Review : Blackstar St. James Amplifier Plugin
Not an actual amplifier, instead a really great amplifier plugin
Hi folks. In this article we are going to take a look at the recently released Blackstar St. James amplifier plugin. Last year I did a review on the physical St. James amplifier, specifically the EL34 version that you can read right here. To summarize, I though that the Blackstar St. James was and is a terrific tube amplifier of highly mobile weight with excellent tone. The EL34 version sounds like a British amp, while the 6L6 version sounds California American, or for the same of clarity like early Marshalls and black face Fenders. My words, not Blackstar’s and my saying this is my opinion, the legal seagulls that chase that sort of thing can go bob for French fries elsewhere.
In that review, I also talked about Blackstar’s control software called Architect and my experience and the screenshots so a clean easy to follow layout. All great stuff.
I recently received notice from Blackstar of the release of the Blackstart St. James plugin. This plugin includes both the EL34 and 6L6 amp simulations, multiple cabinet sims and a number of virtual effects pedals.
What Is It?
The Blackkstar St. James plugin is an audio plugin to be used in your DAW in the input channel track to be used to add the sound and feel of a Blackstar St. James tube amplifier. The plugin includes both the EL34 and 6L6 versions. Blackstar says the the plugins can run in your DAW or as standalones. I am using the free trial for my test. I went for the DAW use for my review. The plugin is a downloadable purchase that costs $99 USD and once installed requires a free iLok account to activate. Lot’s of software uses iLok and it is in my experience considerably less burdensome and filled with cruft than other copy protection methodologies. I installed the plugin, logged into my iLok account and activated the plugin. Took all of two minutes and when I next launched Logic Pro, there was a new Audio Units option called Blackstar with the St. James option.
The plugin is made available in Logic Pro like any other plugin. For my testing, I dropped it as the first and only effect on the guitar input channel. I was using an Apollo Twin X as my interface, but any interface supported by your operating system that can get signal to your DAW will work.
The plugin is not very demanding, wanting 8GB of memory available on the computer, Windows 8 or higher and 350mb disk space, or macOS Catalina or higher and 700 mb of disk space. My installation is on a Mac as I have removed Windows machines from my studio entirely.
While the plug in can run standalone, (it is called St. James) most people are going to use it in a DAW for recording purposes. The supported DAWs are:
ProTools 2023.6 or later AAX
Logic Pro 10.7.8 or later AU
Cubase 12.0.60 or later, VST
Ableton Live 11.3.3 or later, Mac: AU & VST; Windows: VST
Reaper 6.80 or later, Mac: AU & VST; Windows: VST
Presonus Studio One 6.1.0 or later, Mac: AU & VST; Windows: VST
FL Studio 21.0.3 or later, VST
Reason 12.5.1 or later, VST
When you download you only need choose the operating system. The plugin may be active concurrently on up to three machines. Other plugin vendors, can you hear me Waves? should be this simple.
The folks who designed the Blackstar St. James amps and Blackstar claims it is the most authentic guitar amp plugin available. As “authentic” mis a high scorer in my game of bullshit bingo, I will say that for me it is the most accurate plugin of a Blackstar amp that I have ever heard. Blackstar says it is designed, not modelled, but I do not know what that means when it is at home, so I will put that in the mcmarketing bin and stick with the practical use.
In Use
As you can see above, the plugin provides a different face depending on whether you choose the EL34 or 6L6 version. The controls are identical. The St. James amplifier is a two channel design with Volume I being the clean channel and Gain II and Volume II delivering the overdriven channel, although you can push either channel into internal overdrive if you so choose. The tone stack of Bass, Middle and Treble are shared. There is a microswitch in the plugin for channel switching and a second microswitch for channel 2 to engage a clean boost on the EL34 and a Voice change on the 6L6. There is a “built in” spring reverb that sounds very nice. There is also a power level switch to select between SAG and 50w. The overall output is controlled by a Master Volume. By default when launched the amp is powered on and available, however you have two virtual switches for Standby and Power, just like on the regular head.
Below each head is a selector bar. This bar allows you to control the input level, important to get the best level on your interface, an internal noise gate that I found very effective with noisy pickups, then a Mono / Stereo switch followed by five window selectors. By default, the plugin comes up in AMP mode. PRE-FX takes you to the built in virtual effects loaded in front of the preamp section. CABRIG is where you can choose the cabinet(s), room size and microphone(s) used for the cabinet simulation. It looks different from the Architect app but is very easy to use, not unlike Two Notes’ excellent Torpedo Remote. POST-FX takes you to the window for effects that would normally sit in an effects loop. EQ takes you to the window for the four band semi-parametric EQ. If you are familiar with Blackstar pedals, you know that their branding for these tools is Dept. 10, which I take to be the Blackstar version of Q Branch without the exploding stuff or ejection seats. The final knob is the overall output, very useful for balancing the output of the sim into the DAW.
PRE-FX
The PRE-FX section brings us four pedals that we can activate and tweak as we wish. We have a simple compressor that offers rudimentary control of compression level, blend of wet and dry signal and whether the compressor attacks slow or fast. These are very basic controls. useful to most, but anathema to real compression geeks. The Drive has two types, once called Overdrive and one labeled TS. The box does not change colour when you choose TS however neat-o that might be. You have gain, level and tone controls. Again pretty simple, but I was able to get a pleasing sustaining overdrive without much fussing about. The TS option is pretty accurate and as I expected, I personally do not care for it. The Chorus pedal is a very decent not whoosh filled chorus with controls for speed, depth and width. Think CE-1 or something similarly simple and easy to use. With the Sync on, the pedal adjusts the speed to match the tempo of your session. The phaser simulates an unnamed three knob phaser with speed, depth and width options. The Sync switch performs the same function as on the chorus and the Res switch adjusts the resonance of the filter sweep. It is, in my opinion, like the other PRE-FX pedals a very good place to start, and maybe finish for lots of players.
CABRIG
The CABRIG is a lovely thing that allows you to have stereo output on two different (or identical) cabinets of your choice. You also have a selection of microphones to use for each cabinet and can choose to have the microphone on or off axis. In this version, there is no method to control the distance between the cabinet and the microphone, so no Jimmy Page distance miking for you at this point.
Cabinet options include;
HT Club 40 1x12
Artist 15 1x12
St. James 1x12
Artisan 15 1x12
Artisan 30 2x12
St. James 2x12
Series One 4x12 A
Artisan 4x12 A
Series One Pro 4x12 B
The documentation on the cabinets is pretty skint. I would have preferred a drill in on the app/plugin that would give more information on the individual cabinets and to have them fully documented in the separately downloadable manual. If that information is included, I could not find it.
Microphone options include;
57 Dynamic
421 Dynamic
67 Condenser
414 Condenser
121 Ribbon
160 Ribbon
Blackstar is cautious not to specific which microphones specifically that they are simulating. I understand that this is a legal thing. In my opinion the mike sims are quite good. Definitely worth what you pay for and in my opinion nearly as accurate as the Two Notes mic sims. Not the UA level, but also not requiring a super expensive modelling microphone either. All things considered, likely all most folks will need.
This section also allows you to simulate the size of the room that you are playing in. Size options are Small, Medium and Large and Width options are Close, Spaced and Wide. These are admittedly pretty generic so my recommendation is try combinations to get a sound that you like. Again the more expensive Two Notes options allow for materials options, but most folks will not care at all.
POST-FX
There are four effects in this area and as is reasonable for a plugin of this price point, the order is fixed. The first is a Flanger. It is modelled on an old four knob flanger although it has only speed, depth and width options, like the modulation effects in the PRE-FX section. There is the same Sync switch and a Manual switch that controls the range of the sweep. It can be very subtle all the way to swoosh.
The Tremolo is what you would expect, with the now common speed, depth, width and sync controls. A nice addition is a switch from traditional tremolo to harmonic tremolo. I preferred the harmonic trem, but as I rarely use trem ever, I’m not really qualified to pass judgement.
The Delay pedal is very nice. It has time, feedback (repeats), mix (wet/dry),saturation and tone knobs as well as the expected Sync switch. Remember that the system can be set for stereo mode, and this where you would leverage the 3 position normal, wide and ping pong switch. There is also a tap tempo button in the plugin and it’s actually more useful than you might expect. The Saturation control provides the ability to overdrive the input virtual preamp, to get Echoplex like overdriven repeats. The Tone knob is particularly cool in my opinion. At noon it’s neutral but go counter clockwise to get a bucket brigade style tone or clockwise to get a tape style tone. Not like the real thing, but a really good start considering it’s part of the overall rig. If you turn the Mix fully clockwise, you get an effective Kill-Dry.
The Reverb pedal gives other reverb options to the in amp spring sounding reverb. The knobs control room size, wet / dry mix and overall tone to the reverb. There is a switch to select between Hall and Plate and another switch to select if you want a Wide field or not. As in the delay turning the Mix all the way clockwise invokes a Kill-Dry.
EQ
The EQ pictured above is a nice and simple four band semi-parametric eq. Each band has four frequency centres to select from as well as +-15 dB of boost or cut. Each band is individually controllable for power. There are both a low cut and a high cut knob. Each can be individually powered and the knobs allow you to fine tune the corner frequencies of these filters. They have no actual numbers and should be seen as gross as opposed to fine controls. Note that this is semi-parametric as you cannot control the width of the parameter setting.
Plugin Summary
Each of the sections in the main selector has it’s own power switch so you can disable or enable entire sections at once. So you could kill the amp and / or cab sims if you wished, although I confess, I have no idea why you would if you are using the plugin. Each effect also has its own on/off stomp style switch which being a live player, I find more usable.
Audio Samples
In this short clip, I used the following equipment and settings. The guitar was my ‘72 Les Paul. It is my first Les Paul, in cherry sunburst bought second hand in 1974. It started life as a Les Paul Deluxe but the first owner used a chisel to open up the pickup recesses to take humbuckers. I have no idea what they were. The tuners were replaced with MOP Grovers and an inlay matching the rest was put into the first fret. It comes from the Norlin era, so the sunburst was plainly sprayed by a blind person late on a Friday. To this day, it’s still blood red at the edges. I had the original humbuckers replaced with some recommended Seymour Duncans, but they never really won me over. A couple of years back I replaced those with a set of Seymour Duncan Antiquity pickups and rewired the instrument with new pots to fifties wiring. It sounds much better. As with many Norlin era instruments, it is a sandwich body that does nothing for resonance and it weighs heavily on the neck and shoulders at that far from svelte weight of 10 lbs. It plays fantastic though and while it will need a regret on its next major go round, it is still very pleasant. Like many heavy guitars even with the excellent pickups and corrected wiring, it’s pretty dark.
I plugged the Les Paul directly to the Hi Z input on a UA Apollo which feeds Logic Pro. I created four different tracks and on each track independently activated the St. James plugin on the input channel strip for each track. In the plugin, I deactivated the PRE-FX, the POST-FX and the semi parametric EQ. On the virtual amp panel I set all the tone controls to noon. The Clean options had a bit of amp reverb and used amp channel one. The OD options had no amp reverb with Gain at 10 o’clock and all other controls the same as clean, except that I used amp channel two and activated the boost on the EL34 and the second Voice on the 6L6.
The clean samples go into a St. James 2x12 with a 57 mic and a St. James 1x12 with a 160 ribbon. The OD samples go into an Artisan 4x12 A with a 57 mic and a Series One 4x12 B with a 160 ribbon.
The samples in the audio are in order EL34 Clean, EL34 OD, 6L6 Clean and 6L6 OD.
Conclusions
There is a lot here for $99 USD. That’s close to the going rate for what I think are the best amp sims in the world, which are the ones from Neural. I own many of those and every one that I have is really accurate. I do not own either St. James amplifier, but i thought very highly of the EL34 version that I had on evaluation for a week or so. This is a really nice and versatile plugin. While I might be inclined to use it mostly for recording, it’s low demands mean that it could replace carrying an amp to a gig needing only a laptop and a basic interface to take the guitar input and feed the house PA. Definitely portable and you can get a sense of the sound from the samples. I would encourage anyone interested to download the 14 day free trial and if you like it, you buy it and if you don’t, no pain no foul. My only issues are the lack of detailed information on the cabinets and that the manual that you download separately is so skint. Perhaps most people never read manuals. I always do, and poor manuals annoy me. In the course of my evaluation, Blackstar alerted me of an upgrade to the plugin to v1.01 to correct some customer issues. The documentation was non-existent and I learned the hard way that for success, I needed to shutdown and restart the Mac and then do the install. I did it the non-restart way first and then wasted a lot of time with crashes in the plugin as well as it crashing Logic Pro. Plainly even though neither Logic Pro nor the standalone were active, something from when they had been was sitting in memory and was not properly updated. Such is software. I think it is a decent plugin. You get two distinct amp structures, each with two distinct channels, some decent virtual pedals, a number of cabinet options and microphones. It may be a bit pricey considering that you can buy Amplitude with a ton of amps for about three times the price and get more effects, however, in my opinion, the excellent UI counts for a lot and I personally dislike tools that encourage option paralysis. You will have to decide for yourself if the cost is worthwhile to you, but I think that for $99 as a perpetual license with ongoing updates it’s a decent value.
Thanks as always for reading, and until next time, peace.
