Vintage and Rare Guitar

The Blackstar is a distortion pedal rich in even order harmonics, sweet tone, and LOADS of gain. The Blackstar essentially starts off where the Subdecay Liquid Sunshine stops. Almost as soon as the liquid sunshine was released, requests for MORE GAIN started piling up. The design we eventually settled on was inspired by Nicholas over at Catalinbread, playing riffs for me on a Super Chili Picoso booster pedal straight in to a Liquid sunshine pedal with all the knobs cranked. This was more or less a starting point. A few things had to be changed to give the effect the versatility to work with a wide range of amplifiers. The Blackstar signal path essentially is a mosfet gain stage proceeded by two jfet gain stages with a negative feedback network, followed by a passive tone and volume control. OK OK, if you really want the technical explanation skip down below. What you really want to know is: WHY DO I WANT ONE? In short, the Blackstar allows you to match the pedal to your guitar and amp... NOT the other way arround. Most high gain pedals fall flat because of their frequency response, or because all the distortion is produced in one gain stage. The frequency response problem can happen at the input or output of the effect. Too much bass response at the input can make the distortion muddy. Of course bass response is dependant on the guitar used, and most distortion pedals do not allow for tweaking pre-gain bass response. The lower drive knob is a bass frequency gain control and allows you to "match" the pedal to your guitar. Then there's the output. A lot of high gain pedals sound great at low volumes, but just don't cut through the mix at rehearsal or on stage. The Blackstars' tone control allows you to match the distortion to your amp, whether its a 1x10 combo, or a 4x12 stack. The Blackstar produces its distortion through cascaded gain stages, much like a tube amp. Each stage is a little different. The first stage uses a mosfet. The two following stages use hand picked jfets. Jfets are known for producing even harmonics when overdriven, much like tubes in guitar amps. Technical Explanation: The first stage is basically a mosfet booster with the gain knob all the way up. The input is very reactive to different types of guitar pickups, volume and tone controls. For the most versatility it is recommended that the blackstar be the first pedal in the signal chain or preceded by true bypass pedals. From there the signal goes to the lower drive knob, essentially controlling the gain of the lower frequencies. This is a little different than the liquid sunshine, and was necessary since lower frequencies can be overly emphasized in high gain circuits, and low end response of guitar pickups can vary widely. The signal from the lower drive knob then goes to the two jfet gain stages. The upper drive knob increases the overall gain of these two stages through a feedback network. The feedback network is a significant change form the liquid sunshine circuit, and allows for different flavors of distortion rather than a simple altered frequency response. Originally this knob was to be labeled saturation but it wouldnt fit in the graphics of the pedal. Turned to the right, not only is overall gain increased, but some compression is added as well. The tone control is the most the most obvious addition from the Liquid Sunshine Design. This was essential to make the Blackstar work with well with a wide range of guitar amps. Combo amps tend to favor the tone control to the left. Stack style amps tend to favor the tone control to the right. From there the signal goes straight to the passive volume control, and then to the effect output.