Jeffrec
New member
Ok. The Nomad arrived last Friday, and I got a chance to play through it over the weekend. This will be a brief review since I played it for less than an hour. I'll give it a better workout this weekend.
1. Very solidly built. Using hardwood ply vs particle board. The tweed (vinyl) covering is flawless and looks like actual tweed.
2. The Mid and Bass control for both channels are very responsive. Typically, I have the Mid and Bass full up with the Treble at about 12:00 or 1:00. For this amp, I had to roll back the Bass and Mid (slightly).
3. Cleans are really nice on this amp (I played through a Strat, but I'll use the LP this weekend). Very articulate, especially for chords. Even at lower volumes, single notes sustain nicely.
4. The Drive channel: I'm used to El84's with the Crate VC5212. Both the Carvin and Crate have nice creamy distortion, no fizz at all. I didn't crank it up too much, but setting the Soak (gain) knob to around 6 gets a real nice fat distortion. Pushing it closer to max makes it a little too distorted for my tastes. I'm guessing that setting the Soak at 6 and jacking up the level will give me exactly what I'm looking for in an amp.
5. The amp is plenty loud, even at less than half volume. So I should have no problem gigging with it. It's equally as loud as the Crate with 2X12's. I'll have to A/B them to see what differences I'll find with only one speaker.
Anyway. That's it for now. I'll add more later like I said earlier.
1. Very solidly built. Using hardwood ply vs particle board. The tweed (vinyl) covering is flawless and looks like actual tweed.
2. The Mid and Bass control for both channels are very responsive. Typically, I have the Mid and Bass full up with the Treble at about 12:00 or 1:00. For this amp, I had to roll back the Bass and Mid (slightly).
3. Cleans are really nice on this amp (I played through a Strat, but I'll use the LP this weekend). Very articulate, especially for chords. Even at lower volumes, single notes sustain nicely.
4. The Drive channel: I'm used to El84's with the Crate VC5212. Both the Carvin and Crate have nice creamy distortion, no fizz at all. I didn't crank it up too much, but setting the Soak (gain) knob to around 6 gets a real nice fat distortion. Pushing it closer to max makes it a little too distorted for my tastes. I'm guessing that setting the Soak at 6 and jacking up the level will give me exactly what I'm looking for in an amp.
5. The amp is plenty loud, even at less than half volume. So I should have no problem gigging with it. It's equally as loud as the Crate with 2X12's. I'll have to A/B them to see what differences I'll find with only one speaker.
Anyway. That's it for now. I'll add more later like I said earlier.
