Blackstar HT Soloist 60 Reviews

4.6/5.0 based on 5 customer reviews

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Customer Reviews

Scott
from Myerstown PA
January 14, 2013Music Background:
Guitarist, Live Sound and Studio Engineer.

Best tube amp for the money!

Here is what it comes down to. If you want to get a great sounding tube amp and you don’t want to spend over $1000 on an amp, then there is only one thing to do and that is buy this amp. Besides the Blackstar Solo 60 I also have a Mesa Boogie 5:50 Express and another Blackstar the Studio 20. I love my Mesa but honestly The Solo 60 is as close to a Mesa for half the price and it’s actually better in some respects. The Blackstar doesn’t eat tubes and it is extremely quiet. When I ordered the Solo 60 it was because when I used the Studio 20 for practice I really though with some more wattage I could use this for small gigs where I didn’t want to lug around my heavy Mesa. Getting the Solo 60 I thought would give me the same sound as my studio 20 but with enough power to not have to worry about being too low for a gig. I was wrong on all accounts except for having enough power. The Solo 60 has more than enough power but when I fired it up; it exceeded my expectation as far as tone and versatility. I can get so many different tones from this amp that I actually might retire my boogie to the studio. Clean sound is absolutely great; you can get everything from a nice dark warm clean sound to a bright midrange clean. As far as the overdrive channel, I was so blown away by the tone of it and I know that for most musicians they might not even need a separate distortion pedal. A little compression and your Delay and that’s all. The build-in reverb sounds very good. You’ve got a nice foot pedal to switch between clean and distortion, reverb and dry and it also has a boost button to kick in a boost when needed for soloing. You can set the amount of boost right on the amp. You have a tone knob for your clean sound as well as bass, mid and treble knobs for your overall eq needs. With Blackstar’s ISF knob which can further change the tone to push you towards and American or British sounding tube amp and what they call a voice switch (the voice switch is used to fatten up your overall clean or overdrive sound) you can get just about any sound you want. One thing to keep in mind is the Solo 60 has more features that the 20 watt (Studio 20) or 40 watt amp (Club 40) that furthers the versatility of the amp. The bottom line is, for $800 you will not find anything better. I could go into even more detail but my suggestion is try it and you’ll buy it.

BERT PAGANO
from Albany,NY
August 4, 2011Music Background:
Professional musician of 38 years.

5 Stars for Blackstar

I just purchased this amp and it is an incredible piece of equipment. Clean channel is CLEAN but flexible. The boutique setting is touch sensitive and very expressive. Then there is the straight clean setting very "American" with a tight bottom end. The OD channel is the prize winner here. So many options and sounds and sweet singing sustain. None of that cheap buzzy OD you usually find in this price range. Great design, but a bit heavy for a combo. I also own a Mesa Express 5:25 and this amp's quality is definitely comparable. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

ruben trevino
from katy, TX
May 25, 2011Music Background:
pro musician

Phenomenal Amp

Holy Smokes Batman, this amp is incredible, fantastic tones and its range of ISF dial in sweetness is outstanding. Blackstar, a new company on the scene has given us a real winner. It’s a 1x12 amp 60 watt combo with an unbelievable must be heard mojo bar none. I've played them all people and I'm here to tell yall nothing can compare to this beauty. Superb detail in build quality, looks, and components, and what really amazes me is the price point. Usually, decent gear could require mortgaging the house, but not this amp it’s got a great price point. I'm telling yall, get this bad boy and go out and get your gaga on man! Thank you Sweetwater, and never not have this amp in your line of gear.

Jimbo
from New Milford, CT
September 20, 2012Music Background:
musician, recordist, composer

Amazing tonal range

Have been using this amp gigging and rehearsing for 3 weeks--no problems at all! Absolutely dead quiet (no hum, no hiss); reverb is smooth, clean, and has a wide tonal range; no mush or distortion. 2 switchable channels work well, and offer enormous flexibility in sound control. Power is great at any level, tubes are solid, easy to get an edge on clean sounds if you push a little, overdrive is colorful and melodic and crunchy. The real winner here is the design of the tone controls--each one provides a useful interaction with every other control, allowing both subtle adjustments and major shifts to be dialed in. The voicing switches are truly useful as well; you can hear the changes in tone across the spectrum, not just in isolated frequency ranges. Congratulations to the engineering crew for getting this extremely right! Its like having a hi-resolution photo of the sound of my guitar; the reproduction of both acoustic and solid-body instruments is clearly defined and accurate. Would recommend this amp for gigging and recording (the lack of hum and hiss really helps). The first amp in quite a while that I can say that I truly love.

Marcos
from Baltimore, MD
March 8, 2012Music Background:
Producer, Guitarist

Great buy for the $...but

I've gigged 4 times live and 10 rehearsals with it. My 2 cents:

The amp takes pedals great, but the overall tone is somewhat sterile. The reverb especially is average at best, and the ISP was OK but not revolutionary as some have suggested.

The footswitch is great, but don't know why manufacturers don't consider using CAT5 Ethernet to control their footswitches. Blackstar uses a VGA monitor DB cable...really?

The overdrive channel was the biggest disappointment; got some tones out of it that were decent, but overall I got better overdrive and distortion tones with pedals in the clean channel. Channel 2's tones didn't translate in a live situation with my band.

The boost feature is cool, and the clean channel was better than I thought.

The value you get for the $ is where this amp shines; can't beat it. Does it sound like a boutique tube amp? Not to me. But, how many people in the audience will actually notice?