Blackheart BH15-112 Handsome Devil

Loud Technologies are no strangers to the concept of using Far Eastern manufacturing to provide their customers with US-designed products at attractive price points, and the success of their brands (which notably include Ampeg, Crate, and Mackie) demonstrates the viability of this approach. Launched in November 2007, Blackheart (a division of Crate) is Loud’s newest brand, its raison d’être being to deliver “the best old-school, all-tube tone at price points within any guitarist’s reach”.

Behind this laudable (but not entirely unique) aim is the Austin-based Russian amplifier design guru Pyotr Belov who has pulled back on his career as a boutique amp builder to become the Director of MI Amplification at Loud. If you’re not familiar with his name, let’s just say that at least one major corporation has used his design talents in amplifiers ‘Designed in the USA’. The central idea behind Blackheart amplifiers came from Belov himself when he came up with the concept of manufacturing boutique amplifiers overseas using good design, quality materials and making a real commitment to quality.

According to the PR, turning this concept into reality seems simple enough. In his two-car garage in Austin, Texas, Belov creates a prototype of a Blackheart amplifier that is a hand-wired, point-to-point boutique product. This prototype is then engineered by Belov for quantity production by, for example, replacing the hand-wired elements with a rugged PCB carrying heavy-duty copper tracks routed point-to-point. The components specified are basically of the same quality as the prototype. The material specifications and design elements of the prototype are retained throughout.

Then comes the part of the process that seems unique and central to the Blackheart concept. Pyotr Belov personally selects the offshore manufacturer and approves every component one piece at a time, right down to the piping and Tolex. He then trains the workforce in how to handcraft an amplifier to his expectations. Simple, huh?

The basic building blocks of valve guitar amplifier design have remained essentially unchanged since the dawn of amplifier time and, as far as I can ascertain, Pyotr Belov hasn’t broken any moulds in designing the circuitry of the Blackheart Handsome Devil. The amp’s heavy-gauge steel chassis sports a conventional complement of two AX7s in the preamp and two EL84s running in class A mode for the output. Less conventionally, he has given the amp’s valve heaters a DC supply that helps to reduce hum and, slightly more conventionally these days, he has followed the trend of giving it a switch to change the output-valves’ operating mode from pentode to triode. I’ve discussed pentode/triode switching in a previous review, so I won’t repeat the details here (see http://www.performing-musician.com/pm/sep09/articles/voxnt.htm for more info) but, in summary, switching an amp’s pentode valves to triode mode results in a drop in output power, with the valves distorting earlier and the sound losing some edge and urgency and developing a mellower, more relaxed character.

One aspect of Blackheart’s design philosophy that is significantly more unusual is found on the Blackheart website where a link to ‘Mods’ sits right at the top of the home page. There you’ll find Blackheart-approved, third-party companies that offer hot-rod parts and modifications for Blackheart products, and already you can buy up-rated power and output transformers specifically designed for the Handsom Devil. In a similar spirit, the amp’s specification list includes the intriguing entry, ‘Solid-State Rectifier with tap for future mods’. I wonder what they could be?

The controls work pretty well, but I found that after getting about 75% of the way round the dial, none of them actually did all that much. I ended up settling on Drive at two o’clock, Level, Treble, Mid and Bass at three o’clock, Presence at 12 o’clock (all irrespective of operating mode) and using my guitar, pick and fingers to create and shape the final sound. I definitely favoured the triode mode, but my love of a flat-out plexi pentode mode has probably removed me from both my neighbours’ Christmas card lists for yet another year.

Incidentally, the Handsome Devil is a loud little amplifier. In pentode mode, its full 15W of class A power is more than capable of handling a small pub gig and, if you want to work with the triode sound or it isn’t quite loud enough, well, that’s why PA was invented.

Tonally, in pentode mode the Handsome Devil is firmly in the late ‘60s plexi park. Drop it down to triode and you’ll find that there’s a chunk of California in the sound. The controls are pretty much ‘set-and-forget’ once you’ve found your personal sweet spot, and you’ll find that your guitar, your pick and your fingers are the biggest components in the sound that you produce.

If you buy a Blackheart Handsome Devil (or indeed any Blackheart amp) it would seem that it could be only the start of your quest for tone. The fact that the Blackheart amps are designed to be upgraded and modified means that you can really get into personalising your amplifier.

I haven’t yet met Pyotr Belov, but I know that I’m going to like him when I do. Anyone who can design the circuitry and drive the manufacturing of an amplifier to the quality of the Handsome Devil at its wallet-friendly price point is a man after my own heart, and the fact that it is also available in a head-only version just adds to the attraction. In the meantime, I’d advise anyone looking for a lower power, class A valve guitar amplifier to head down to their local Blackheart dealer and get to grips with this very Handsome Devil.  0