Super Star

BLACKSTAR HT STAGE 100 MKII

- Chris Gill

IT’S NOT UNCOMMON for amp companies to add a feature or two to an existing product and rebrand it with a suffix like “mark 2,” “plus,” “XL” or the like. What is less common is when a “new and improved” amp gets significant upgrades and feature expansions without a similarly significant increase in price, and what is rarer than hen’s teeth is when a company bases most of those upgrades on feedback from owners of the previous version of the product. Blackstar’s new HT Stage 100 MKII boasts so many improvements over the previous HT Stage 100 introduced eight years ago that they could have given the model an entirely new name. But it shares so many of its predecessor’s most beloved features—including a similar control panel, functionality and affordable price—that keeping the model name was a solid decision.