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Small enough to fit almost anywhere you'd like to put it.

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You have to hand it to Blackstar: the new company appeared virtually out of nowhere in 2007, and as we click into 2011 it's without doubt one of the leading brands in valve guitar amplification, certainly in the low/mid price sectors.

Its most successful model, the HT-5, offers lots of features in a small, convenient package at an extremely competitive price. But it seems even five watts is too much for some folks, so enter the HT-1 - a fully featured valve combo putting out the grand total of one whole watt.

Cynics beware… Outwardly, the HT-1 bears Blackstar's now established smart black livery, quality metal pots and general feeling of high build quality and finish.

"We never expect much from digital reverbs but this does an exceptional job of emulating a classic long-tank spring reverb. It's the best we've heard in a cost effective amp."

And boy is it small - we don't know whether to put it on the floor, on a shelf, or knit a little jumper for it, as you would one of those handbag-sized dogs. In short, only the most unreasonable of significant others will ban it from any part of the house.

The single channel runs off a lone ECC83 preamp valve and has two modes, selectable via a top-panel switch. With the switch out you're in clean to crunch mode, and with it in it's all about heavier overdrive. Then you get a gain and master volume set-up followed by Blackstar's trademark ISF control.

Rather than spanning vaguely woolly to vaguely tinny like most single tone pots, this one shifts the whole EQ curve, which has the biggest tonal effect in the mid frequencies.

Blackstar says this mimics the harder mids and tighter bottom end of classic British amps, through to the more scooped mid-range and blooming bottom end of classic American amps.

Finally there's a master reverb control (note the presence of an 'R' in the model name) to control the digital reverb circuit. You also get a couple of functional extras: most usefully an emulated/headphones out that enables you to connect directly and silently to a mixing console or soundcard for recording, and also to practise without disturbing the neighbours.

In either environment, it sounds surprisingly good. There's also an mp3/line input should you want to jam along with your iPod/phone/CD player or what have you. The single eight-inch guitar speaker isn't going win any hi-fi awards when it comes to backing track playback, however.

Finally, you have an 8-ohm speaker output, which when connected, cuts off the HT-1R's internal speaker. We tried it with 1 x 12, 2 x12 and 4 x 12 cabinets with impressive results - as you can imagine, the HT-1R is a different beast entirely through a bigger, more powerful speaker cabinet.

Power comes from a not-that-common ECC82 dual triode that's using its two halves to run in class A/B push-pull configuration - many single output-valve micro amps tend to run in single-ended class A.