Star Amplifiers - Blues Star

Mark Sampson is a car guy. The vintage Cadillac outside the front door to Star Amplifiers is a dead giveaway. Actually most of the amp designers I have met are car guys. Anyone who spends serious amounts of time trying to win races or car shows knows how you learn about design from wrenching on your own car. As you become close to your car, you discover little hidden beauties that amaze you with their perfect approach to solving a mechanical problem. You also discover small and large stupidities so curious that you suspect either the designer had a bad day or bean counters decided to show those snotty punks on the design staff their AutoCAD chops and now you get to pay for it. Whether it is the rear oil seal on a Chevy 235 or the profile gasket on a BMW Z3 motor, you discover things you wish someone had done better.

In a car, Bad Design, (sometimes called “monkey motion” if it is especially pointless and silly) will leave you stranded in Bakersfield in August. Not a good thing. Bad Design in guitar amps will occasionally blow up the amp during Inna Gadda Da Vidda or Livin’ La Vida Loca, (not necessarily a bad thing) but when Bad Design doesn’t actually blow the amp up, it can create some very interesting sounds. A starved and under-rated power supply, in the case of a JTM45 for instance, will produce a nicely sagged (compressed) singing lead tone, as long as you don’t mind the extra notes playing below some of the ones you are playing. Kind of an “instant-harmonizer”, and it is included free! There are all kinds of bad designs in guitar amps that have produced wonderful tones. Jim Kelly amps produced a great tone by running voltages that made the output tubes scream “uncle” in an occasionally loud and fiery protest. (they were called hand grenades by the techs)

Of course, there are tube guitar amps with proper audio circuits in them. Hiwatts are a great example of an extreme-headroom, stout power supply, well-designed circuit that sound terrific as are the old original Williams Amplifier-based tube Standels (and the reissue ones made by Requisite Audio). But many amps are either based on badly regulated, noisy, non-linear public address amps from the 1940’s, (the original Fender Champ was derived from a Western Electric circuit for a PA head) derivations thereof, or totally unique circuits.

Mark Sampson had to deal with bad design and execution in many Vox AC30’s and their brethren that have produced many hit records playing somewhere on radio even as you read this. Mark came up in the audio version of Navy SEAL training fixing those tired old pieces of moldering solder and wood while the band ate dinner and the producer watched him nervously. Mark became the go-to guy to get a session to sound great, and in time he unearthed all the monkey motion in our favorite guitar amps. We want the cool sounds of course, but no one wants the amps to break, so eventually, he had replicated all of the parts that broke so regularly with parts that kept the great sound, but did not break. It was time to make his own amp. So, back in the early 1990’s, with his partners, he scraped together enough money to get a NAMM booth and brought the result of those years of wrenching to the public.

I was there. I played one. They were called Matchless, but I simply called them “the amp from hell” because hell is where I wanted to send all my amps once I heard one. It was that good. I thanked all of the Matchless folks, profusely, and as soon as I could work it out, I owned one; a gorgeous DC30 in shower-curtain grey. Stunning. And what a tone.

Since then, the retired drag racer has earned a reputation among the great amp designers of all time. People all have their favorites, and “best” is a dangerous word, but I can think of no one I consider to be better at this, and that is saying something. Mark has peers, in this wonderful age of superb guitar amps, no doubt about it, but he has no superiors. Not in my book at least.

Which brings us to Star Amplifiers. Since leaving Matchless, Mark designed amps for Bad Cat and SMF, and now brings us his new Star Amplifiers. What, I wondered could he bring to the table at this point? Where can we go with so many perfect plexi clones, reissued Hiwatts, immaculate tweed Fenders, and lovingly recreated Voxes? Well, I was surprised again. Wandering that most interesting of Halls at NAMM (the basement) I turned a corner and there was Mark in a small booth with a bunch of new amps to show. Cool! While chewing the fat and telling stories, I heard a couple of players trying out the Blues Star and was quite impressed with it, so I tried it myself, and discovered a clean tone that is probably the best I have ever heard. The Boost sound is great too, but the clean sound is so articulate, so sweet and nuanced that the notes you play seem to sit there in space rather than issue forth from a little box over there in the corner. Very nice indeed, and yes, I liked it even better than my old Matchless, (which is now wowing them in Hong Kong after a nice gentleman made me a spectacular offer for it)

So, I went home and sold all the vintage tikis, mics, and compressors I had lying around. (well, ok, I kept the tikis) My rule is that if I don’t use something in 6 months, out it goes. So I sold a bunch of stuff and now I have a new Blues Star, and as we say in SoCal, I’m stoked!

The Blues Star has the usual volume, treble, mid, bass, presence, and master controls, all of them very effective, but it also has something they call Trim. This knob, which I understand works at the driver/inverter stage almost changes the character of the amp as you turn it. Ever find that to get enough treble you get too much mid, but the mid control doesn’t help? The trim control brings the upper mids either forward or relaxes them without reducing the higher timbres until you get really extreme with it. It allows me to get exactly what I wanted, and no other amp has ever done that so perfectly. All the sounds are good. There are no bad tones here, but if you spend a little time learning the interaction of the controls and how the Trim control affects them, you will find tones that will knock your socks right off.

Despite its name, the Blues Star works great for country and classic rock as well as jazz. To my ear, the trim control pulled back quite a bit produces just stellar jazz sounds. He also has one called the Gain Star and the Sirius Reverb and smaller amps called Novas.

This one is a keeper.



Check out the website here.