Blackstar HT Club 40 MKIII combo review

Blackstar’s HT venue range has been a firm favorite of the gigging musician since its launch in 2010 due to their reliability, impressive feature set, and all-tube tone – all at a punchy price point. With the third edition of the HT venue range, Blackstar has refined and improved in almost every area whilst also adding a handful of game-changing features.

You probably wouldn’t know there is all that much difference between the HT Club 40 MKIII and its predecessor from looks alone, but that's no bad thing. The Tolex looks and feels premium and it’s very well built. Small tweaks, such as the logo now being mounted on a plate, elevate it above the previous range.

Featuring two channels with four distinct voicings, taking you from clean to modern high gain, the versatility of this amp is quite incredible. The clean channel has two voicings: a bright, spanky tone and a warmer, slightly scooped sound. Both are pleasant to use, particularly if you turn up the channel volume, gradually bringing you into an organic crunch, which plays nicely with boost pedals.

The two voices on the overdrive channels start with a relatively subtle crunch on the first voicing when on low gain, which cleans up nicely if you back off your guitar’s volume. If you switch to voicing two and take the gain knob past the halfway point, you get into seriously saturated overdrive with a particularly excellent bottom end.

The EQ – though seemingly simple – is wildly powerful, particularly when used in tandem with the ‘ISF’ knob, which has been ever-present on the HT series since they first hit the market. This shifts the entire tone stack and takes you from a ‘British’ sound over to ‘American’, which provides a huge breadth of tonal possibilities.

Unlike some of its rivals – such as the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe or Vox AC30 – the HT Club 40 has a digital reverb rather than a spring tank. This modern approach to the reverb arguably makes this Blackstar more reliable, and better yet, a digital reverb tends to retain its clarity even when you crank the gain.

With two distinct settings, Dark – based on a room reverb – and Light – based on a plate reverb – this Blackstar covers most of your reverberation needs. Both settings are certainly pleasant enough and will work in a myriad of situations, but they do lack the character of their spring-loaded rivals. That said, the reverb time can be changed using Blackstar’s Architect software, which is a nice touch and exemplifies the benefits of digital reverb over spring.

With built-in power reduction from 40W down to 4W, you can realistically use this at home – though don’t be fooled into thinking that the 4W mode is mouse-quiet, it still packs a serious punch! However, for those who do want total silence, Blackstar has added a headphone output alongside the built-in DI, giving you the option to play the Club 40 MKIII just about anywhere.

A significant upgrade on the previous generation amp is the use of Blackstar’s proprietary CabRig technology, which gives the user beautifully realistic cab tones via the DI output. With three options via a switch on the rear and plentiful others available through the Architect software, this is the kind of feature you’d expect on high-end modeling amps, not an affordable, all-tube combo.

Speaking of features you wouldn’t expect from a powerful tube amp, the built-in USB interface is a fantastic addition that allows users to connect the amp to their computer via a USB C cable and immediately capture their tone in a DAW.

Blackstar includes a two-way footswitch with the amp, which allows the user to switch between both clean and overdrive channels and their voicings. A 5-way footswitch is available at additional cost, which gives you even more switching capabilities, including access to a 6dB boost, which can be used on any channel. In our opinion, this is a very handy feature, but one that would be nice to have as standard on the included footswitch.

The HT Club 40 MKIII gives you everything you could hope for from a gigging tube amplifier, plus a host of additional features, which makes it excel in both a live and recording environment. There are few better all-rounders on the market than the Blackstar HT Club 40 MKIII.

Specifications

• Output: 40W, switchable to 4W

• Tubes: 2 x ECC83, 2 x EL34*

• Channels: 2

• Controls: Clean Treble, Clean Bass, Clean Volume, Clean Voicing Switch, Overdrive gain, Overdrive volume, Overdrive voicing switch, Overdrive treble, Overdrive mid, Overdrive bass, Overdrive ISF, master volume, master presence, master reverb, reverb mode switch. Power reduction switch

• Footswitch: 2-way footswitch included, 5-way switch available

• Speaker: 1x12” Celestion

• Reverb: Digital ‘DARK/LIGHT’ modes

• Contact: Blackstar