Awesome amp for home use, worth upgrading speaker though!

My previous amp was a Roland JC22 which I really loved, and I still claim the JC has THE best Jazz clean tone, but after 1 year I ended up trading it with a limited Deluxe version of the Blackstar HT5 (mk I) Combo with a Vintage 30 speaker. I was missing some valve overdrive dynamics in my sound and was not enjoying the tones I was getting through overdrive pedals, in fact my goal was to again sell all my pedals and just play with looper and amp, and I actually enjoyed the HT5 very much for that, so I decided to sell it and get the newer version because of the main new features such as USB, attenuator, and that new british clean voicing seemed like worthy upgrades.

• First of all, it´s less noisy, which is great. My previous HT5 had this humming drone not sure why, even in standby. This one is incredibly quiet unless you push it of course...
• It feels more like a traditional amp in the sense that it breaks up as you crank the normal channel, especially with british voicing. My previous ht5 stayed mostly clean all the way cranked, possibly due to the higher performing Vintage 30 speaker.
• The gain sweep on the overdrive channel is more usable, the previous version I really wouldn't go beyond 10 o'clock on gain, now the sweep is more progressive and the actual overdrive feels smoother and more responsive.
• The voicing switch on the clean channel is my favourite new feature, disengaged it has a deep bass and glassy treble à lá Fender Blackface, very defined and full sounding. Engaging the second voicing the EQ changes quite a bit and gives you a tad looser bass, mellower treble, and beefier mids, along with a slight increase in volume and break up dynamics. Love it. Blackstar claims this switch changes a lot of the preamp section. And it's foot-switchable!
• The tone knob on the clean channel is worth to mention that feels much better as well, usable sounds through its entire sweep, like a tilting EQ, and helps you to balance the right amount of overdrive (more bass = earlier breakup)
• The Reverb also feels improved IMO. Quite modern sounding, no spring emulation (thank god, I really hated the reverb of the Laney Super Cub), I would say it's kinda of a Hall with a bit of pre delay. The decay time is always the same no matter where you set it, almost 2 seconds, so the pot works like a "mix" knob for Reverb.
• The attenuator (my second favourite feature and main reason I upgraded) works very well, bringing the amp down in volume but not loosing any dynamics, just volume, so you can cranck the british clean a bit more to have more gith and just take some dB's of volume down. Great job on that, super useful for late night practice. Of course the amp feels best at full power moving more air...
• The mini chicken head knobs are much better looking and easier to operate.
• The amp receives a great facelift from their limited run of "Deluxe" HT5's with Vintage 30 (wich was my previous amp). It's a very good looking amp, nice smooth texture, really small and light for a 12 incher, very well assembled and premium looks.

Things I didn't enjoy that much:

• The weakest aspect of the amp is naturally it's 20W factory speaker, it falls apart with hotter pickups and may sound too dark at low volume. Overall a dark sounding speaker with little character. The amp deserves a better speaker. I installed an 8hm Celestion Greenback and it completely opened the amp up, cleans are way more punchy and refined, and the overdrive just sings in a vicious 60's and 70's vibe. Also worth to mention, I can now crank it without any fizz. I didn't enjoy half as much the Vintage 30, way to nasal for my taste. I highly recommend the Greenback for this amp, with my low output pickups it starts breaking up at around 1 o'clock in volume on the clean channel.
• Blackstar changed the Line/headphone output impedance, making it MUCH lower to play better with weaker headphones. I happen to have 250ohm Beyerdynamics that sounded AMAZING with the previous version of the amp, now they just don't cut... Plugin in some cheap smartphone headphones gave better results, but I honestly prefered the higher impedance output. Anyway, I guess the majority of people will actually find this a good change, since many folks were complaining about distorted and fizzy sound from the previous version into their 12 ohm cheapo headphones... Using apple headphones (mini jack) provided very nice volume and tone, loud and clear all the way cranked. The stereo reverb sounds absolutely gorgeous through headphones and the emulated 4x12 and 1x12 are simple but effective... I ended up selling the DT's and got the Sennheiser HD25 (70 ohm) and they sound fine, however for more volume I would recommend even lower impedance headphones, like 32 or lower.
• Recording clean tones via USB requires you to digitally gain your input levels, so It wont be noise free. It connected flawlessly to my Macbook Pro, but the signal is very small and needs to be digitally amplified. The output is controlled via the Volume knob, so If I crank the amp the signal becomes nice and big, but then, because of the preamps lower headroom it's just overdriving all over, not clean anymore. Sounds very good nonetheless, and is a handy feature if you don't have an audio interface. The noise is perfectly acceptable, I recorded clean tracks with volume on 10, gained them up in Garageband using the EQ master volume, and it's really acceptable and great sounding. if you need to record a clean track with nice fat signal just use the line out or XLR (very nice) into an audio interface and gain it up there.
• Also regarding USB, It would be nice to be able to bypass the speaker emulation and have dry signal, but unfortunately can't do that. Only way to do it is maybe to take effects loop out into an audio interface if you want to use it as a preamp, will try it later.
• The voicing switch on the overdrive channel. It's just not my cup of tea, unless I really want a ratty harsh distortion sound. It seems to sound best if I split coil my humbuckers, so low output single coils should sound good with this voicing. It basically compresses everything, tighter bass, scooped mids, and treble boost. My least favourite feature on the amp, at least with my guitar with low output alnico humbuckers.

In summary: I am mostly practicing Jazz and enjoying some fusion/rock riffs right now. I tried a lot of amps in the meantime, Laney Super Cub 12, Fender Blues Jr, Pro Junior, Blackstar Studio 10, Vox AC15, I really liked the Vox over the others. But yeah, when I tried the Blackstar at my local store I immediately felt it was the wisest choice for apartment versatility, excellent cleans, a flexible overdrive channel, very good fx loop (which is a must for multiple channel amps). The Greenback was the missing ingredient really. I gotta say it's a great choice for bedroom, living room or small studio use. I've had Fender Deluxe Reverb, Roland Jazz Chorus, and while they all sounded glorious I just couldn't properly enjoy them at home because they need to be turned up way louder than I can in my apartment. This amp delivers amazing sounds at very polite levels, and it gets better as you turn it up of course, and yes it can get loud, not near as loud as an AC15 or Deluxe Reverb, but still loud. The overdrive channel feels indeed like some solid state IC's interacting with V1, or in other words like a specially tweaked "overdrive" pedal built into the amp. Thing is... That's exactly what it's suppose to be and It sounds preeeetty damn good. It has the flexibility of both master and non-master volume amps, it's a very competent guitar combo that any guitarist could plug into and certainly find a great sound. I'm not sure about it's overdrive typology, I believe Blackstar uses a pair of mosfets in the preamp, but I also remember reading that all the gain comes from the ECC83.. I don't really know and that's not of much importance imo, I just wouldn't recommend this amp for serious fuzz users, naturally. An amp with simpler topology will always yield purest results with fuzzes, diode distortions, etc. (EDIT: The CockFight’s Fuzz from EHX has a Fuzz and it sounds KILLER into the HT5!)

15W Blues Jr or AC15 are great but I really can't cook them at home and was not feeling like spending extra cash on a separate attenuator... The HT5 II while I still can't crank it to it's max I can run it at a cooler "medium heat" without calling the cops. With the Celestion Greenback, trust me, it freakin rips! A very solid amp from Blackstar, just spend a few extra on a nice speaker and you won't regret it.