It's here. NAD!

[Mr 9finger]

I've only got about a half hour on it so far and I've not played anything but my P90 goldtop tribute LP. The one word that keeps coming to mind is RAW. It's got a raw, gritty tone to it. That's just an initial impression. The guitar has that tone as well, so the amp is probably just accentuating that natural tone.

For no more knobs than this thing has, you can spend a lot of time tweaking it. Like any other amp, you can make it sound really bad, really fast. It is a little on the dark sounding side of things. From all the clips I've heard of it, I'm going to say that's probably the crappy stock tubes. They are literally no name generic tubes. There's not a marking on them at all.

It's also quite a bit bigger than I expected for a 6 watt amp. I'm going to have to do some rearranging. Right now it's just crammed in there. Also need to make a longer speaker cable to make this work out how I intended.

Is it a great amp? Not really. I didn't expect it to be for the price. Does it have a lot of potential. Absolutely, and that's what I bought it for. I'll jam on it some more over the next couple weeks and give it a more thorough review for the amp thread.

Here's a quick temporary pic. Now I have to rearrange this whole area to make this big ass thing to fit in here.

 

[Hoss]

It it's a dark voiced amp. The tube swap should help. My Eq pedal helps as well.

 

[MetalManiac]

Re: It's here. NAD!

Ya could also get a Yellowjacket and run a EL84. Should brighten it and give it come cluck.

 

[King IzzO)))]

Re: It's here. NAD!

I don't understand why anyone would remove a 6V6 and put in an EL84, but that's just me.

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: It's here. NAD!

I don't understand why anyone would remove a 6V6 and put in an EL84, but that's just me.

I agree and FWIW...simply using EL84's don't make the amp chime or cluck...most of the voicing of an amp is in the preamp...that amp with an EL84 will still sound mostly the same.

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: It's here. NAD!

The guy I spoke with recommended a 5881 in the power tube slot for what I'm going to do with it. He said between using lower gain preamp tubes and the 5881, it'll brighten up and make it a bit more articulate. Not that it lacks definition now. It does get a little fuzzy if you don't set it right. For the price, I half expected the gain to sound like a distortion box. However it's got a nice natural breakup and cleans up well with a turn of the guitars volume knob.

I'm really surprised with the effects loop. Again, cheap price usually equates to cheap quality. But the effects loop works as it should. No odd noises or volume drops. Works just as good as my Mesa's loops. Right now I've got a Berhinger 7 band EQ in the loop and it helps a lot for fine tuning. Takes pedals just as well out front. It didn't overly care for my Distortion+, but that's not really uncommon.

I'm really curious to try it with more pedals. So far it's been more than I expected, but to be perfectly honest, I didn't set the bar real high for it to begin with. We'll see if I'm still digging it in a week or so.

 

[MetalManiac]

Re: It's here. NAD!

I think the end all be all tone fix for that amp is gonna be a Mercury Magnetics X-former once the modders get serious with it.The tone is always in the Iron.

( Someone tell him what i said..he's got me on Iggy..lol)

 

[Chickenwings]

Re: It's here. NAD!

I don't understand why anyone would remove a 6V6 and put in an EL84, but that's just me.

+1

tungsols in the pre= clarity and articulation
jj in the power section= headroom and defined bass.

 

[Hoss]

Re: It's here. NAD!

I had a Tung Sol 12AX7 in the pre amp and a Tung Sol 6v6GT in the power in my combo.

I switched out the 12AX7 last night and put in a JJ ECC83S in the preamp last night...i could swear that it added some more high end to it...:22:

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: It's here. NAD!

I had a Tung Sol 12AX7 in the pre amp and a Tung Sol 6v6GT in the power in my combo.

I switched out the 12AX7 last night and put in a JJ ECC83S in the preamp last night...i could swear that it added some more high end to it...:22:

That coincides with the what their CS rep told me. I've got some 70's Fender labeled 12AT7's and a couple ECC83's here I'll try in it sometime today if I get the chance.