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Great Sounds; Incredible Value for Money
Blackstar ID:X Floor One
Look, I know some of these reviews are like wading through treacle, and you can see loads of stuff on YouTube etc, so I’ll start with the essential need-to-know stuff.
Full Disclosure: I’m a very poor guitarist recording my own indie/dreampop style stuff, and looking for an easy to use multi-effect amp modeller with varied preset/user patches, to go straight into my Mac (Logic Pro X). If you’re looking for the authentic sound of a 1962 vintage AC30 with twin overhead cam and Ju87 ribbon mic, I’d be the wrong person to ask.
For the rest of us, there’s really no good reason not to buy this thing, as it represents incredible value for money, and sounds great. If you’re going to use it live, you’d be better off springing for the Floor Three (easier footswitch navigation, assignable expression pedal, effects loop and effect freeze function).
Personally, I like the user-interface, as I had an old Boss multi effect unit which was similar, involving a bit of scrolling through pages with the aid of a small screen. Competing products in the same price range tend towards the ‘dragging things around on a touch-screen’ model, and interracting with mobile devices: not my bag. I found it pretty intuitive and easy to use, while the build feels satisfyingly robust.
The Headline Features
Three Kinds of Stereo Output: 2 x XLR; Headphones/Line Out; USB-C direct to your DAW.
Uses standard 9v Power Supply.
33 Banks of Patches with 3 Patches in each, so 99 in total (see below). Lots of great sounds, ranging from Ambient, Blues and New Wave to the usual Metal vibes (or simply use in Manual Mode).
Huge flexibilty in how you can mix and match the various amps, cabs, valves and effect voices.
Built in Noise Gate, Tuner and Tap feature (you can assign different time values for separate effects in the same patch, eg Delay and Flange).
The Manual
You don’t get a physical manual, and it’s readily available online, so I won’t duplicate much of it here, other than to point out some of the stuff it doesn’t tell you. By the way, Blackstar, if you’re going to publish your manuals online, please don’t make the front and back covers solid black – some of us are going to print these out!
The Patches (no info in manual)
Banks 1-13: 39 Guitar Patches (ranging from ‘Glassy Clean’ to ‘Shoegaze Wall of Sound’).
Bank 14: Three kinds of Acoustic Sim Patches (sounding pretty reasonable).
Banks 15-28: Duplicate Patches of Banks 1-14 (handy if you want to adapt for your own patches).
Banks 29-31: 9 Bass Patches (based on modelled bass amps – all seem very useable).
Banks 32-33: Designed for Acoustic Guitars with a pickup.
Patches are navigated on the Floor One by pressing the ‘up’ and ‘down’ footswitches, and simply scrolling through the entire library. Each Bank contains three patches which are organised so that patch 1 is a clean amp voice, 2 crunch, and 3 is overdrive-based. Strangely, the layout of patches within a bank seems pretty arbitrary (Solo Funk is next to Modern Psych...me neither!). If I was using this live, I’d want a clean and crunch version of the same sound within the same bank, with a driven/boosted version for power. Obviously, you can do this yourself, if needed. You’ll need to decide which banks to over-write if you want to save your own patches (the manual describes how to do this). I would suggest it might be less stressful to copy the patch to its destination first, before you start editing it). Assuming you wish to keep all of the original preset patches, there are 48 user patches available. As an aside, many of these are perfectly useable for synths, drum machines etc.
Amps/Effects/Valves/Cab Sims
These are covered in depth in the Manual. All the parameters are widely tweakable and satisfyingly deep and flexible, for instance: 12 Guitar Amps, 3 Bass Amps, 10 kinds of Modulation, 5 Reverbs etc. Plenty of cool stereo options available too.
Hope you guys find this useful!
Look, I know some of these reviews are like wading through treacle, and you can see loads of stuff on YouTube etc, so I’ll start with the essential need-to-know stuff.
Full Disclosure: I’m a very poor guitarist recording my own indie/dreampop style stuff, and looking for an easy to use multi-effect amp modeller with varied preset/user patches, to go straight into my Mac (Logic Pro X). If you’re looking for the authentic sound of a 1962 vintage AC30 with twin overhead cam and Ju87 ribbon mic, I’d be the wrong person to ask.
For the rest of us, there’s really no good reason not to buy this thing, as it represents incredible value for money, and sounds great. If you’re going to use it live, you’d be better off springing for the Floor Three (easier footswitch navigation, assignable expression pedal, effects loop and effect freeze function).
Personally, I like the user-interface, as I had an old Boss multi effect unit which was similar, involving a bit of scrolling through pages with the aid of a small screen. Competing products in the same price range tend towards the ‘dragging things around on a touch-screen’ model, and interracting with mobile devices: not my bag. I found it pretty intuitive and easy to use, while the build feels satisfyingly robust.
The Headline Features
Three Kinds of Stereo Output: 2 x XLR; Headphones/Line Out; USB-C direct to your DAW.
Uses standard 9v Power Supply.
33 Banks of Patches with 3 Patches in each, so 99 in total (see below). Lots of great sounds, ranging from Ambient, Blues and New Wave to the usual Metal vibes (or simply use in Manual Mode).
Huge flexibilty in how you can mix and match the various amps, cabs, valves and effect voices.
Built in Noise Gate, Tuner and Tap feature (you can assign different time values for separate effects in the same patch, eg Delay and Flange).
The Manual
You don’t get a physical manual, and it’s readily available online, so I won’t duplicate much of it here, other than to point out some of the stuff it doesn’t tell you. By the way, Blackstar, if you’re going to publish your manuals online, please don’t make the front and back covers solid black – some of us are going to print these out!
The Patches (no info in manual)
Banks 1-13: 39 Guitar Patches (ranging from ‘Glassy Clean’ to ‘Shoegaze Wall of Sound’).
Bank 14: Three kinds of Acoustic Sim Patches (sounding pretty reasonable).
Banks 15-28: Duplicate Patches of Banks 1-14 (handy if you want to adapt for your own patches).
Banks 29-31: 9 Bass Patches (based on modelled bass amps – all seem very useable).
Banks 32-33: Designed for Acoustic Guitars with a pickup.
Patches are navigated on the Floor One by pressing the ‘up’ and ‘down’ footswitches, and simply scrolling through the entire library. Each Bank contains three patches which are organised so that patch 1 is a clean amp voice, 2 crunch, and 3 is overdrive-based. Strangely, the layout of patches within a bank seems pretty arbitrary (Solo Funk is next to Modern Psych...me neither!). If I was using this live, I’d want a clean and crunch version of the same sound within the same bank, with a driven/boosted version for power. Obviously, you can do this yourself, if needed. You’ll need to decide which banks to over-write if you want to save your own patches (the manual describes how to do this). I would suggest it might be less stressful to copy the patch to its destination first, before you start editing it). Assuming you wish to keep all of the original preset patches, there are 48 user patches available. As an aside, many of these are perfectly useable for synths, drum machines etc.
Amps/Effects/Valves/Cab Sims
These are covered in depth in the Manual. All the parameters are widely tweakable and satisfyingly deep and flexible, for instance: 12 Guitar Amps, 3 Bass Amps, 10 kinds of Modulation, 5 Reverbs etc. Plenty of cool stereo options available too.
Hope you guys find this useful!
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