ART DST Eighty/Eighty (Head)

Not the easiest processor to use but the sounds make up for the aggravation learning how.

Excellent sound, tho I'm not using the amp part (it's too loud!!!)I am using effects.... if you know what your doing the chorus sounds great. I'm running this thru a Lexicon Alex and a ART E3Q51 equalizer all stereo into 2 old red knob Fender Princeton chorus'. Super warm distortion, that and an old Dunlop wah-wah.. and I get great Hendrixy sounds. I personnaly dont like 100 watt amps and such.... which is why I dont use the amp part..it it were a 25/25 that would be different... which is why I like the Fender Princeton chorus. The guitar is well several.. for flying fast its my beloved Westone Trevor Rabin Signature Series which I the pick-ups with full SA EMG single coils, I also have a back up Westone Pantera outfited simularly, the other 'main' axe is my beloved 72 Fender tele cutom maple neck on a '85 strat body, spertzel locking tuners floating stock tremelo and of course EMG's but these are the old S1's. I've obviously set this up with EMG in mind! I don't use alot of the effects as i use it for a certain sound mainly chorus and flanger, so I have done much tweeking to get that right sound i require and have worked to perfect with all my set-ups.

It's never let me down, and its my main sound! I do use shock mount rack boxes so im sure that helps, but all in all they seem to take a licking and keep on ticking.

excellent if you figure out how to manuver the website you can find any manual you need and each time i have talked to ART they have answered it... and i own several ART products including a power conditioner and a X-15 Ultrafoot midi controller, an EQ351and every question has been answered perfectly even when it came to questions that had to do with other brand processors like my Lexicon Alex and the fender amps for the best set-up and sequence. Kudos!

I Play rock to jazz and blues been playing for about 25 years and if I ever was parted from this I would be on Ebay nite and day till I found at least a DST 4 which is the same thing without the stereo 80/80 amp. My only problem with it is when usiong the amp whenever you change setting with the knob it goes into tweek mode and it changes the amp levels another reason I dont use the amp, but I keep the unit caus e they are hard to find especialy the 80/80.. not to mention just finding a DST 4.

This amp sounds great. I play through it with jackson custom shop guitar neck through with EMG 85 in the bridge and EMG 89 in the neck with coil tap, also a cort viva 7 string guitar with a tone zone 7 in the bridge and an air norton 7 in the neck, and a hand made neck through baritone guitar with carvin h22 alan holdsworth model pickups. It sounds good on all the guitars except it gets a little muddy with the baritone playing through the extreme mode. The pre-amp is quite nice although it only gets better if you crack it open and experiment with different tubes. NOS RCA, and Telefunken tube tend to make the clean sound more full. But Mesa Boogie relabeled sovteks seam to make the distortion soar, and also can give you that on the edge of breakup clean sound that is so sought after. The power amp is good for a solid state amp, but I think I might pick up a mesa boogie 20/20 stereo power amp to play it through. The effects are decent, but the controls for the effects are non existant. The stereo pre-out is great but the mono return sucks, that doesn't matter though because I don't plan on returning anything to the amp. Midi control is straight forward. If you buy a foot switch the dual bypass of the preamp and effects is also usefull if you are in a series rack setup. For the money though I don't see any problems with any of its drawbacks.

basically every thing prior to this review stand true.

Hasn't broke and ive had it a while.

Never delt with them but from the other posts they seem awsome.

I have been playing a little over 18 years. I have too much gear to list, but this is my best sounding amp with a solid state amplifier section. If it were stolen or lost I would definately try and track another down if not to use just to keep in my arsenal of amps. I love the preamp and midi controls. I like the amp for a solid state. I hate the lack of controls on the effects. It does not sound as good as my mesa's and bogner but it is more versital and sounds better than all the other modeling amps I have currently tried.

This unit is very easy to use no manual is even required. I really like the analog knobes on a digital unit. I also have the SGX 2000 express that is easy to use with a little manual reading , but this baby anybody could get killer sound in minutes without ever reading the manual.

I usally play through my bad ass roc axe w/demarizo super distortion at the bridge (no neck pick up)or BC rich beast loaded with the new Demarizo dropzone or my Ibanez sg570dx with active EMG 81 and 85, the rest of the stuff connected to my wireless is a ART SGX 2000 express,
into an ART 341 EQ , then Samson s com plus compressor/expander gate limiter, sometimes I use my Rocktron hush super C ,then into the Pyamid 500 watts per channel stereo power amp, and send that to my Marshall 1960a 4 12 cab . yea!!!
When I first hooked up the DST 80/80 and just played through it only, it sounded just as good as my stack and now that the compressor and EQ are in line it is just a tone monster and I'd put it up against a Mesa boogie, Saldano, any day !!When I first got the DST 80/80 and just started to play it didn't sound as good as my art SGX 2000 express and rack , except I noticed about double the gain right away. Then in about 20 minutes of trying the settings on the thing out , I was saying man this thing is just fuckin incredable,
Monster sustain, and I noticed much clearer Notes than the SGX even with the gain and bass maxed all to hell , and the tone sent shivers down my spine. Last thing I heard with this much tone was a mesa boggie triple rec packed full of tubes. This fucker kicks ass !!!

I would gig without a back up

I only have one thing to say about art support AWSOME

I play metal , trash metal , Sabbath, PRONG , Rammstein, Motorhead
and other bands that kick fuckin ass ,learning some KALUS
I wish the effects were like the SGX ,,,50 of them and program them any way you want, plus it needs more presets or memory for them.
It does have some effects that are really different.Check out the Kalus sound (free mp3s) on their web site you'll hear alot of the different effects in the unit. I first heard the DST at a Kalus show and had to have one .
I couldn't belive it,,,, the preamp, effects processor , and amp all in a 2 rack unit and the built in amp is a strong as my 1000 watt stereo pyramid amp. Giggin live is no problem and plenty of volume left.
If it were stolen I would track em down and kill em slowly by playin a strat and a fender amp , then I would have to find another one .
On a scale of 1 to 10 this bitch gets a 12 I would rate it at about a 6 or 7 for the effects and use of. but since this bitch has incredable gain ,monster sustain like I never seen , tone and note clarity while distored all to hell that made my mouth drop open and I drooled all over myself. I give the DST and ART a 12 on a scale of 1-10. The only thing I wish, was it had a location in ART's warehouse so you could buy these new forever.

Because it uses knobs instead of buttons, it is much easier to dial in a tone (V.S. say a SGX or a chamelion). Messing with the four band eq and gain can really change the sound a lot. Some presets just need a little adjustment on the eq and levels to sound great. Other presets are useless. You only have 75 patches so you gotta pick a section that you do not like and overwrite. It needs more memory, but overall its a snap to get a good sound and save it including a volume level.
One very big problem is the effects loop has stereo out and only mono in...was somebody smokin crack here...if you use a stereo effect and return it to the dst to use the power amp it only comes out mono!!! You can use it daisy chain style with other rack units and out to a seperate power amp...but that kinda makes the built in amp useless don't it. Overall except the effects loops anybody who can tywist a knob and hit save can get a GREAT sound out of it.

The best thing about this is the preamp. The distortion brings out harmonics and sustain with more gain than should be legal. You can get a scooped out thrash sound to a warm muddy alternative tone, very rich here. The clean tube (12ax7) can be warm or clear, bright or soft it just takes work with the eq to get it. A good commpressor would be a good investment! It is noisy depending what effects you use and how much. The level out and wet dry knobs will help in the noise area but I recommend a good noise gate to stop hum and wash while you are not playing.

The power amp keeps the signal quality well. It has a loose or tight button for the speaker out and it does just what it says makes it sound "loose" or "tight". This thing can get you plenty of volume for any club...IT IS LOUD!!!

The effects are so-so theyare usefull but the flanger and pitch shifter suck major. The chorus is OK (cannot compare to say a T.C. chorus) The delay is pretty good. But you can only adjust one parameter on an effect they select THAT IS A MAJOR SHORTCOMING!!
Do not get me wrong you can get some killer sounds out of it especially on the heavy side. Because the amp tones deserve a 10 but the effects overall only rate a maybe a 7 or 8 I will give it a 9.

I had a regular DST in my rack and used it constantly, always on the move, banged around in a van and no probs whatsoever. I HAVE NOT ROAD TESTED THE EIGHTY-EIGHTY yet. But if it is anything like my DST or other ART gear I am confident it will hold up. I believe in a backup so I plan to purchase a second one.

Never had to deal with them.

I play a lot of shred/80s rock (OZZY,Dokken,Scorpions). This thing gives me the best lead or rythem tone I have EVER EVER had period!!
I have been playing for 15yrs had all kinds of crate/peavey amps, digitech dsp, pedals of all kinds tried boogies leejackson heads ect. As far as my tone this unit is crucial. If it blew up I would hunt down another and would not be happy till I had one.
I love 1. the tonal range it gives me. 2. Its so easy to change up and program. 3. It sounds just as good direct as it sounds with a cabinet.
I hate: 1. The limited adjustability on the effects. 2. The effects loop has stereo out but ONLY MONO IN ARGGGH!!@! 3. You have to overwrite existing presets to program a custom patch.

I'm using this amp mainly with Fender Big Apple Strat & Marshall 4x12 cabinet. I think that it's a great combination, at least for me. Distortion department is suitable for heavy/hard rock playing. Best distortion what I've ever heard so far. Exellent when looking for good lead sounds. Nevertheless the clean sound is quite averige, not poor but nothing special. I rate this 9 because I'm hardboiled metal monstah :)

I guess that this amp was made in mid-nineties. I bought this amp from Pro Center, Helsinki, Finland around 1997. I think that the others writers have already written all crucial features.

I have lost my nerves many times with this amp due to it's reliability. It has some sort of heatening problem. Warms a lot --> goes off. PERKELE! But after I installed an extra cooling fan inside the rackbox things have been better.

I got answered to my e-mail when I had problems with my amp so I guess that there really is customer support existing. :)

This amp only does one thing well -- super mondo gain. All the other sounds are terrible. In my case, I only use it for one thing -- super mondo gain! So for me it's perfect. If the guitar isn't mixed right, it can sound very hissy and bright, but if the soundman/engineer is good and the guitar is where it should be in the mix (live or record), the amp provides an excellent low end "gunk-gunk" buckle. It has great sustain, with great harmonics and overtones. With a little splash of the built in delay, it makes for great lead sounds too.

This is a digital amp w/ a tube in it. The amp has up to 100 channels w/ different presets and/or programmable sounds, including a lot of very '80s sounding effects. You need a midi footswitch to switch sounds around. I give it an 8 b/c it's hard to find a midi footswitch that does the trick.

I purchased one of these once that did not work at all. But the two I actually have used have always been very reliable.

Amazing support. After one of mine got stolen, I called ART. Even though the product has been discontinued, they shipped me a new one from their back-stock.

I've been playing for 20 years. This amp is not the one if you're looking for a natural or vintage guitar sound. But if you want power and lots of gain w/ great crunch, harmonix, and sustain, this is a great amp.

I play a 52 reissue tele and a Ywngie Malmsteen U.S.A. strat and they both sound excellent through this amp. I replaced the bridge pickup on the tele with a duncan and it adds a little bit more bite to the signal going in. My guitar cabinets are Rocktron S-112 single speaker enclosures. This amp sounds great through them! Musical styles I play are Rock & Metal and this amp is great for both. It is not a noisy amp and can cover all musical types. Clean Tube channel is a really nice feature of this amp, it run's a clean solid state signal through a 12ax7 tube which in my personal opinion is pretty bright. To get a scooped mid sound on this amp you have to set the MID FREQ knob to between 12 and 3 o'clock and the MID control to between 7 and 9 o'clock. By scooping out the mid and setting the preamp to extreme you can get that heavy but clear(each note in a solo has definition) Pantera type of sound.(Very Nice!)

This DST Eighty/Eighty was made in 1996 and is a combined preamp, effects processor, power amp. It is a very versatile amp that has four different preamp types, Extreme, Scream, Retro, and Clean Tube. All of the preamp types are very flexible and can be edited very easily using the knobs on the front panel. There is a button on the front that allows you to select single or humbucker, when you select single it automatically adds 6dB of boost, nice little feature you don't see much! The interesting thing about this amp is the effects section. You can edit Chorus, Delay, Tremelo, Flange, Reverb, and Pitch Transposer, from the front panel and they sound good! This amp has an effects loop that allows you to select either +4 or -10 signal to noise ratio on Loop Level In and Out. The Headphone jack is clear and accepts a standard 1/4" jack. There is a MIDI jack that allows you to control this unit with a foot controler, have not tried it yet.

I have only had this amp for about a month.

Called the company about the software upgrade and they were extremely helpful, seemed very proud of their products.

I bought this amp used for 200 bucks to add to my growing collection of guitar stuff. ART does not make this model anymore which is a shame because it is versatile, easy to use, loud (great for gigs and practice), and like all ART products 'The price is right!'. One more thing, the DST Eighty/Eighty comes mounted onto a cabinet that looks kinda like an old Marshall JTM-45 head, so it looks cool too!

Just a follow up to my last review. I got the v2.0 firmware upgrade and it makes a big difference for your own tailoring sounds. It's a lot more flexbile now. I also found that I can use ART's old X-11 foot controller, which is much smaller than the X-12. With the v2.0 firmware and the X-11, I have close to an ideal set-up. Installing the new firmware was very easy. While I had the cover off, I confirmed that my unit was made in '97. All in all, I'm very pleased. For a little more than a Line 6 pod, I have an amp AND footcontroller that can hold it's own against the top of the line digital modeling amps.

Too bad this catagory doesn't go up to eleven!

Integrated programmable preamp/stereo processor/stereo power amp. Features are as described in other posts, but the power amp is 65 watts a side, not 80. I believe mine was made in '96 or '97. I got it on clearance from a local music store because they are no longer being made. Too bad. It's a cool unit. The eq section of the preamp has gain, treble, bass, midrange, a nice parametric type midrange control (controls which midrange frequencies the midrange pot targets), and preamp master. All of the eq pots seem to be active rather than passive (i.e., 12 o'clock = zero, 10 o'clock = minus 2, etc.) The preamp runs on a single 12AX7 and allows you to select from 4 different gain presets, from "xtreme" to "clean". Aside from the overall concept, I think the preamp is the most interesting part of this amp. The effects processor is ok, but I have the older firmware version so I can only adjust one parameter of one effect per patch. E.g., For a sound that incorporates both delay and reverb, it will only let me adjust the decay of the reverb. If I want to change the delay time or number of repeats, tough luck. No can do. This is the achilles heel of this amp. The firmware upgrade is still available and allows you to adjust one parameter for each effect being used in a patch (e.g., reverb decay + delay time, but NOT depth or regeneration). That's an improvement, but that still means the amount of control you have over sculpting your sound via the processor is limited. It would be nice if you could adjust each parameter of every effect independently. As is, with only minor tweaking ability, you are pretty much stuck with the preset effect combinations. Luckily, these are generally useful and well thought out. The quality of the effects is comparable to what you get with Line 6 or Johnson modelling-type amps. I.e., they are good enough for what they do, but you probably wouldn't use them for applications outside of this amp (you can if you want to using the effects loop). The "Pierce Designed" power amp has seperate master volumes for each channel (L/R) and sounds very warm for a solid state rig. This amp is plenty loud and is ideally suited to a player who wants a range of decent sounds without having to tweak the amp too much. The optional MIDI footswitch (X-15) seems cool, but it is expensive and excessively large. I usually play smaller clubs, and I would rather not have a "Battlestar Galactica" between me and the audience. From what it says in the manual, I ought to be able to use a MIDI drum machine or a keyboard to trigger patch changes. Haven't gotten that far yet...

I do not believe this amp can "do it all", but the majority of sounds are very musical and hence usable. Right now I am using a stock Tele, a lone star Fender Strat (w/ stock bridge humbucker), a Les Paul Jr. with P90s, and a Japanese "rice rocket type" custom Strat copy (w/ active humbuckers). The clean sounds are reasonable, even though they are called "tube", they kind of remind me of a JC120. I wish it had more compression on the clean sound for country-style licks. Where this amp really shines is with the distortion settings. I run mine into a stock 2-12 stereo Marshall cab or into two separate ADA 2-12 cabs loaded with 75 watt Celestions. In general, I like the sound I get with humbuckers more than single coils with this amp. Even when I use humbuckers, I set the input selector to the single coil setting to get more signal into the preamp. As I mentioned above, you can't really change the presets that much, but the built in sounds are good. The feedback sounds you can get with this amp are excellent, especially for a solid state amp -- very warm, with lots of even sounding harmonics.

So far so good. (knock on wood... ;-) Pots are a little scratchy, but I imagine it sat in a warehouse for two years. Otherwise, no complaints. Even though I got mine on clearance, it's still covered by the factory three year warranty.

They were great, especially considering that this isn't even a product they still make! I called to inquire about the firmware upgrade and they took my number and called me back within minutes. This was courteous and it saved on my phone bill. While the firmware upgrade costs $79, they candidly explained that the it probably wouldn't change the sound much. The firmware upgrade mostly enhances the switching speed and allows you to edit one parameter of each effect in a patch. I opted against it. Very low key, no high pressure selling tactics. I want to buy something else from these people just for being so nice!

I've been playing most of my life. I own a ton of other stuff, some that sounds better and some that sounds worse. Once you accept that you are basically stuck with the presets, it is very easy to use. I think it sounds as good or better than the Line6 AX2 or Flextone, but it would be nice if you could access all of the effects parameters. A built in compressor would be nice too. If I can get the MIDI switching to do what I want, I will try to get another one as a spare. It's a shame that ART has stopped making guitar boxes. They were just on the verge of really nailing it! I am giving this amp a "10" because I do not think you will find anything even remotely comparable for $250. If I had to pay $600, I would probably give it an 7 or an 8.

This is an update to my previous post... see below

Okay, I purchased this via mail order (www.rockauction.com) only to find it did not function properly.
ART was VERY VERY helpful. Really impressive. They offered to repair the unit under full warranty, no questions asked. I was told the average time was 17 business days (ouch). Well much to my surprise it arrived fully repaired (no charge) less than 10 business days later.
Like I said, this ain't too shabby!