I have a Peavey ValveKing 112, and while it has a great clean channel I've never been overly impressed with the lead channel.
I was pretty much on the point of ditching it for another amp with clean / lead channels when I decided to give the Blackstar pedals a try to see if they could improve things for me. I went along to my local Blackstar dealer and tried out the HT - Dual and the HT - DistX.
Both myself and Sue have been playing some heavier stuff lately (could be something to do with the arrival of C-Pigs :roll: :twisted: ) so we tried the DistX first. It's a great high gain pedal IMO, it has a tone shaping dial to move between british and amarican voicing, not sure how accurate it is, but it gives some nice versatility to the sound. Standard Bass, mid and teble EQ, plus gain and level controls. We were playing Sue's C-Pig equipped Ibanez and got some really great Metal tones, face melting highs and end-of-the-world bass.
Next we tried the HT-Dual. I was really impressed with this pedal, the same controls as the DistX plus a clean / crunch button for channel 1. In effect this is a 3 channel pedal, clean boost(ch1) / low gain(ch1) / high gain(ch2). Extremely versatile, really great tones.
Both pedals are tube driven and use 300v interal power to properly drive the tubes, both come with power supplies and both are built like bomb shelters.
We played with each for about 10-15 in the shop and I couldn't decide between them, the HT-Dual is the more versatile by a long way, but the DistX gave us tones we couldn't get from any of our other equipment, where the Orange amps gives us at least some of the tones of the Dual.
You know where this is going right?
So I walked out with both, and a Small Clone I spotted on the way out :roll:
Having got them home and played (badly) a little while I can say that the Peavey is now safe and can earn it's keep along with the Oranges, and as an added bonus, because the pedals have both gain and level I can play overdriven tones at room levels :)
I'm (currently) very happy with my purchase, and no longer need to put a second 4x12 + head in the lounge. (It will happen one though I'm sure).
If you have an amp with a good clean channel these are worth checking out!
