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Thread: NAD

  1. #1
    Forum Member OldStrummer's Avatar
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    NAD

    The good news: The combo tube amp I purchased from Monoprice arrived today. Others here have said they belief it's a Laney Cub 12R clone, but I wouldn't know. I got it for extra cheap. Equipped with a 12" Celestion speaker and a spring reverb. Like the CUB 12R, it has a "step-down" setting: you can either plug into the 15w full power jack, or into a <1w jack, which, according to Laney, "Plug into the <1W and you get .75 of a Watt output. This allows you to drive the amplifier as hard as you like, giving you masses of power amp compression and a pleasing break up for that elusive DARK ART tone."

    The bad news: It's late at night, too late to unpack and try it. Worse yet, I have to work tomorrow, have a church dedication to work Sunday, and then I'm headed off on vacation for a week. So, it might be more than a week until I get a chance to hear it work.

    But I will give a full report (and pictures). I feel I owe that to you.

  2. #2
    Forum Member Don's Avatar
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    Re: NAD

    It often seems like things like that arrive when we have to wait to spend with them! I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of it.

  3. #3
    Forum Member OldStrummer's Avatar
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    Re: NAD

    Like a kid on Christmas morning, I couldn't wait to "unwrap my present," so with some very limited time available to me, here are my first impressions.



    I placed it on top of my Fender Mustang IIv2 amp to give it some size perspective. The photo is a little misleading, as it's actually not quite as tall as the Fender. As Kenny (FrankJohnson) observed in my original thread, the build quality is impressive.



    The controls are smooth and the <1w setting is impressive in itself. For my purposes, I could play on that jack most of the time. The 15w jack (shown) cranks this bad boy up to some real grit. As you can see from the photo, I set every dial to 5 except for the bass. I used my Strat's pickup selector, volume and tone controls to change the sound. More experimentation will be needed to find the "sweet spot" for me.

    Let's face it, I don't know diddly-squat about electric guitars or amps, so I don't know if this thing performs up to spec or not. But my initial foray into sampling it is positive. My other amps are modeling amps, so this is the first tube-driven amp without extra "voices" I've owned. It will be fun and interesting to see how my pedals work through it.

  4. #4
    Forum Member concert410's Avatar
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    Re: NAD

    So....... what was the final thought on this?
    A good, screaming Strat just might be the greatest guitar sound of all..... -Slash

  5. #5
    Forum Member OldStrummer's Avatar
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    Re: NAD

    Quote Originally Posted by concert410 View Post
    So....... what was the final thought on this?
    Wow, thanks for asking -- I had pretty well forgotten about this!

    OK, here then, is a "partial review." I say partial because I moved after I wrote the original post, and I'm still not completely set up in what I term my guitar/photo studio...

    The first thing I'll say is that it's the only amp I've been using since my move. That's the good news -- and the bad news. I'll start with the bad news first.

    The thing has a noticeable hum when it's on and standing by. I don't notice it when I'm playing, but it's there when I'm not. I can live with it, but there's no mistaking the fact when I have it powered on. The other "bad" news is that it isn't a modeling amp. Okay, that's a segue into the good news...

    The good news is that it isn't a modeling amp. By that, I mean that any affect I want to change out of this amp comes either from a dial, either on the guitar or the amp itself, or a pedal. And that's why I bought it. Of course, I'm a wet fart when it comes to dialing in the "perfect sound," so I find myself frequently tweaking and twiddling, which takes away from the playing. On my modeling amps, all I have to do is change one setting and I have an entire new sound to work with.

    I like the different input sockets. However, I don't really have the chance to crank it up, so the output at < 1W isn't that much different than at 15W. Still, it's clean sound at low volume, which is what I wanted in the first place. For my purposes, I can crank up the < 1W and get all the grit and bite I could want.

    And that makes it worth the purchase.

    More as I learn more...

    Again, thanks for asking. It was nice to revisit my thoughts on this amp.

  6. #6
    Forum Member concert410's Avatar
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    Re: NAD

    I see the ads all over Google and I was wondering how those products are. The 40 watt solid state amp looks the same as Fender's to me.
    A good, screaming Strat just might be the greatest guitar sound of all..... -Slash

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