Re: NAD on the way...
The Chupacabra showed-up yesterday. Wow... it's amazing. I was a bit intimidated when I first sat-down to dial-in a tone. It's not like the Friedman Pink Taco that I'd received a few days ago. That amp was very quick to dial-in, set it, and forget it. The Chup has so many gain and tonal options that you have to just sit there and kind-of soak it in little by little. It's more complicated than my old Bogner XTC that way. But I was able to find a lower-gain 80s tone that just rocked my socks within a short time. It's got this thing going with the mids that's just amazing. If amps sounded like cars... this thing would be a Ferrari (several of which I've ridden in). It just roars! I played along with Accept's "Balls to the Wall" and "Love Child" and felt that this tone that I'd dialed-in was similar... only BETTER. More refined. Smoother. That's pretty much the extent of my tweaking this far. The tone was so good that I mostly just played with that last night. I did flip switches, pull the Focus knob, and tweedle with EQ knobs, drifiting in and out of various more high and low gain stuff last night, but kept going back to that raw (yet smooth) early 80s roar that I'd stumbled-on earlier. As the days go on I'll continue to play around and venture out from the "base camp" that I've found to see what all this thing can do. I've had a lot of nice tube amps over the past ten years, and this thing sounds as good or better than any of them. It's just amazing. Taking it all in was like trying to drink from a fire hose. I am blown away. Hands-down, the most toneful single-channel rock amp I've ever played or heard.
