I recently bought a Blackstar Debut 100RH amp head.
This is going to be an additional pedal platform amp. Read on for my first impressions.
Table of Contents
- What Did You Buy?
- Why Did You Buy It?
- My Signal Chain For The Debut 100RH
- How I’m Recording The Blackstar Debut 100RH
- Final Thoughts
What Did You Buy?
I bought a Blackstar Debut 100RH amp head, in blonde tolex.
- “Blackstar” is the manufacturer.
- “Debut” is the name of the amp range.
- “100RH” is the model number. It indicates that this amp can do 100W, has a built-in reverb, and is an amp head.
- “amp head” indicates that this is not a combo amp. A separate speaker cabinet is required to use this amp.
- “blonde tolex” is the colour that the amp came in. This amp also comes in black tolex.
Blackstar’s Debut range is their entry-level, all-analogue amp range, for those people who don’t want the complexity of a Boss Katana or Blackstar ID:CORE amp. It’s solid state, so it’s a lot lighter than a valve amp, and there’s less maintenance.
I bought mine brand new from my local guitar store, AStrings.co.uk.
Why Did You Buy It?
I Miss The Certainty Of Plugging Into A Real Amp
For the last few years, I’ve been using my Axe-FX 3 as my pedal platform amp. It’s a fantastic tool. It gives me access to world-class emulations of all these amazing high-end amps that I can’t afford, and that don’t have physical space to accommodate either.
However … regular readers may have noticed just how much my pedal platform presets have evolved over time. The Axe-FX 3 comes with a steep learning curve, and I find I get the best results out of it when I’ve got the real amp to compare the digital model against.
As a blogger, I get a certain confidence from hearing a pedal that’s plugged into a physical amp. I don’t have to worry about “have I dialled in the amp model right?”. The sound … is the sound.
Why Did You Choose The Blackstar Debut 100RH?
First and foremost, I wanted an affordable amp for this role.
I’ve already got the Axe-FX 3 to help me get the very best (that I can) from a pedal. But I don’t have anything at the other end of the spectrum … something to help me understand how a pedal is going to sound to home hobbyists on a budget.
Next, it had to be an amp head – and it has to have front-mounted controls (because I’m going to put my Tweed Deluxe amp on top of it).
Right now, where I live, the Blackstar Debut 100RH is one of the few amps that ticks all of those boxes.
Oh, and finally, I’ve been missing my old Blackstar Studio 10 6L6. I wish Blackstar made this amp as a standalone amp head; it would have been my automatic choice. They don’t, so this is the closest I can get right now.
My Signal Chain For The Debut 100RH
Overall Signal Chain
I’m using:
- guitar
- into Axe-FX 3 (mostly for the tuner)
- out to my pedalboard
- into the Debut 100RH
- speaker out into Two Notes Captor 8 ohm
- line out into the Axe-FX 3 (for virtual cab, delay and reverb)
- out to my audio interface
- and into my DAW.
Let’s look at that in a bit more detail.
How I’ve Setup The Blackstar Debut 100RH
Whenever I sit down with a pedal, I start with these settings on the amp:
- Clean channel bright switch is off
- Clean volume at around 11 o’clock (pointing at the marker on the front panel)
- Treble, Middle and Bass all at 12 o’clock
- IFS control around 11 o’clock (pointing at the marker on the front panel)
- Power in 100W mode
- Onboard reverb off
To my ears, this gives me a tone that’s quite similar to my memory of the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 that I used to have. It’s definitely a familiar tone, one that I’ve been able to just sit down and work with straight away with no messing about.
The ISF Control Is The Most Important EQ Control
On my old Blackstar Studio 10 6L6, the ISF control was very much a set-and-forget kind of control. I found its influence to be fairly subtle.
It’s been a very different experience on my Debut 100RH. This ISF control seems to define the character of the Debut 100RH as a whole.
As a rough rule of thumb:
- ISF settings below 12 o’clock add bite and reduce warmth, and seem to suit Marshall-in-a-box (MIAB for short) pedals well, while
- ISF settings above 12 o’clock add roundness and warmth, and seem to suit tweed-tone pedals well.
(I only worked this out after I posted my first impressions of the NUX ’59 Bassguy. I’m going to have to revisit that very soon.)
I’m excited by this discovery. There’s a real possibility that this amp might not just be an affordable pedal platform amp; it might well turn out to be a versatile pedal platform amp too.
Haven’t Felt The Need To Engage The Bright Switch
The clean channel is plenty bright enough as it is. I don’t need to use the bright switch to add any additional brightness at all.
That’s surprised me.
Regular readers may be aware that I’ve spent years struggling to get brighter tones out of my Axe-FX 3 pedal platform patches. Not a problem with this amp, in this signal chain!
How I’m Recording The Blackstar Debut 100RH
Why I’m Using A Load Box
I want to hear all of this amp’s circuit, so I’m running the regular Speaker Out into one of my venerable Two Notes Captor units.
I’ve set the Out Level on the Captor at 12 o’clock, and plugged a cable from the Line Out of the Captor into my Axe-FX 3’s Input 3. That seems to be about the right volume for me.
Inside the Axe-FX 3, I’m running a “Tube Pre” amp model, mostly to add speaker impedance emulation to the overall signal chain. This step is the magic sauce that prepares the signal for feeding into impulse responses.
From there, it’s impulse responses, then delay, reverb … and then out to my DAW. That’s it. The “Tube Pre” amp model’s EQ is set absolutely flat, and I’m not using any extra EQ anywhere else in the chain.
I think the Two Notes Captor is a good choice for this rig.
- Most importantly, it’s always sounded good with Marshall-inspired amps (did you know that Blackstar was founded by ex-Marshall folks?)
- It fits with the affordable theme for this rig.
- I don’t think it’s realistic to use the Fryette PS-100 Power Station for this rig. A home hobbyist who has a Fryette probably bought it to attenuate a really nice vale amp … not a budget amp that costs 1/4 the price.
Why I’m Using Celestion Impulse Responses
These days, it feels like many affordable combo amps are using “custom” speakers (presumably to keep costs down). But before that trend started, affordable amps (and speaker cabs) often came with Celestion V-Type speakers.
I’m using Celestion’s official V-Type impulse responses. I’ve gone with the 1×12 open cab IRs. At the time of writing, the full IR pack costs £11.50. Definitely fits with the “affordable” theme! It’s very early days, but (so far) I like this pairing very much.
And these old-school impulse responses work everywhere:
- we can use them in any IR plugin in our DAW (no need for proprietary plugins);
- we can use them in any hardware that supports IRs (like my Axe-FX 3, or any of the Line6 HX / Helix products).
One of the advantages of a hybrid rig like this (over a traditional amp & speaker combo amp) is that I’m not limited to the sound of a single speaker. If I’m chasing a specific genre of guitar tone, I can just switch to an impulse response that suits the genre better.
And that’s exactly what I did in my recent first look at Mad Professor’s The Green Wonder overdrive pedal.
Final Thoughts
So far, I’m really happy with my amp choice. I knew the Debut series of amps sounds good (I’ve used the combo amp in my local store). I wasn’t expecting it to sound this good through my rig at home.
Now, I need to spend a few months learning the sound of the amp, and how various pedals sound when I run them through the amp.
The only challenge with this amp so far? Autocorrect keeps turning the word “Debut” into “Debug”.