NAMM 2022: Coming in to this year's NAMM show, we were keen to see Blackstar's new St. James guitar amps, which the company touted as as “the lightest 50-watt valve guitar amps on Earth.”
Shortly before the show started though, we got wind of another new Blackstar product that excited us just as much – the Carmen Vandenberg CV10.
A 10-watt version of the Bones UK electric guitar player and Jeff Beck collaborator's signature Blackstar CV30 amp – which was first unveiled last January – the CV10 was born of calls to house the tonal palette of the CV30 in a lower-wattage, more compact chassis.
Like its older sibling, the CV10 is based around a 6L6 power section. Its sonic character also comes from a single ECC83 tube and 12" Celestion Seventy-80 speaker. You can see Vandenberg take it for a spin in the demo above.
The CV10's control set is more streamlined than the CV30's, with a master volume, plus knobs for Gain, Tone and Reverb. Like the CV30 though, the CV10 features a small button on its front panel that engages a built-in overdrive circuit, for added bite.
Bringing up the rear, there's a series effects loop, a post-power stage emulated output, and a trio of speaker outputs (1 x 16, 1 x 8 and 2 x 16 Ohms).
The Blackstar Carmen Vandenberg CV10 amp is available now, in a limited run of 130 units, for $799. Each comes with a Vandenberg-autographed certificate.
We saw the amp in person at NAMM, where Vandenberg told us that you could get "ANY tone" out of it. We'd love to see if it gets a wider release at some point in the future...
For more info on the amp, in the meantime, visit Blackstar.
