Blackheart Engineering BH5H Head

As far as I know this is the only commercial 5W SE tube amp with a full TMB tone stack, pentode/triode switch, and 4/8/16 ohm output jacks with parallel jacks for 4 & 8 ohms.

Its a very easy amp to modify - assuming you know what you are doing around high voltages.

For some very low-cost tweaking ideas see my report at http://www.guitarnuts.com/amps/bh5h/index.php

Out of the box the sound quality is giggable if you get good tubes, but don't be surprised if you get bad tubes. I've got two of these and two more on the way. The preamp tube in the first amp was microphonic but usable - the preamp tube in the second amp was so microphonic the amp was unusable even though it is a head. Put simply - order decent tubes when you order the amp, it's well worth it.

Both amps were noisy enough to be annoying but that was easily fixed by twisting and rerouting the AC primary wiring. That alone reduced hum by 400 percent.

Beyond that the sound is surprisingly good - and that's the reason I rate sound quality high. Junk the chinese tubes and neaten up the wiring and this is really a killer amp for blues through rock. You'll need pedals to get into metal territory but the amp is very pedal friendly. I don't think the amp would be too useful for "old" country and clean jazz because it just doesn't have enough clean head room - though it has more than most amps in its category.

Haven't had these long enough to say for certain but I think once you junk the Chinese tubes the rest of the amp appears to be very good. It is made in China but doesn't "feature" the "sandbox" construction of some Chinese amps.

I design and build tube amps as a hobby and my impression of this amp is that there is a good chance it will still be working in five years - I can't say that about some Chinese amps!

Haven't had any contact with them.

I've been playing about twelve years. I design, build, tweak, fold, spindle, and mutilate tube amps for fun.

Very basic, Class A amp. All the basic features a player could want. 3 band EQ, Volume, On-Off switch, 3/5 watt switch. Multiple output jacks on the back panel for running into various single or multiple speaker cabs. If you want clean, turn it down. If you want grit, turn it up. Very basic circuitry...12AX7 pre-amp, EL84 power.

This is not an amp with a lot of bells and whistles. That being said, I believe that is the precise reason why many people are going to like this amp. I run the head through the matching Blackheart 112 cab (which is also an incredible bargain). The 5 watt setting is somewhat brighter. Very prominent, but not overbearing top end. The 3 watt setting is a little more subdued, but really growls when the volume is pushed. I use this amp with some stomp boxes for practicing and recording, but I'm quite sure many players will find this little amp more than adequate for lower volume gigs/rehearsals.

Don't know...only time will tell.

From what I hear, they are quite good, but I haven't needed them yet.

For my needs, it's just about perfect. Makes all of my guitars and effects come alive (even at lower volumes). My main guitars are a Strat, Tele, Les Paul and a Flying V. Throw any stomp box in front of it and this amp eats them right up. I use a Dyna Comp, Bad Monkey, Duncan Pickup Booster, Jekyll & Hyde OD/Dist, Boss GE-7 EQ, Boss CE-5 Super Chorus, and a Boss Noise Supressor. I have a feeling that a lot of Epiphone Valve Junior owners are going to dig the Blackheart amps. According to their website, Blackheart will be introducing 15 watt and 100 watt heads and combos. If they're as good as the B5H5, I'll be owning quite a few Blackheart products.

It's a class A, single channel, single ended tube amp. 5/3 watt pentode, triode swithch, and a 3 band tone stack. It is awesome!!! I got it about 3 weeks ago from Musicians Friend, after a 3 week backorder. What a great little amp!!! I gave it an 8 for features because of the lack of a standby, but what do you want for the money you have to pay???

I mostly play my Les Paul. If you keep the volume under half way, you get a great clean sound. Very bell-like sound to it. Keep turning it up, and that's when the fun starts. It gets very loud, for the size of it. It just gets better the more you turn it up. It's a great classic rock sound. I changed the tubes right away. I put in a Tungsol 12AX7 in the pre-amp, and a Mullard EL-84 power tube, and just doing that made a huge improvement on it. It really likes pedals too. I got mine with the matching cabinet, but just for fun I hooked it up to an old Silvertone Twin 12 Cabinet that I have with the old Jensens in it, and it sounded HUGE!!! For anyone looking for a great little amp for not much money, this is definately the one for you!!!

I haven't had any problems with it so far.....

Havent had to deal with them yet, so I don't know....Cool websight tho...

I have been playing for about 12 years now, and I have had, and still do have, lots of different amps. But, I really like this little guy. It's fun to play, and looks pretty cool too!! Can't wait until the other Blackheart amps become available. I want to get those too....

This gets a high rating becasue of the three band eq ... most others in its class have either a single volume know, or a volume and a tone. The eq feature really lets you tailor the sound.

This starts at a 7 out of the box .... I test drove it through a single 12" eminence Legend alnico, with both of my Strats ('82 Dan Smith; '96 MIM) and my '77 LP Standard. Nice tone, both straight and through a Line 6 Verbzilla reverb pedal. BUT ...

Change out the tubes, folks! That's one of things that tube amps are for, for those of you joining Tubeland for the first time. My background has included, over the years, a blackface Fender Vibro-Champ, the Dan Armstrong-designed Fender 30, and a vintage Marshall 50 halfstack, so I know my tubes. First, lose the stock Chinese-made tubes which it comes with, and install vintage tubes in both the preamp and power stages. Then, play with it. I'm running an RCA blackplate 5751 and a vintage Tung-Sol el84 right now, and the improvement is HUGE. Lots more headroom, much sweeter distortion, mroe responsive to the pick, etc. ...

There is no Holy Grail tubeset ... just your amp, your guitar, your style and your ears. It's like flavors of ice cream. That said, vintage tubes made in the US (RCA, GE, Tung-Sol, etc.) or even better, Europe (Amperex, Mullard, Telefunken) will kick the hind end of any tubes from China, Russia, or elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Build a collection, adn experiment. It's worth it. With this amp in particular, it's the difference between "Nice amp! Nice value!" and weeping with joy.

Talk to me in 10 years. Decent tube amps should get there, with respectful treatment and occasional retubing, no problem.

No experience to date.

$149, shipped. Need I say more? I can't wait to record with this thing ...

The Blackheart 3/5 watt amp head for 150$ gives you more than your moneys worth. Yet with 1 channel, no reverb, in my opinion is a winner. Not for metal players. The 5 watts is very loud. I believe with a band playing smaller venues if used with a multi-effects unit and boosting its master volume would actually be enough; or mike it
(there's no line out) Perfect for blues & country.

The sound quality is very,very good. I don't know how with 1 preamp tube, but the tone, its responsiveness, EQ pot responsiveness, is very,very good. It compresses itself for lots of sustain. A little buzz when I remove my fingers from the guitar strings, 98% quiet when touching strings or metal on guitar. (probably my house wiring)
To overdrive it you will be quite loud to reach that point if "bedroom" playing, even in the 3 watt setting. It sounds excellent with an Eminence "Lady Luck" 16 ohm speaker, great with vintage Jensens 8 ohms. I'm very satisfied with the performance of this amp head.

The blackheart amp head is made very solid! It is 21 pounds and so far so good; haven't had it very long.

I believe this amp head will be such a "hit" they will up the price before too long. I hope they don't cheapen it down with smaller transformers etc; The way it is now is awesome. Just be sure you want to invest in only 5 watts.

Actually a lot of features for a little amp like this. Bass, Mids, Treble & Volume. One Input. It also has a switch to change from 5 watts to 3. I like the options on the outputs for cabinets. Simple controls and easy layout. A standby switch would've been nice though.

Here's the thing. This is a $150 head. You can buy it together with a 12" closed back cabinet for $250 total. That's cheap. However, the sound is anything but cheap. It's very warm and responsive. It also breaks up really nice when you get the volume past halfway. I like to crank it to really overdrive the tubes and then back of the volume of my guitar to clean it up. It's very responsive to my guitar's volume. It has great harmonics and feeds back really nicely. But it's quiet too. No discernable hiss at all. I may try changing the tubes to sweeten up the sound a little, but honestly this thing sounds great. Probably one of the best buys I've ever made.

Only had it a week. But it seems pretty solid. We'll see.

Hven't had to deal with them yet.

Been playing for 18 years. Right now I'm playing a '72 Tele Deluxe and an Ephiphone Dot, another great buy. I usually play through a '78 Twin with a number of effects, Morley Bad Horsie Wah, MXR Phase 100, Durham Mucho Boosto, Fulltone Distortion Pro, Digitech Whammy, Fulltone Choralflange, EB Volume & Line 6 DL-4. I've got a lot of great gear and I just wanted a low watt practice amp. I got a whole lot more. You definitely get bang for your buck on this one. Where else are you going to to real overdriven tube sound for this price? Plus you have a lot of options for upgrades on this amp. Just buy it and you'll really like it. If this were stolen I'd buy another in a heartbeat.

I think the features have been covered fairly well already in previous reviews so I won't rehash them. But really, this amp isn't about features, it's about tone.

When I bought this amp, I just had some money kicking around and thought that it would be nice to have a tube amp to leave at home to practice with so that I can leave my Rivera KR100 at my band's practice space. I really wasn't expecting a whole lot out of it because of how cheap it was but I have been very pleasantly surprised. It's just got a really great tube tone. They did a fine job of engineering this amp. You have to crank it all of the way up to get overdrive out of it and it really tops out at about a classic crunch amount of gain. To do hard rock or metal you need an OD pedal in front of it. I'm actually running a Genesis 3 into it and it sounds surprisingly good. Just a warning, other reviews have stated that you can crank this think up and it's not that loud, that's not what I've found in my experience. In order to get even a bluesy style overdrive, you have to crank it to at least 5 and once you're up that loud, you're way beyond bedroom volumes. This thing is definitely loud enough to gig with.

Seems to be built solid. I have no opinion as of yet.

No experience yet but I like their website.

This is a very nice amp and I am very glad that I bought it. I keep getting tempted to say that it's a very nice amp "for the money", but that is a little misleading because while that statement is true, it's really just a nice amp period. You just need to remember that this amp doesn't have a lot of gain on tap but it does have a very good core tone which is the most important thing. You can always add OD pedals to achieve the amount of gain that you like. This is the same reason why I love my Rivera KR100, it just has a great core tone. The only thing I wish this had is an effects loop but oh well. I'm definitely going to be watching this amp line and checking out their new releases, especially the 100 watt they've got coming out that you can switch to lower wattages. If that thing sounds as good as this amp with more gain and an effects loop, it could definitely be my dream amp. But I guess we'll have to see.

Made in 2007
I play mostly Rock and Metal, and with its 12AX7 and EL84 tubes, it's got a great Marshall tone.
Only has one channel, but there's a boost footswitch mod available on my website which was designed by Pyotr Belov, the guy who actually designed the amp http://blackheart.rowbinet.co.uk
Great amp for home rehearsal and very small gigs... or mic it through the PA for larger gigs.

I use mostly humbuckers in various guitars, les pauls, SG and Ibanez RG's... It suits my playing style (rock and metal).

As a stand alone amp it rocks... for my style I needed an OD pedal in front of it, but on its own it gives a creat crunch tone!

Clean tones are available, but as there's no master volume, you don't have enough clean headroom to gig with, unless you mic it... but clean is not what this amps about!

My use for this amp was to amplify my Line6 POD X3 Live. for this, I did not want the blackheart to add any more distortion, and I did not want the blackheart speaker in the BH112 cab I got, to colour my PODs sperker simulations... All I wanted the blackheart to do was to add a little real tube tone which I find helps finish off the great tones I get from my POD X3L in a live situation. http://blackheart.rowbinet.co.uk is where you can find out about the simple mods I did, which can be carried out in only a couple of hours. Here's my video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjKIG5-YO8

I gave the score of 9 for tone, as it needed a boost/OD pedal to sound good for my style... But for what it does, it does well. but with my mods and a POD it would be a 10... but of course I can't judge the amp on that for this review.

Blackheart had modifications in mind when they designed this amp. that said, it's really well built inside and out and I doubt many people will ever have an issue... I'd gig with it without a backup, for very small pub gigs.

but I've contacted tech support and they replied quickly and gave me a copy of the schematic for the amp, which is handy for after the amp's warranty has run out, as any amp tech could then service it.

Also after asking a couple of questions, Pyotr Belov (the amp designer) started emailing me with info about modding the amp! great service above and beyond what other companies would give.

Been playing on and off for 11 years, had a few tube amps in my time, and this one is great. good value, definately would replace it is it got stolen... seems a better buy than Epiphone Valve Juniors which are the same price with less features.

Has a single 12ax7 tube, and a single el84 tube, Volume, Bass, Treble, And Mid controlls, single input, a 5w to 3w switch, and 4 speaker inputs in the back, two 4 ohm, one 8 ohm, and one 16 ohm.

This amp sounded suprizingly good. I have allways liked using small amps, but hate crate amps...so i was a little scared, but i plugged into it thinking "what the hell?" and was blown away! even with the cheap chinese made tubes, it sound awesome, but i quickly replaced those with a single fender el84 groove tube, and a jj electronics ecc 803s tube. after doing this, the amp really came alive, I play mostly classic rock, and new age rock, and this amp does it very well. I use a electro harmonix metal muff pedal in front of it, and it sounds awesome. I paid $280 for the head and the matching single 12 cab, and i think it was probably one of the best gear purchases i have made. I use a carvin 100b all tube head for gigging, and this little monster for studio work, and i tell ya, its well worth it.

Well, i've had it for about a week, and so far so good, its been banged around a lil, just from moving it around, and so far so good!

Havnt had to call them, but i do like how they encourage you to mess around with, and mod the amp, so thats cool.

I have played thru many amps, one of my favorites being a 69 fender twin reverb, and also my carvin 100b, and this little guy could hang in there with them, not gonna say that it sounds as good as them, but its right up there. In my opinion, one of the best purchases i have made.

Front -> On/Off, Pentode/Triode, bass, middle, treble and volume. Just right for tone shaping. The only thing missing is a standby switch.

Back -> 2 * 4 Ohm, 2 * 8 Ohn & 1 * 16 Ohm jacks. This is a great feature! The jacks are wired in parallel, so it is a little confusing, but if you have two 16 ohm cabs they plug into the 8 ohm jacks or if you have two 8 ohm cabs they plug into the 4 ohm jacks. No messing with splitters or Ys! Changing cabinets and speaker combinations takes all of 10 seconds.

Pentode - The Little Giant sounds very good. The clean sweet spot is at about 4 or 5 and the crunch comes on as you turn up the volume.

Triode - Sounds muffled and needs to be turned up past about 7 to get bloom and harmonics.

I am still running the OEM tubes, but I bought the BH5 as a platform for EL84/6BQ5 tubes where one of a pair rattles or is micro. I have dozens of pairs for a Vox AC15CC1 and Dr Z Maz Jr that have been set aside because one of the pair rattles.

The Little Giant has nice rich full tone that is comparable to much more expensive amplifiers and it produces the tone a lower volume than either the Maz Jr or AC15.

I have been playing it through an Avatar Vintage 112 open back with a Celestion 12H30 70th Anniversary. Great bottom end, nice sparkle/chime, spacious room filling sound and a an agressive blues rock growl when turned up.

The BH5 is designed as a hot rodders platform. I first heard of the amplifier when I saw a P2P upgrade kit on the Mojo web site. Additionally, I have had very good expieriences changing to Mercury Magnetics transformers in a a Fender Champ 12 and Fender Pro Junior. When I bought the BH5, I figure another ~$100 for a MM output transformer and maybe the Mojo P2P kit (its all wired except the controls). After playing through the BH5, I am happy with the stock amplifier for lower volume playing at home. The only thing I will change is putting in a couple of NOS tubes.

Considering the price, the sound quality is a bargain.

No issues. Even with a screw up. I turned on the BH5 and when it was ready to go realized the cover was on the cabinet. While taking off the cover, I inadvertantly pulled out the jack. The BH5 had no load for about 20-30 seconds before I realized what was going on and hit power off. It does not seem to have affected the amp.

I have not tried to contact Blackheart Engineering. Their web site is very irreverant and entertaining with some good sound clips. No user manual in the box. I had to go to the web site to get a PDF of the user manual and verify how to use the output jacks. Good thing I looked, plugging two 8 ohm cabinets into the two 8 ohm jacks would have been a mistake.

I was always intrigued by the Epiphone Valve Junior, but dissuaded by the lack of tone controls and component based Mercury Magnetics upgrade kit. Soldering on circuit boards is not my cup of tea. When I saw the Mojo P2P assembled upgrade kit and a description of the BH5, I did a little research. I found a review describing the design process where the amplifier was orginally built and optimized as a P2P. Once the design was complete, it was migrated to a printed circuit board using high quality components and robust PCB traces. It was design specifically to facilitate tweakers and hot rodders and supposedly the designer is involved in setting up the production process. This all made sense to me and sounds like a very well executed plan.

I was hooked. For $150, I had to have one. Apparently, a lot of other people had to have one also because I ordered one in late November. The original shipping projection was early December, then it moved to early January. In the most serendipitous of events, it arrived Christmas Eve. There is a Santa Claus!

I am very happy with my BH5. It is off the scale when it comes to the bang for your buck.