Blackstar HT-5RH MkII

Blackstar do it again

I am a backstair fan so I am biased, the Blackstar sound in a low wattage small package it works really well and sounds well for me out of this world.

I do not understand a lot, so please do not count on my review

I do not understand a lot, so please do not count on my review

Size doesn’t matter

Great sound quality and pretty loud for 5W. I was kinda surprised when I started to dial up the volume knob, it can get very loud without losing any quality. This is a pretty versatile amp with some nice crunch and clean tones. I usually like to play some blues, Ozzy, Led etc and I had no problems on getting tone right in just a couple of minutes. I have my HT-5RH connected to a 140 watts Marshall cabinet 8412 with four G12L-40. If you want a practice amp and have some extra money to spend on a couple o pedals to be able to get even more tones I don’t see any cons on this one.

The ultimate home practice amp

I use this home (most of the time using headphones) and I'm using it for anything from crystal clean to extreme gain sounds. Without headphones I'm using it on the 0.5 watt setting and it's perfect for my living room. On the 5 watt it is a bit to loud for home practice, but it's probably OK for a small gig.

This sounds amazing and it covers a great amount of genres, but it does not cross in the extreme gain territory. It can do hi gain, but sticking a Metal Muff or Metal Zone in the effects loop makes it sound even more amazing. I think this alone and a high gain pedal are enough to cover any guitar tone that one could image.

I've bought this to replace my old Bugera G5 witch I wasn't planning on replacing if it wouldn't have broke. I was not expecting great differences, but there are, quite a lot. Besides the double voicing for each channel and the fact that it sounds better, all my pedals seem to feel, react, and sound better through this amp (my pedal board has about 20 pedals, about half of which are in the effects loop, the others in front of it). Also the reverb sounds very good. I'm using it with a Les Paul and 2 Strats - one with hot humbuckers and one with single coils - they all sound great through this amp.