Blackstar Series One 200 200W Tube Guitar Amp Head
Blackstar builds the 200W Series One S1-200 tube guitar amp head with intuitive controls, comprehensive range, and sturdy construction to stand the rigors of the road.

The amplifier head's unique Bright/Warm switch control actually reconfigures the pre-amplifier voicing and power amplifier damping to reproduce either ringing Class A performance in the Bright mode, or crunchy Class AB tones in the Warm setting.

Blackstar paid careful attention to the amp's available overdrive levels when designing the S1-200 head's Crunch Channel. Blackstar wanted to cover the widest range of crunch gain levels from just on the edge of clean break-up, to crushing modern rhythm tones. To this end the Crunch/Super Crunch switch alters both gain levels and tonal shaping for maximum crunch flexibility.

The overdrive channels are characterized by a tone that's high in gain, but lacks any of the detached top-end often found in many similar designs. This is a result of unique preamplifier and power amplifier shaping techniques, which also benefit the player in the way the overdrives clean up beautifully as the guitar volume is reduced.

Even at the most extreme settings, the S1-200 tube amp's overdrive channels remain natural sounding. The ISF (Infinite Shape Feature) control is unique to Blackstar Amplification and represents a major step forward in tone shaping flexibility. The ISF control shifts the response of the three-control tone stack between a US response at one end and a UK response at the other. As a result, an infinite number of alternative tone choices lies in between that would be otherwise unavailable.

Completing the tonal feature set is another unique Blackstar innovation—the DPR (Dynamic Power Reduction) system. DPR reduces the power of the output stage from full power (200W) down to 10% (20W) and any power output in between. This means that the full tonal depth of the KT88 power amplifier can be enjoyed at any volume, making the S1-200 ideal for recording, smaller gigs and even home practice use. Working in conjunction with the power amplifier voltages, this method of power reduction suffers none of the loss in tone of other power reduction systems.

The tonal flexibility of the S1-200 is augmented by full MIDI implementation of the main channel switching functions. Used in conjunction with outboard gear such as multi-effects units, MIDI allows a whole new level of creative performance to be explored.