150 combo w 2 way channel switch pedal, loved it so much been looking at id series 100 tvp for extrq features. The portal software and the extra footpedal effects jack with its built in effects just says how much you can modify your own sound. Theres just an infinite choice.

Back in my teens i upgraded my beginner amp with an HT5 combo buying into the chesp valve amp marketing. While i got confused about if it was fully valve or not, that didn't really matter to me.

At first, i really liked the amp, mostly because it was obviously mych better than my cheap ass fender beginner amp, especially for metal. But as i tried different, sometimes quite a bit more expensive amps i started to find the blackstar very lifeless and unexciting, it got worse when i was donated an Engl E520 ravk preamp and the ht5 made it clear it would not work well with a preamp olugged into the FX return and eventuslly sold it to get something else and never looked back. It wad a good amp for the price but had shortcomings and a sound that really didn't make me feel much playing it. Was it the circuit itself, tge 10" speaker who knows.

I live in Thailand and these amps are in every music store. Can’t find an Ampeg anywhere but Black Star and Orange amps are on every street corner here.

I used to use Marshall and stupidly bought a black star HT5R. After 6 months problems. Under warranty. Backwards and forwards to service center, but never was ever right. Eventually I got so cheesed off with it I took it down the council recycling center and threw it into the crusher👍
I then went and bought a Marshall DSL20 HR, solid as a rock and sounds fantastic with my Gibson LP Standard and Fender. 👍👍

I'm hating and just this moment binned my HT5 Mk2.....great sound, great tone....but WHY make the fuse carrier really crap??!!!! Both fuse carriers broke simultaneously.....can you get the fuses back in and will they stay put?!!! Not a chance. After trying for days and failing miserably I could not get the fuses to sit inside the spring loaded and upside down.....WTF they put the fuse carriers upside down carrier is beyond me!!! The fuse carrier eventually snapped from the circuit board and could not be re-soldered so now my nice little amp has just been put in the bin!!! No way to fix the fuse carriers back in place. This will be something I look into real closely when buying a new amp. Why make the fuses so hard to fit????? Why????? Frustrated ain't the word.

Pro-guitarists: How does it sound? Good? Is it consistent? Good. I'll take it.

Insecure guitar players: I can't be found to like or play something with solid state components. I only play true bypass pedals (with 30 feet of cable) into tube amps.

Got an HT1R...sounds great for straight out rock....where it lets me down is it's buffered and so works poorly with old style fuzz like Fuzz Face or Tone Bender......

Poor man's Marshall. What is there to hate? The Club 40 muds out when cranked IMO. The speakers used seem to be the issue more than anything.

he is so jaded pompous annoying, if only he could speak clearly and with interest, cos his info is good

At first didn't think much of the brand myself. Yet found out that they have some quality amps.

I think the lack of history & pedigree is why people don't like the brand, at least for me it was 😅

CRAPstar is the correct term around here./

I got a blackstar Id core 40 and it’s amazing

Because they break and cant be repaired.

Don't forget the solid state DC rectification. Generally you lose the sag from a Valve rectifier. Just saying

I own HT20 MkII Combo and I wouldn't change it for anything. It can handle blues, funk, modern distortion and any pedal. Absolutely loving it.

I'm afraid you missed the point; nobody complains about the blackstar circutry, or how transparent the company is about it; it's just that they sound like a boring jcm900

I owned something ID 60 or something- and it is junk. maybe there are good blackstar amps but I could not care less.

Honestly wasn't aware that people did hate Blackstar amps. I love my little HT1R

I had a black star studio 10 6L6 for well over a year and ended up selling it. And I loved that amp I totally regret selling it. It didn't work well with a lot of amp in a box pedals especially any that were designed to sound like a dumble amp it got real muddy and flubby. But tended to work well with Marshall Style in a box pedals. And overdrives. Especially low gain overdrives through the drive channel in that amp not cranked all the way. My only concern with Blackstar has been the lack of there doesn't appear to be any authorized repair people in the United States. So if anything did go wrong with it you would basically have to ship it to England and it would cost more than it would cost to just throw the thing in the garbage and replace the amp. Fortunately I didn't have any problems with mine and rather than go out and buy an expensive handwired amp or Hot Rod Deluxe or DeVille I'm planning on purchasing another one of these. I wish the game channel was a actual game channel and not an overdrive pedal built in. on the 6l6 version

I've worked on a couple of Blackstar amps. One reason techs don't like them is that Blackstar used to be very uncooperative about providing any service information on their amps. Techs to whom they provided schematics were warned not to share them with anyone at the risk of being cut off by Blackstar if they did. The problem is that musicians needs their amps serviced in the field ASAP and can't always easily ship them to some "approved" Blackstar agent. I personally don't like companies that make it excessively difficult to fix their products.

Bro, I like the way you broke that down and I would have to agree. People should be more worried about how the amp sounds and not what parts are in it!

Who are these “people” ?