Blackstar HT5RH MKII 5-watt Tube Head with Reverb Reviews

I was looking for a low wattage head and wasn't quite sure if this would do the job. I am quite happy with it! I personally like the clean channel a lot more than I ever thought I would. The OD channels nail the tone I was hoping for, classic/ hard rock. Not sure how well it would do high gain but that's not my thing. I really don't use any OD or Distortion pedals with it. I think it is a winner!

I've owned more amps than I can remember, and most of them I acquired because of a specific need. This one may be the last amp I ever buy, because it covers all of the bases. I no longer gig, and even when I did, a 100 watt Marshall head was so much overkill. 99% of us aren't playing stadiums, and that is a lot of amp for a small club. This guy is plenty loud enough to get over a drummer. If you have a family and can't play solos on 11 in your house any longer, the switch to cut the volume to .5 watts is such a great feature. The amp tonally still sounds great at such a low wattage. That too loud? Plug in headphones and get as deaf as you want. Headphone quality is pretty great (not Orange Micro Dark great, but pretty close, you can just about get there with some knob fiddling or some pedals). Effects loop, a line-in to jam with tracks. This amp does every single thing I need an amp to do. And it sounds really great! It takes pedals so well. I mostly run the amp on the clean channel and just feed my pedals into it. The effects loop gets me the tone I am looking for with my pedals. I have a great little reverb pedal that I picked up someplace, but I hardly use it any more because the reverb on this amp sounds better, in my opinion. I consider this a practical amp, because it does everything I need, and I can play it without shaking the glass out of my window frames. I've been using this guy for over a year now, and I haven't once ever regretted buying it. I sold almost all of my other amp heads, because I just don't need them any longer. If you are looking for a practical amp with a wide range of volume options, and some really nice add-ons, this guy might be for you.

Thanks to Ryan Gregory at Sweetwater for helping me decide on which small tube amp to get. I have a number of amps, including an old Tweed Deluxe TV amp. I needed a low volume amp for practice, that included Reverb, a Headphone out jack and preferred a direct out to record also. Combined with the power reduction circuit that allows me to reduce the outage, this was the perfect amp for my purposes. The clean channel has enough headroom, even at 5-watts to get crystal clear tones. And being able to (using the Infinite Shape Feature) to go from essentially an over-driven American Fender sound to an over driven British sound makes this amp wildly versatile. I'm running it mainly through a 12" Celestion Vintage 30 single cab.

Awesome tone. Very versatile. This actually works out to being a 4 channel amp with the voice selection in each channel. I have played several styles of music through this - blues, country, jazz, pop, punk, rock, hard rock, and just about all forms of heavy metal. This head sounds great right out of the box, and it's easy to find any tone with just a little knob twisting.

Choices for recording are as diverse as you would ever expect to find. You get an emulator for simulated cabinets out. The USB out is worth the price of admission alone considering what tube interfaces are running. XLR, 1/4", 1/8", and USB - is there another way to get your signal to the recorder?

Great cleans, and they crunch up nicely at about 12 o'clock. It's not super loud when totally clean, but plenty for recording at about 100 dB at the cone. The upper registry of the clean tone actually serves as a nice crunch channel with just a little dialing. The .5w function keeps things nice and quiet for your sleeping significant other; phones too -

Killer overdrive; absolutely searing when maxed out. Anything from 60's British to 20's Black, and very responsive; growly and dark as I want for a black metal project. A little splash of overdrive almost picks up right where the clean breakup leaves off.

I have tried it through several speaker configurations, and the HT5 is incredible - 1x10 & 2x10 from the Marshall MS series (glassy); Marshall 2x12 (perfect); 4x12 V30's in Engl and Mesa - 5w gets soaked out pretty fast here - just too much speaker for 5w to drive. The 80/20's seemed a little tinny, but I like a lower/hot mid tone. I'm settling on a Silverline 2x12 V30's, and I imagine that this will be where it sits for the duration.

Blackstar was listening, and it shows.

This amp makes an incredible pedal platform. As a stand-alone amp, it is one of the better low-wattage, single-endes amps I've heard by far. I honestly wasn't expecting it to be this good. 5 watts can still be pretty loud with the right speaker and too, but if you love with other people or in an apt the 0.5 watt butting does make it instantly useable, a very nice feature. Effects loop, DI out, switchable channels each with their own switchable voicings, they packed a lot into this little amp, & honestly everything seems useable, even with sitting in between 2 high-end amps at the moment.

After 30+ years of gigging, those days are behind me now and all I need is tone that inspires me to play in a 6th floor apartment without getting evicted. But I also wanted something more than the 1 watt offerings in case I ever play parties & get-togethers again without a drummer drowning out my playing.

A tube amp was what I was looking for and I already had a solid speaker cabinet. I watched countless demo and review videos and noticed 2/3 liked this amp, 1/3 hated it. With Sweetwater's generous return policy, I took a flier. And man, am I glad I did!

With or without pedals, this amp covers all the rock, thrash & blues music I can push thru it. Even at half a watt power scaling, the tone isn't lost. This is quite likely the last amp I'll ever need for my purposes. If like me, you're on the fence about buying this head, let me assure you it won't disappoint. As far as longevity and road abuse issues, it's too soon to tell, but as I said, my days of dragging gear into dirty taverns or the backs of vans are well behind me so this isn't a concern.

Look over the many features you get for that almost budget price (for a proper tube head) and it's really a no-brainer.

Don't be fooled by the 5watt rating. This amp is loud, but it can also be quite as a church mouse. It also has some of the best guitar sounds I've ever heard come out of a stock amp head in over 50 years of playing. I had a Hughes Ketter TM18 and thought that was good but this amp eclipses that amp everyday of the week. Just check out the features and you'll have to agree that versatility is this amps middle name. I'm considering purchasing a second one to have sitting in my living room to plug into there. What an engineering marvel this amp is. Thanks to Jeff Barnett as always for excellent service and attention to detail, best Sweetwater salesperson hands down.

We purchased a Blackstar HT1RH MkII 1-watt head for studio use, and it's proven to be an amazing amp. After being blown away over and over by that amp, we just fell in love with the Blackstar sound,especially when recording with great mics,cabs,and guitars. So--- We made a wish list for it...an effects loop, speaker outs with various Ohm choices, ISF control PLUS standard 3-band EQ,etc. Well, yeehaw...We upgraded to an HT5RH MkII as soon as we found they had an affordable 5 watt version, with all the good stuff included! We are so satisfied... it's all the amp we expected it to be...plus more. Beautiful tube tones when matched with all kinds of mic'd cabinets and Gibson Les Paul's and Fender Strat's. Besides the real deal tube tone, and with all the clean/drive options being stellar, what we really love is that blessed ISF tone-knob providing a gazzillion "in-between EQ" choices, and harmonics with extra mojo. This amp, it can be plenty quiet with sweet cleans...or plenty loud and pure rock tone; when paired with a 75 watt Celestion 10" cab and a Stratocaster, it was VERY loud. Direct recording emulation is spot on, delivering that Blackstar sound to your DAW with no added noise. Nice!
Final word is ...we are blown away at how perfect the HT5RH MkII is as a studio amp. Fun and inspiring to play, too! Absolutely a steal at this price! We are considering a second one. Even though it has matched up pretty well with our HT1RH head, matching 5-watts would be close-to-Heaven perfect. If we do, we know who to call...Sweetwater has done us right so many times, it's a no-brainer.

I tried this amp based on reviews from a UK-based YouTube content provider and I have to agree with their very positive opinion. I have been playing guitar for a long time as a hobby, and have wanted a low-wattage amp that sounded "full" without being too loud for home use. Although it gets louder than I expected at 5 watts, it doesn't have to be cranked up to sound good. It sounds full in the low power setting. Going to the 5 watt output makes it louder but doesn't radically change the overall tone. To me, turning down the volume on many amps or using a master volume control typically changes the sound significantly. Not so much with this amp. Even though there is only a tone control on the clean channel, you can get everything from a clean, jazzy sound, to twang, depending on the pickups. You can overdrive the clean channel to get decent breakup. The amount of varied tones in the 2nd channel is hard to describe (or understand). Between your guitar and the tone/gain/volume controls on the amp you can get a lot of different sounds. The tone controls seem to be pretty interactive and make the most significant changes at the far end of their ranges. (Sometimes the the change in sound is subtle,) I am not a metal player - the bottom end is full, but not huge and probably wouldn't suit metal. I also bought the matching Blackstar cabinet (1x12) which is pretty much a perfect match. (I bought a demo head from Sweetwater. It arrived in perfect condition with no indication it had every been used, which made this an even better deal.)

I didn't pay much attention to Blackstar until recently. It appears they cut through the wool and established themselves as a viable option (granted its origin for some). MK II's seem to have upped the game along with the new St. James Series. I had difficulty with all my tube amps vol down at home and took a chance on this one. I'm so impressed with the tone, even the digi-verb, both clean and dirty, and the ability to coax out low volume, tone, and also the cranked-up volume on either ch. I have a few cabs to choose from and most sound great with this amp (112/212) but have been using it mostly with an oversized 112 with a V type. Liking it so much, I bought a 6L6 MK II Club 40 combo from SW, and both are impressive. This one is a little better at night, but the 40 can drop down to bedroom levels too and is a seriously killer amp. This is a great little amp, but don't cut yourself short on a good, oversized cab. The BS vert 212 would be my choice but I have too many cabs, and the 70/80s or whatever are not my 'cup o tea' on the MK II series but would think they will sound great with this head. Or, Go with some Vin 30s, V type, A-Type, G backs, or maybe Creams. Headphone and DI work well, but mainly use it as a standalone amp. If these amps had an off/on on the fS for the loop, they may be hands down the best value for tone and flexibility.

I had been searching for a practice amp to be able to play at bedroom level volumes. I first tried the Fender Bassbreaker 15 based on the great reviews I had read about it. When I received it and tried it out, I wasn't impressed at all. It sounded cold and lifeless to me. I know Blackstar receives underserved hate from some people, but I decided to take a chance on this one, and was pleasantly surprised. It absolutely "smoked" the Bassbreaker. No comparison IMO. It is highly tweakable. The clean channels are "clean" and I can get some very pleasing tones from them. The gain channels are fantastic. This is where the amp shines. You just have to be patient and tweak the knobs to get the sound you are after. Also, what is great is the included footswitch, and the ability to change from 5 watts to 1 watt. If you are worried about it not being loud enough, don't worry it is. In the five watt setting, I can't turn it up past three without it being too loud. For the price, you just won't find a better practice amp IMO. Blackstar gives you a tone of value for what you pay for it. The only negative thing about the amp, is the reverb. It is a little weak IMO. I am using a reverb pedal to address that issue. Other than that, the amp has met all of my needs perfectly. I have now become a Blackstar fan!

I have married the app with a 412 and a 212,. I have also hooked it up to a single 12. I'm unimpressed by the bass response, but that's expected. I believe the amp is overpriced for its class.. I was more impressed with the five watt Bugera. I believe this amp would benefit from an EQ pedal. The difference between modern and classic is minimal. The difference between British and American is slight. More time will give me more ability to marry it with a different pedals and cabs in hopes of exacting a desirable tone. The clean shot channel is completely functional and it's probably where it actually shines..
Understanding that this is a hybrid amp you would recognize the reasons for its tonality. Very useful in the studio. Takes the pedals front end decently. But I have had some issues with the loop.
I give it the three stars basically for its utility , taking away a half a star for its price.

Back to the drawing board, however this fills the need for the time being.

Maybe I received a lemon but the footswitch was broken. The heavier tones aren't bad but I would not recommend this amp

I'm not sure if there is a fuse issue, or something shorted, but as soon as I got it, it didn't work out of the emulated output (headphones), or out of the USB. Which is a shame since I was really excited to try this out. Apparently these are known issues on the forum and it's just a luck of the draw.