A key part of my guitar affliction is the related amplifier affliction.  While my family might propose that I have too many, I can always see place for at least one more.  I also tend to prefer the sound of valve (tube) driven amps and while I have bought and sold many, they always have one characteristic.  They’re really loud.So I wanted an amp that I could use for practice at night, at home, that would still deliver a good tone, would handle pedals well, had an FX loop, great reverb and didn’t need to be glass rattlingly loud to get there.  I went by my local shop, The Arts Music Store, and the very talented and genuinely nice Chris Spano invested the time to help me find something.  I had heard about the Blackstar HT-5R Mk II on the Anderton’s Music channel as well as some other decent low wattage amps.  Chris took me through a number of offerings, but I did not enjoy any of the solid state units.  I was ok with all valve, or valve preamp with solid state power amp based on the contestants.  In the end, It was down to the Fender Pro Junior IV or the Blackstar HT5R.  I liked the little Fender but found the Blackstar to be more flexible in terms of options and controls.Chris helped me decide between the combo version or the separate head and cabinet.  I chose the separate head (HT5RH Mk II) and cabinet route.  The cabinet is the HT-1120C Mk II which houses a 12 inch Celestion Seventy 80.What I love about the HT5RH is the flexibility.  This allows for two output levels, either full power or 10% power.  It’s the same circuit design as in the HT20R family and in my opinion perfect for home use because it is immediately switchable between 5 watts or 0.5 watts and while we know that we hear differently at different volumes, dropping the output does not result in the massive tone suck found so often in circuits of this type.Here’s the key features list;

• 5 watts / 0.5 watts
• Unique push/pull power amp design
• ECC83 preamp valve, 12BH7 power amp valve
• 2 channels
• Footswitchable voices for clean and overdrive
• USB Audio out
• Studio quality digital reverb
• 4-16 ohm speaker jack
• XLR DI output
• Stereo line / headphone output

There are two channels, Clean and Overdrive and each channel has two selectable voicings.  The first is the “American” voicing which I find very Fender like and the second is a “British” voicing which sounds to me more Vox / Hiwatt like than say Marshall.  Again, it’s an opinion and yours may differ.  Both my Marshalls are big 100w heads and they are, in my mind, unique sounding.  The amp came with a foot switch for channel and voice switching.  In practice scenarios, I tend to find myself using the American voicing more often, possibly because I am looking for that Fender sound for clean and jazz tones.  When in Overdrive mode, I use the different voicings depending on the pickups in the guitar that I am playing.  I will say that the little Blackstar is very good with all the different pickups that I have run through it, but is particularly nice with the Eric Johnson pickups in two of my Strats and really likes the Seymour Duncan Antiquity pickups in my early 70s Les Paul.  It even handles the pickups in the White Falcon very nicely, and in my experience getting a great tone from those can be a bit of work.It incorporates a redesigned Reverb.  I have no experience with the old reverb so all I can say is that this one sounds pretty nice.  I have a Keeley Caverns in the effects loop and use that more often than the built in reverb because the Caverns has an elegant and well controlled Shimmer facility that I really enjoy, particularly at low volumes.  The Clean channel has a simple layout, basically a volume knob, a tone knob and the voice button.  The OD channel adds a gain knob as well as separate bass, middle and treble controls in addition to the ISF function mentioned below.  The front panel also includes a master Reverb control, a channel switch button and the output power select buttonThe voicing is more finely controlled by the ISF function that Blackstar refers to as the Infinite Shape Feature.  It’s a variable pot that goes from the American to the British voicing and whatever you like in between.  This is particularly useful if you use the USB out to your DAW and want to include those voicings.The rear panel has the USB out, a level selectable (+4/-10db) effects loop, an MP3 player line in, a pair of emulated outputs, more on these next, three speaker outputs fusing and the mains connector.The amp also features an XLR out to DI, and the ISF function works there on the OD channel.  In addition there is a stereo ¼” jack for output.  There is also a push button to select between either 1x12 or 4x12 speaker emulation for the outputs.  The stereo line out can also be used as a headphone output.  This massive flexibility was a key differentiator for my use cases.Since this is my defacto practice amp, I wanted an FX loop as a place where I could trial pedals and I am a bit overzealous in determining what goes where.  The WL-50 Receiver goes into a Dunlop volume pedal which then goes to a Diamond Comp Jr.  The tuner out on the volume pedal goes to a Polytune 3 Mini.  From the Diamond, the signal moves to an Xotic RC Booster V2 and then to a Wampler Tumnus Deluxe and then to the amp’s input.  These are all excellent pedals and I find no line or tone loss up front.  The FX loop pops out to a Keeley 30MS doubler, then a Diamond Halo Chorus, and then to a Keeley Caverns before returning to the amp.  All the pedals are on a Pedaltrain Metro 20 board sitting on top of the amp head.  The board is not overly clean so it’s easy to wire up a new pedal anywhere I want it in the chain to try things out.  Before a pedal gets to another board it has to pass the test on the Blackstar board first, that’s how much I like and trust this amplifier.It’s not kidding that this head and cabinet practice rig cost a lot more than a similarly powered modelling solid state amp would have. It’s my money and my use cases and a number of other things that I tried simply did not sound acceptable to me where the Blackstar HT5RH Mk II has never let me done.Highly recommended