FLY 3 Bass Pack : Fun and usable, but begs for an upgrade

If you?re wondering whether to buy the single amp or the stereo package ? buy the package because with the single amp YOU DON?T GET THE POWER SUPPLY! That?s just horrible in my opinion and easy to miss in the product description. What?s worse, the Blackstar engineers decided on the totally non-standard 6.5V 1.5A so it would be difficult to find a replacement.

The stereo pack however, comes with everything you need.

The size is indeed tiny, but it produces quite a big sound. It?s loud enough for the bedroom and can easily keep up with an acoustic band. Your bass will be heard, but not felt rumbling the room, which is to be expected from a mini-amp.

The sound is decent and quite usable, but it has a ?plastic? character to it. A real shame because it might be a killer set with a couple of improvements. I?d like to see a version with wooden enclosure like in Genius PC speakers. It wouldn?t cost much more to produce, but I expect it would sound more natural.

The OD channel is louder and has a lot more treble and hiss. On light gain settings it has it?s moments.

One knob EQ is actually great! Clockwise from the center you get a typical mid-scoop with boosted highs and lows, and CCW it gets more vintage by cutting the highs. Works great! My favourite setting is 1-2 o?clock.

Compressor is very useful when kept really low as it adds a lot of warmth and punch to the sound. However, crank it up past 10% and the artificial cut-off with hiss becomes too annoying. A slightly better compressor would have made this a far better unit.

The SUB knob is a simple analogue octaver with all its shortcomings. The tracking is so-so and what it adds to the sound is mostly farting noises with a slight delay from your playing. I think that wasn?t a good idea. A simple EQ bass boost or even a cheap chorus would have made more sense than the octaver which, for me, was unusable.

The headphone output is where this thing shines! It gives one of the most pleasing headphone sounds I ever experienced on a bass. With my AudioTehnica ATH-M50 the bass was deep and punchy, presence was decent and the noise was surprisingly low. If not for anything else, this amp is great for silent practice.

On the other hand, the Aux input was surprisingly crap. The Fly3 stereo speakers sounded weaker and more mid-rangey than my laptop speakers. Which was a huge disappointment.

The extra speaker does make a difference and I?m glad I bought the stereo pair.

Overall, It?s a fine mini-amp, good for bedroom practice and outdoors. I would recommend it to a beginner as a first bass amp, especially if you want to travel with it or play with headphones.

This amp has a potential to be a must-have, but because of all the unfortunate shortcomings, I?ll be looking forward if Blackstar decides to make a V2.