This is the Blackstar St. James 6L6 Combo – one of six amps in Blackstar’s 2022 range that they claim are the world’s lightest 50-watt tube/valve amps!

Get the St. James 6L6 Combo here: [ Ссылка ]

Now, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to check out a few amps in the St. James range this year, mostly at Henning Pauly’s 42 Gear Street 4 event. I found them to be great sounding, extremely tonally flexible, easy to dial in, and – yes – exceedingly light!

There are currently six St. James amps in the range: two heads, two 1x12 combos, and two 2x12 combos. Each is available with either 6L6 (for all your high gain needs) or EL34 (for your classic rock tones) power tubes, and all come with ECC83 preamp tubes. For this video, Blackstar sent me the 6L6 combo (which is fitted with a Celestion Zephyr speaker), and the more time I spent with it, the more I realized that these amps actually contain many of the must-have features for every 21st century guitar player – and so in this video, we go through those features in detail.

The weight thing is a given – the combo is just 12.8 kg (that’s 28 lbs.), which is nothing compared to some of the competition. It’s also packed with extensive modern connectivity, power attenuation options (you can go from silent playing to the full-on 50 watts at the flick of a switch), and has access to Blackstar’s excellent Cab Rig technology, a next-generation DSP speaker simulator which gives you almost limitless tonal options via software and on the amp itself.

This would all mean nothing if the St. James sounded terrible, of course, and so I also put the amp through my standard stringent tonal tests here. Using my humbucker-equipped Epiphone Les Paul and my Fender Telecaster for single coil tones, I put the amp through its paces in the pop, funk, country, indie, rock, punk and metal genres, and we test how it takes pedals too.

After that, I give you my eight reasons as to why I think the St. James range should definitely be on your list to try if you’re in the market for a new guitar amp!

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:16 Introduction to the St. James range
01:34 Front panel features on the amp
03:35 Back panel features
05:42 Today’s rig and plan

Humbucker sound examples
06:24 Clean tones
08:44 Indie rock tones
10:22 Classic rock tones
11:45 Hard rock tones
13:15 Punk rock tones
14:06 Progressive rock tones
15:02 Metal tones

16:11 Running the Revv Tilt overdrive into the amp
16:26 Using the Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini as a boost

Single coil sound examples
16:50 Clean tones
18:29 Indie rock tones
19:36 Classic rock tones
20:58 Hard rock tones
22:21 Punk rock tones
22:59 Modern rock tones
23:55 Metal tones

24:54 Running the Revv Tilt overdrive into the amp
25:08 Running the Fender Tre-Verb into the FX Loop

27:14 My thoughts
27:57 REASON 1 – tones
29:38 REASON 2 – weight
31:46 REASON 3 – connectivity/features
32:30 REASON 4 – silent to stage
33:16 REASON 5 – Cab Rig
34:20 REASON 6 – pedal platform
35:05 REASON 7 – analog and digital technology
35:43 REASON 8 – price/value for money
36:48 What I don’t like about the amp
38:22 I should try the EL34 version!
38:54 What other similar amps are out there?
40:36 My conclusions on the St. James amps
41:27 Thanks and goodbye

My setup was as follows: I ran the St. James straight into my Mac, and recorded in Logic Pro X. That's it! No post-processing on the sounds was done.

Here’s some links to the pedals I used:

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Revv Tilt: [ Ссылка ]
Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini: [ Ссылка ]
Fender Tre-Verb: [ Ссылка ]
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Enjoy!

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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Blackstar #BlackstarAmps #BlackstarStJames #42GSFour


*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*

@Blackstaramps

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