The Blackheart Autopsy Report
Devil in the Details, Angels in the Architecture …call it what you want but the sonic beauty of a Blackheart Engineering amplifier is only equaled by the meticulous craft that goes into its design and build. We’ve never once (and will not) build a musical instrument with cost as the guiding concern. That’s been done and you can get an amp on the cheap just about anywhere these days. Instead, every amplifier with the BHE “Heart and Flora” badge proudly affixed to it begins life as a hand built, no-compromise piece of gear. Pyotr Belov locks himself in the infamous two-car garage (now in Austin, TX) and makes great amps the way he always has: by hand, with the best materials and without stopping to think about what it’s costing. From there, Pyotr translates his designs into a PCB layout for larger production runs and sets out to teach our manufacturing partners, one to one, how to build a great amp using robust parts and design philosophies. He doesn’t head home until it's done and done right. This is the process that sets Blackheart apart and the reason your amp is built like a tank, sounds like an angel and you can actually afford it.
Look deep into our Blackheart:
16 Gauge Steel All BHE amps use 16 gauge steel, folded and welded to protect your amp’s innards and keep it nice and quiet, noise-wise. The welding is an extra step that you’ll only find on high-end amps and is done to minimize rattles as well as protect. Cheaply built amps can have more rattles and hums than an oft over looked U2 album — not a Blackheart. The only noise you want to hear is the blistering wrath flying from your hot little fingers. We agree. And strong? You can literally pull most amps' chassis out and bend them in half with your bare hands. Blackheart simply laughs at your feeble attempts.
15mm, 11 ply Void-Free Birch Cabinetry, classic joinery and meticulous tolex work mark BHE cabinet quality. MDF (multi-dimensional fiberboard) is cheaper, heavier and less “tonier”. In our opinion, great cabinetwork is as important as the circuit and the speaker. When you’re looking for that big, fat tube tone, too rigid and dense of a box means you're headed in the wrong direction. You can compensate to restore some of the tonality lost to the rigid nature of MDF but in the end, it’s a few bucks on the profit and loss statement and we’d rather just avoid the compensating part. Add to that the fact that hardware made for real wood doesn’t usually hang on to fiberboard as long and you’ve got a recipe for a short term relationship with your amp through premature gravity trauma. Blackheart wants to see you off to school, watch you get married, have kids, get married again and then grow old. We think of that when we design anything.
The Most Robust Circuit Construction, Period. All of our guitar amps use 1W carbon film resistors in the circuit path, 2W and 5W resistors in the power section and get firmly attached to a double sided PCB with 2 oz traces. Overbuilt? You bet they are. All those great, beefy components add up to smooth sailing for your tone. We even take the extra care of designing DC power to the filaments which means a Blackheart amp runs super quiet.
Everything inside a Blackheart proves out a serious promise of putting a great amp in your hands and on your stage. Blackheart is made with an obsessive commitment to great quality, jaw-dropping tone and a lifetime of reliable performance. Rock on.
16 Gauge Steel All BHE amps use 16 gauge steel, folded and welded to protect your amp’s innards and keep it nice and quiet, noise-wise. The welding is an extra step that you’ll only find on high-end amps and is done to minimize rattles as well as protect. Cheaply built amps can have more rattles and hums than an oft over looked U2 album — not a Blackheart. The only noise you want to hear is the blistering wrath flying from your hot little fingers. We agree. And strong? You can literally pull most amps' chassis out and bend them in half with your bare hands. Blackheart simply laughs at your feeble attempts.
15mm, 11 ply Void-Free Birch Cabinetry, classic joinery and meticulous tolex work mark BHE cabinet quality. MDF (multi-dimensional fiberboard) is cheaper, heavier and less “tonier”. In our opinion, great cabinetwork is as important as the circuit and the speaker. When you’re looking for that big, fat tube tone, too rigid and dense of a box means you're headed in the wrong direction. You can compensate to restore some of the tonality lost to the rigid nature of MDF but in the end, it’s a few bucks on the profit and loss statement and we’d rather just avoid the compensating part. Add to that the fact that hardware made for real wood doesn’t usually hang on to fiberboard as long and you’ve got a recipe for a short term relationship with your amp through premature gravity trauma. Blackheart wants to see you off to school, watch you get married, have kids, get married again and then grow old. We think of that when we design anything.
The Most Robust Circuit Construction, Period. All of our guitar amps use 1W carbon film resistors in the circuit path, 2W and 5W resistors in the power section and get firmly attached to a double sided PCB with 2 oz traces. Overbuilt? You bet they are. All those great, beefy components add up to smooth sailing for your tone. We even take the extra care of designing DC power to the filaments which means a Blackheart amp runs super quiet.
Everything inside a Blackheart proves out a serious promise of putting a great amp in your hands and on your stage. Blackheart is made with an obsessive commitment to great quality, jaw-dropping tone and a lifetime of reliable performance. Rock on.
