Blackstar St. James 50-watt Tube Head with 6L6 Tubes Reviews
Everyone from jazz box architects to 8-string sweepers will find a lot to love in the Blackstar St. James 50-watt Tube Head. As Blackstar's lightest and most innovative head available, the St. James is tailor-made for studio and stage musicians seeking an all-in-one amp to handle everything from DI recording to live performance and beyond. St. James heads are constructed from candlenut plywood, reducing the weight significantly while maintaining the look and feel of a boutique amplifier. Its two channels are perfect for guitarists seeking crystal cleans and overdriven tones, with onboard toggles and an included external footswitch to meet your switching preferences. Best of all, the St. James comes stock with onboard cabinet simulation and power reduction — adding features like this to your rig often comes with a substantial price tag, but that's not the case here! Incredible sound for any situation is yours for the taking with Blackstar's St. James 50-watt Tube Head.
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Highest Rated Reviews
Fantastic amp
What attracted me most to the amp was it's blend of the old (tubes) with the new (all the great Cab Rig and recording capabilities). Of course, it has to sound good and this amp has that in spades! The clean channel is a great platform for pedals and the gain channel is perfect for heavy music where you need the crunch and the scream of some feedback. Much is made about the weight of this amp, and having picked up some very heavy heads and combos in the past, this thing is a joy to move around if you need to. Very excited to play through this every day and recording from it.
Wow!
I believe that the engineers at BLACKSTAR are old farts like me! They got it down with this one. Tone, headroom, great clean and extremely useful and lush Lead channel AND easy to carry. No grunting necessary! Aces BLACKSTAR!
From the bedroom to the stage
Spend like a year searching for an amp that would check all my boxes. Which included: 2 channel amp that I could play at home (in an apartment), as well keep up with a heavy handed drummer. Also, the usable headphone output was an extra plus as my wife works nights, so I cannot uses my speaker cab. I'm not usually a big fan of connecting an amp through a computer to adjust settings, but their cab sim is super easy to use, and I only had to do it once since I got it. All the headphone cabs are dialed in. I also love the balanced xlr out. It makes recording demos super easy plugging straight into my Scarlett focusrite 2i2.
My main genre I play is rooted in pop punk, so I did not need extreme gain. But it's nice to have it on tap. I like it at the low gain channel with the gain set to about 1 o'clock. It certainly gets me those warm thick power chords that I'm used to with my other amps. The clean channel does what I need it to do, be clean! The reverb built in fine, but I prefer the sound of spring reverb, so, a reverb pedal might be necessary if you want that sound. Glad there's an effects loop!
All in all, this amp works for the modern day musician. Sounds great, versatile and light.
