I’ve had an id Core10 v2 for the best part of 3 years. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to get nice over driven sound out of it.
The clean is reasonable enough, but to my ears the crunch/distorted sound is quite unpleasant no matter how much I fiddle with the gain etc.
I’m guessing a lot of it is down to the tiny speakers screaming for mercy 
The frustrating thing is, that when I listen to the demos on YouTube they always sound pretty good.
Perhaps I’m missing something obvious?
@firebee are you experimenting just with the amp controls, or have you tried using the Blackstar Architect software?
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I tried the software when i first had the amp.
I very quickly decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
- What guitar are you using?
- What setting on the channel dial are you using?
- What’s the volume level on your guitar?
- What’s the gain level on the amp?
- What’s the volume level on the amp?
- What’s the voicing dial set at, full left gives scooped American rock/metal sounds. Full right gives fuller British rock/metal sounds?
- Are you playing with the amp on the floor?
- Are the strings on your guitar quite new?
All of these will contribute to what the sound coming from your guitar will be like; there’s a lot of things to get right to sound good. I have the Blackstar BEAM so know what it will and won’t do. If you’re expecting it to sound like a Marshall or Mesa boogie stack it won’t, but it can sound ok. Bear it in mind these demos are not just in a room, they are mic’d up to enhance the sound!
I’m using an Ibanez S 521 guitar. (which is in need of new strings)
I have experimented with all the Channels.
For me the 3 most distorted channels sound pretty bad even with the gain turned down. Which kind of defeats the object.
The other 3, with careful use of the gain are acceptable.
On the rare occations that I actually use the amp, I do prefer to keep the voicing pretty neutral.
The amp always lives on the floor. Be it in the carpeted lounge or the tiled kitchen.
I guess the truth is that I was expecting too much from the amp to start with.
I wont give up on it totally. But at the moment my time is better spent practicing with no amp than wasting loads of time searching for something that may never be found.
As I beginner, I would say 3 years is a long time with a starter amp. I lasted like 6 months.
Why not move on to whatever you really want, be it an amp or a quality modeller? You can always keep the Core for travel or whatever.
In my limited experience (I have played around a dozen different well-known guitars with various levels of gain), on a 5150 style gain the guitar matters little so long as the pickups are powerful enough. I do feel huge differences on gain sounds between pickups, but not on really high gain.
I am looking to get a new amp at some point.
As yet I’m undecided on what to purchase.
But it’s not very high on the priority list, so I’ll have plenty of time to mull it over.
The current software - Architect- is relatively new. It replaces the original version - Insider - but I don’t know when it was released, just that it’s sometime in the last 3-5 years. Is it possible you were using Insider? If so I’d give Architect a whirl, it’s a definite improvement
I was running the “insider” software.
I didn’t get on with it at all.
Too much time wasted connecting laptops and downloading patches.
It was far easier to fiddle with the settings manually.
I think that in the future I’ll replace it with an amp that amplifies, and does nothing else.
Keep it as simple as possible.