Blackstar St. James 50 Watt EL34 Head Amp

We had two main goals in designing the St. James amplifiers. The first, was to produce a range of heads and combos that were the lightest available while retaining the essential elements of traditional valve amps, with no compromise in tone or performance; something guitarists have been requesting for decades.

The second, to include everything within one box to enable staggeringly authentic mic’d cabinet sounds direct to stage box or recording device. This has been achieved by using the full signal path of the amp (including power valves) to drive into a genuine reactive load, which is then passed through Cab Rig, our proprietary state-of-the-art DSP section to provide almost limitless variations of cab/speaker/mic/room simulations.

As has been the design philosophy of Blackstar from the beginning, these products have been designed by referencing the sounds of traditional and modern valve guitar amps, but we are not enslaved by old dogmas with regard to the components and topologies used. We apply uncompromising care and attention to every detail to get the sound and performance that we want and modern players expect.

St. James is one of the oldest parts of Blackstar’s hometown Northampton, England. It’s the site of 12th century abbey that gives the area its name and is home to the Northampton Saints, our world-class rugby team’s grounds, and the iconic lift tower that dominates our skyline. Personally, for the Founders there was also a very significant James (Jim) in our history… not to mention the many guitarists that also share the name; Hendrix, Page, Hetfield, plus many more.