I've been using for about a year now in a whole host of environments and usage scenarios so I thought I'd share my experiences.
Features
As printed by Blackstar:
- Genuine valve design
- Operates at 300V HT
- Cascaded valve gain stages
- Responds like a valve amp
- 2 channel operation
- Clean, Crunch & Lead modes
- Unique switching operation
- Unique enhanced tone controls
- Patented Infinite Shape Feature (ISF)
- Fully equipped for stage or studio
- Speaker emulated output
- High integrity buffered bypass
- Power supply included
- Silent switching
So Blackstars usual feature list for an amp really. Their ISF feature is a very useful feature that can be used to differentiate your tone from the sound of another guitarist in your band or for creating big layered sounds in the studio.
Controls
The HT Dual actually has a lot of tone shaping control on the main panel. The number of dials is actually similar to the front panel of any simple amp. You have seperate gain and volume controls for each channel, and a shared tone section of bass mid and treble with the added bonus of Blackstars ISF control which darkens and sweetens the overall feeling. They say that it makes the tones more "British" or "American". So once you've set your tone in the neutral position you can shape a little more to hit the sweet spot that resonates with you.
The first of the two channels is also actually split into two distinct operating modes controlled by a small switch labelled Gain 1. The clean setting has a gain range that goes from sparkly clean, round to a nearly crunch, cranked-clean breakup. A great sound for clean leads and trying your hardest to do a Jimmy Page impression. When set to Crunch, channel 1 takes on a gritty hard rock character, suitable for music ranging from AC/DC to Foo Fighters. At maximum gain here, you can get well into hard rock rhythm territory and maybe bordering on some light lead tones.
The second channel is very much your high gain setting and covers a lot of ground from the worlds of rock and metal. While not having quite enough gain to do the most modern high gain tones, it does get most of the way there and it's very satisfying.
The Sounds
This pedal can be used in a variety of ways both in front of an amp or straight into your recording interface for recording; as a clean valve boost stage, a crunchy rock tone, or straight out high gain for leads and rhythms.
Using the emulated speaker output you can run directly into your recording hardware and get all of the valve-like tones that your amp emulation software would struggle with. I'm not going to say it's the best speaker emulation out there, but it does sound fairly good once you've built up a few layers in the recording.
Of course, this unit sounds most at home in front of a tube amp played through speakers. The three distinct operational modes all sound there best here too. I have also used it in front of solid state and modelling amps to add a bit of valve character to the input (but for me that was only a stop gap to actually getting a tube amp).
I like to use this pedal in two ways into my amp. I have it setup primarily to provide all of my tones through the clean channel, so I get a just breaking up clean tone with a crunch if you really hit it from channel one and a high gain setting from channel two. Add these to the pedal being off and I have three channels in one, from just my HT-5 practice amp. The second setup, is a fluke really. I set my my amp to channel two and it's gain to about 10 or 11 o'clock, then use the clean side of the pedal as a clean boost with the same settings as the slightly crunchy clean tone I get in my amps first channel. You get a really nice snappy drive sound out of it, not dissimilar to tones you might hear from Tom Morello on RATM and Audioslave records.
Bonus features
I bought a couple of brands of 12AX7 and ECC83 to see what kind of effect it had on the tone shaping controls and the tones I could get out of the pedal. In the end I stuck with a Mesa Engineering 12AX7 replacement pre-amp tube. I think it cost about £10 from one of the many major music equipment stores here in the UK. I found this tube just gave me that little bit of extra snap and a touch more gain in the metal end of the settings.
Anything negative to say about it?
If anything, one thing that drags the HT-Dual down is the relatively poor noise performance. It could easily be my pedal chain that is putting a little more noise into the signal, but in the high end of the gain scale there is quite a bit of hiss and hum going on. It's not the end of the world, as it's only really audible when your not playing. It could be controlled quite simply with a decent noise gate.
The only other minor niggle (but which is actually a necessary design feature) is the 16A AC power supply, which is not usually covered by most multi output power supply units. Only a couple of boutique-type brands produce one with that output, and they are pricey!
In The End
This pedal is really versatile and covers virtually all the tonal ground you could want in a valve distortion pedal. In many ways it is like having a two channel amp in a pedal. My only gripe with that is if you have a really good amp, then this will offer you a lot less, except maybe for the clean boost settings. The drive tones are great, and a superb choice for anyone with very limited settings on their amp, or a lack of channels.N.B. I'm about to acquire a Blackstar Series One 45 combo and I'm a little worried this pedal will need to be moved on to a new home, where it will actually get some use after this week.
