Blackstar Silverline – Setup a Setlist
If you’re a working musician and you need access to a lot of different tones to get through a gig, the Silverline paired with the FS-10 Footswitch is a great combination.
Take the scenario of a function or wedding band guitar player. If this is you, you’ll know the situation. You have to play material that spans 50-60 years including everything from Soul classics to rock hits and beyond. When trying to replicate all the classic tones, it is easy to get carried away with gear.
You may find yourself taking a huge pedalboard and various guitars, maybe even two amps, to attempt at recreating the tones in question.
The Silverline is a one stop shop to solve this problem. The amp has 12 presets built in, across 4 banks. It also has 4 reverbs, 4 delays and 4 modulation effects. Couple that with the 6 voices, 6 tube responses and the ISF and you can dial in whatever you want.
The FS-10 allows you to expand the 12 patches to 128, based across 32 banks of 4. Imagine each bank is a song. This allows you to set up 32 songs, each with 4 separate pre-set sounds.
Here is an overview of the 8 tones in this video from Blackstar’s Insider software for the Silverline.
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Sweet Home Alabama
The first bank of tones in the video is based on the Sweet Home Alabama style tone. This is a US Tweed style overdrive. The EQ has been kept fairly straight, so the initial editing process isn’t too complex. You can dig into this a little more as you start to fine tune your tones.
The voice is on the Clean Bright for the first patch and the Crunch for the rest. The gain changes on each patch to give different textures but the 6V6 TVP is kept on throughout. For the lead tone there is also a Slapback style delay added for thickening the tone.
Patch 1 – Clean Breakup
Patch 2 – Crunch
Patch 3 – Overdrive
Patch 4 – Lead Guitar
Stereophonics – Dakota
Another track that I broke down some rough tones for in the video is Dakota. This is another track that a lot of function bands play and it has 4 different sounds used.
This is using the KT88 TVP with the ISF at 5. This creates a mix between UK and US style tones.
The intro is a low gain crunch tone with flanger, this then switches to the same tone with a delay engaged for the lead parts. The verse is a low gain crunch tone and the chorus engages the Super Crunch voice for a heavy rock tone.
Patch 1 – Flanger
Patch 2 – Delay Lead Tone
Patch 3 – Overdriven Picking
Patch 3 – Overdriven Picking
Set Up Your Setlist
This is a great way to program a bunch of songs into the amp ready for your gig. You can work out how to break down each song into 4 main tones. You can do this based on specific tones, or specific sections of the song.
With up to 32 banks of 4, it is quite easy to program a pretty large setlist into the FS-10.
You can even edit on the fly. Using the Effect mode of the foot switch, you can engage or disengage the Reverb, Delay and Modulation sections. You can also tap tempo the Delay and Modulation effects.