Introduction - Blackheart Little Giant 5 User Manual

Introduction

Congratulations! You have just purchased what we believe to be one of the most significant
objects that you'll acquire in your lifetime—a tube amp. If that's not enough, you've gone and
gotten yourself a Blackheart Engineering tube amp. So let's take a big picture view of this for
a second: You're a guitar player that could have bought anything to bring your mind-bending
chops to life, to unleash upon the masses the wrath of your otherworldly, mad riffin' skills. Did
you settle? No, because you're more than just "whatever." You're like, "hear me roar!" so you
go tube. Not "hybrid," not "solid state," but all tube—from when you scream "jump!" until your
speaker wails "how high sir!"
We like you. You've got style. Speaking of which, take a look at the way this amp is built. 16
gauge steel, ½" radius corners in a void-free birch ply cabinet that looks like Michelangelo
covered it for you personally. How about double-sided PCB with 2 ounce copper tracers so
your big fat sound has lots to hold on to traveling through a classic boutique circuit path
designed by none other than Pyotr Belov himself. The guy's got a soldering iron in his hands
most hours of the night so if he says make the thing like a tank, everyone agrees real quickly.
Who knows, you might be in some sort of edge band; knock the thing around a bit. That's a
Blackheart thing. We make rock-solid, no compromise music gear that sounds like choruses
of angels that sing in big, beefy power chords. We work with glass, metal and wood just like
the powers that be intended when they created rock and roll. We take every amp personally
and we do it assuming you worked hard to get it and we're not letting you down. That fancy
tattoo logo was inspired by one of our test animals.* He said a great amp leaves a perma-
nent mark on your tone and shapes how you play, write, perform, etc. So, when you laid
down coin for a Blackheart, you kind of got hitched.
And it didn't set you back much, especially when you consider what you got. Every Blackheart
design starts as a hand-built masterpiece with no thoughts about cutting cost or going for
it on the cheap. Pyotr picks every component one by one and tweaks until his ears hear the
tone. Once he's given birth to the prototype (ouch!), he personally works with offshore manu-
facturing to translate that exact tone into the most affordable piece of gear that won't let you
down. Literally, he works in the factory, training other people how to build boutique-quality
amps and sits on the QC line before anything gets into a box. Blackheart isn't the cheapest—
plenty of other amps are cheap and you can have your pick. We prefer to be ultra-high quality
and performance for a price that anyone can afford.
So thanks for laying down your hard earned cash for a Blackheart Engineering product. We're
not going to disappoint you. You've got, in your hands, one of the best sounding, best quality,
old school inspired amps that's ever been made.
Vous avez notre coeur,
Pyotr Belov Kevin Van Pamel Walter Hsu
Blackheart Engineering
* We don't test on little furry helpless animals of course. We call our artists animals because, well, we've
eaten with them. They give their time and opinions to us on a regular basis and have a lot to do with how
good your Blackheart is.
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