Blackstar launches the St. James Plugin, including “precise models” of its EL34 and 6L6 models

Blackstar has released its first ever plugin, which includes “precise models” of the EL34 and 6L6 head, a range of pedals and a Cab Rig speaker simulator.

Everything included in the plugin has been designed by its in-house team so that you can get the tone and feel of a valve amp in the digital space, designed by the people who made the originals.

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The digital St. James EL34 is said to deliver the warm guitar tones associated with icons of the ‘60s. Blackstar describes it as offering “British Crunch”, and “jaw-dropping US cleans”.

The 6L6 on the other hand offers more headroom cleans and modern high gain. Using Channel II Voice I on the amp, users can get that preamp gain with a British-style passive tone stack. Channel II Voice II however, delivers “tight, modern metal sounds” and has the brand’s highest gain overdrive circuit yet.

Outside of its amp sims, the St. James package includes a range of pedals that are divided into pre- and post-FX, with the pre cohort consisting of compressor, drive, chorus and phaser. The post section includes flanger, tremolo, delay and reverb. Also on board is The Dept. 10 Equaliser which is based on a classic analogue rack, and features adjustable high and low cuts, as well as four semi-parametric EQ bands with selectable centre frequencies.

A DSP speaker simulator known as CabRig is also included, which reproduces the sound and feel of a mic’d up guitar cab. For the St. James plugin, a new “advanced” algorithm simulates a speaker, cabinet, mic and room “with effectively zero latency”, and with more flexibility than a ‘snapshot’ IR. A curated selection of nine Blackstar speaker cabinets and six industry standard microphones are on offer here.

The St. James plugin is available now for £99 and works with Garageband, Logic Pro, Pro Tools and more. Find out more on the Blackstar website.