Blackstar Dept. 10 Amped 2 review

Blackstar seems to have a never-ending conveyor belt of new and exciting products to tempt us with, many of which, like the award-winning St. James amplifiers, fall into the ‘why didn’t we think of that?’ category. 

Blackstar’s Amped 1 was a perfect addition for pedalboard users, putting real guitar amp tones into a compact and powerful package. Now, the Amped 1 concept has been taken to its logical conclusion, with the addition of high-quality built-in effects. 

Amped 2 keeps the same good looks as its predecessor, with a candy-apple red anodised fascia and typical Blackstar clean looks and graphics, underneath which there’s a tough steel chassis enclosing seriously high-quality circuit boards. 

The list of features is remarkable: an integrated front-end drive pedal with three distinct overdrives including a fuzz; a preamp with three different voices that goes from clean to positively filthy; and a 100-watt class D power stage, with three valve emulations and switchable power levels.

The effects are subdivided into modulation, delay and reverb, all independently footswitchable along with the drive pedal. There are four modulation types, three delays including an exclusive ‘shimmer’ effect, and three reverbs, all with a tap tempo switch. Under the hood, Blackstar’s superb Cab Rig speaker emulation and a few extra hidden features are accessible with Blackstar’s Architect app, which connects via USB-C.

The same USB socket also allows direct recording into a PC or DAW, with other output options including mono balanced XLR, stereo headphones/line out and an effects loop. 

Amped 2 also benefits from MIDI, with practically every parameter accessible from a compatible MIDI controller like Blackstar’s own Live Logic, with a small but visible OLED display for control status messages. The same display doubles as an onboard tuner, activated by pressing down on the delay and reverb switches simultaneously. Amped 2’s core tones are very useable, with high-headroom cleans, touch-sensitive crunch tones and huge leads.

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The onboard effects are superb, with responsive dynamics from the integrated overdrives, lush warm choruses and smooth reverbs. The fuzz drive is brilliant, as are all the delays, with various tempo sync options to expand your creative options, as well as making it easy to emulate the signature sounds of artists like the Edge and Hank Marvin.

Specs

• PRICE: $649 / £539
• TYPE: Analog/digital preamp, Class D power amp
• OUTPUT: 100 watts RMS into 16 ohms or 8 ohms, switchable to 20 watts or 1 watt 
• DIMENSIONS: 288mm (w) x 149mm (d) x 81mm (h) 
• CHANNELS: Two, with footswitchable drive and three selectable voices
• CONTROLS: Gain, bass, middle, treble, master volume. Drive gain, tone, level, three-way drive select switch. Modulation time, depth, level, three-way modulation select switch. Delay time, feedback level, three-way delay select switch. Reverb time, level, three-way reverb select switch. Three-way power amp response type switch and three-way output power select switch. Loop return level switch, Cab Rig select switch and output level control
• FOOTSWITCH: Five integral switches for drive and effects on/off, plus tap tempo 
• CONTACT: Blackstar