Developed with the Whitesnake and Dead Daisies guitarist, the combo carries the DA100 Ruby's tone into home and studio volumes.
Doug Aldrich’s DA100 Ruby earned a stack of awards, and now Blackstar has now shrunk its sound into a smaller package. The DA5 Ruby is a five-watt valve combo, developed in close collaboration with the Whitesnake and Dead Daisies guitarist, built to carry the feel, response and character of his stage rig into home, studio and recording use.
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Built on Blackstar’s HT-5R MK III platform and derived from the DA100 Ruby’s signal paths rather than simply based on them, the DA5 Ruby runs a push-pull power stage where most low-powered valve amps are single-ended. Around an ECC83 preamp valve and a 12BH7 power valve, that design is meant to give it the feel and character of a 100-watt amp, with the dynamics, compression and touch sensitivity of a driven valve circuit showing up at practical volumes. Blackstar’s power reduction can also drop the output to 0.5 watts, a tenth of the rated power, for late-night playing without losing the amp’s response.
A custom 12-inch Aldrich 50 loudspeaker, co-developed with Doug for this amp, does a lot of the work. Rated at 50 watts, it gives the DA5 Ruby more headroom and projection than you’d expect from a combo this size, which is much of why it feels bigger than its wattage suggests.
Tone-wise, there are two footswitchable channels and four voices in total, covering American-style cleans, British overdrive and the high-gain lead sounds Aldrich is known for live. A choice of dark or light reverb voicings shapes the ambience, while Blackstar’s patented ISF control shifts the overall response between American and British character.
For recording and quiet practice, the DA5 Ruby carries Blackstar’s CabRig IR-based speaker simulation, with three user presets stored on the amp and hundreds of cabinet, microphone and room combinations available through Blackstar Architect software. Connections run to an XLR CabRig output, USB-C audio straight into a DAW and a stereo headphone output, and with integrated load protection the amp can be run silently with no speaker connected.
Finished in Aldrich’s Ruby tolex with a cast alloy logo plate and premium toggle switches, each DA5 Ruby also ships with some of Doug’s Dunlop plectrums, a signed certificate of authenticity and a two-way footswitch. It’s available now in limited numbers.
“It’s killer! It’s got all the tones from the original DA100 Ruby but in a 5 Watt combo and I love it so much!” says Aldrich.
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