Blackstar Silverline Deluxe Head • Vox Cambridge50

BLACKSTAR’S NEXT-GEN SILVERLINE PROVES THAT DIGITAL IS THE NEW BLACK. REVIEW BY NICK GUPPY.

The Silverline series has a unique look in Blackstar’s catalogue: a light-grey vinyl coat teamed with a black and silver sparkle grille cloth, and a small silver badge instead of the familiar moulded plastic logo.The MDF cabinet surrounds a steel tray chassis, which contains the modular PCB electronics.

The dimensions are typical for a compact valve head, apart from the weight – there are no valves, and therefore no heavy transformers.

The USB connector allows direct recording and reamping, plus remote patch access, firmware updating and storage via Blackstar’s Insider app. The control panel features a six-position rotary switch to choose the basic voice, followed by familiar controls for gain, volume, bass mid and treble. Not so familiar (unless you’re already a Blackstar user) is the Infinite Shape Feature control, which adds further tonal versatility by continuously varying the EQ stack from classic British to USA response. This rotary selector provides six distinct responses based on the most popular valve output stages.

Next up are the Silverline’s digital effects, with three button switches and a knob to select the basic effects types, and an effects level control. There are also non-programmable master controls for presence, resonance and volume.Around the back there’s a sparsely populated rear panel with a pair of speaker jacks, footswitch and MIDI sockets, and a speaker-emulated phones/line-out jack together with an MP3/line-in. These last two can be reconfigured in Blackstar’s Insider app to run as a series effects loop.Overall, the Silverline Deluxe looks the part, especially atop its matching two-by-12-inch cabinet.

Rather than offer an impressionist’s repertoire of classic amplifiers from yesteryear, Blackstar’s Silverline features updated versions of the proprietary voices found on its ID series: Clean Warm and Clean Bright, Crunch and Super Crunch for light to medium drive sounds, and the well-known OD1 and 0D2 lead voices.

Combining the regular EQ controls, ISF control, resonance, presence and the TVP response switch, there’s a lot of tone-shaping flexibility. However, everything is arranged in an intuitive way, so it’s quick and easy to dial in the sounds you’re after. The Silverline’s two clean sounds are good for all vintage and modern styles. Clean Bright has a little extra gain as well as a tighter bass and extended high range, which works really well with single coils, while Clean Warm is ideal for humbuckers.

Crunch and Super Crunch add extra gain and enhanced dynamics, which sound great for blues and classic rock, while OD1 and OD2 pile on gain and sustain for high-energy solos, with OD2’s mid-boosted tone working better for single coils.

The True Valve Power response switch emulates EL84, 6V6, EL34, KT66, 6L6 and KT88 power stages, with compression and drive progressively reducing as you travel up from the EL84 setting to the KT88, which has the biggest, most open sound. The Silverline’s tones breathe and respond like a good valve amp, cleaning up as you back off with the pick or guitar volume control and increasing in bite and aggression as you dig in.

We used our regular Les Paul and Duncan Alnico Proloaded Strat alongside a Gibson Memphis ’63 ES-335 and found our favourite sounds using the four clean and crunch voices in combination with the EL84, 6V6

VERDICT

PROS and 6L6 TVP settings. This offered us a great selection of AC30-ish cleans and Tweed-inspired leads that covered everything from woody jazz tones to ‘70s classic rock.For modern rock and metal, the OD1 and OD2 voices are ready and waiting with enough gain and sustain to make even the weediest of single coils sound like the axe of a rock god.

Unlike amps that use effects to mask less-than-great core sounds, the Silverline’s onboard effects are the cherry on top of a very tasty cake, including four choices each for modulation, delay and reverb, with all three effects types able to run simultaneously.

With 100 watts powering the Silverline Deluxe’s two-by-12-inch, Celestion V-Type-loaded cabinet, this little beast has plenty of volume to handle any gig, as well as looking impressive on stage. It’s also a great studio companion, with a speaker-emulated line out and a USB socket for direct recording and reamping using Blackstar’s Insider app, which accesses the front panel controls and a few hidden functions, as well as being a storage library for your favourite patches.

CONS

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