BLACKSTAR SERIES ONE S1 100 HEAD

S1-100 head
Inside the chassis it’s much the same story, with typically neat and robust PCB construction. There are boards for the front and rear panels, with three larger ones handling the power supply and main preamp components, all supported properly on robust metal standoffs.

The valve bases are all PCB-mounted, which is fine – the only practical drawback is that preamp valve replacement is trickier, as they’re quite deeply recessed into the chassis. These aren’t simple amps, so those PCBs are stuffed full of components, with several bundles of interconnecting wires all neatly terminated in plugs and sockets. The chassis is a tough steel box and needs to be, as the amp has substantial transformers.

100 Watt head with built-in DPR power reduction
3 x ECC83, 1 x ECC82, 4 x EL34 valves
Clean channel with Warm (Plexi) and Bright (Class A) type modes
Overdrive channel with Crunch and Super Crunch modes
ISF equipped tone control section
Presence control
Master Volume
Series effects loop
MIDI switching
Speaker emulated output