MadAsAHatter
Well-known member
With Jason starting up a 2nd Australian run now and a US run in the 2nd quarter (I think) I've been getting a few questions of how I'm liking everything so far. So I figured I go ahead and do a one month update post.
The newness is starting to wear off, but I still love this amp just as much as I did on day one. Really, I love it even more than on day one now that I've become familiar with it and settled into my preferred settings. First off I'll start by saying that my initial impressions still hold up. You can read them here:
https://www.rig-talk.com/forum/threads/nad-it-has-arrived-headfirst-alta-100.259864/
I've been playing it primarily through my 212/115 cab loaded with 2 12" Weber Grey Wolfs and a 15" Weber Alnico Blue Dog. For reference the Grey Wolf is like a mix of a V30 & CL80 and the Blue Dog would be similar to a Celestion Blue with extended lows. All together it's midrange punch, Voxey sparkle and extended low end.
As far as Marshall tones go, there's not much the Alta can't cover. It does cleans to high gain and everything in between.
Ch 1 covers the cleans to dirt and can be pushed into AC/DC style saturation. While you do get the saturation, I feel it is pushing that channel close the max so it may not have the feel you'd want. For me it's better to keep Ch 1 in the edge of breakup to moderate dirt area and let Ch 2 take it from there into the classic rock territory.
Ch 2 and 3 catch everything else. Both Ch 2 & 3 have similar amounts of saturation so there is overlap. Ch 2 stars off with less gain and Ch 3 can be pushed further into higher gain. I've set mine for Ch 2 to cover lower gain rock and Ch 3 for high gain metal. I've set the gain on both channels to just shy of 3 o'clock. From there I can switch between vintage and modern voicing depending on my mood and what I'm playing.
With that general setup on Ch 2 I'll use vintage voicing for the 60's to 70's classic rock and jump it into modern voicing for hard rock. Ch 3 is the same concept but vintage voicing hits classic and 80's thrash metal and modern voicing covers anything past that. In any setting I use Bright 1 & 2 to taste and use the diode clip + MV2 if I want an extra push. As far as EQ goes, everything sound pretty much how it needs to with all knobs at noon. EQ adjustments are about aligning the tone with the speakers and room acoustics more than trying to dial in a good sound. For me. bass is set to @ 11 o'clock, mid at noon, and treble a @ 1 o'clock. Depth, Presence, and response are pretty much the same way but for the power section. Set them to taste. All three knobs do interact together. It's all well balanced with knobs set a noon. But if you dial up the response you may way to dial back the presence a little. Same thing with depth. Dial the response down and you may want to back off on the depth.
A note on the response knob... It controls the negative feedback loop and has a big impact on sound and feel. Noon is a good balance that for me that works well across the board. Dial it back and you get a smoother, darker response. I won't say it becomes overly polite. Let's just say it becomes courteous, but you still know there's a beast lurking under the surface. Dial the response up and you start letting that beast loose. It becomes brighter and has a good feeling aggressive bite. Like I mentioned, noon is a good spot for me. My analogy is like letting the Rottweiler snarl, bark and scare the shit out of everyone, but you still have him on a leash 100% under control. Lower the response you're tightening up the leash; up the response and you're giving that leash more slack.
As for negative aspects of the Alta, I'm hard pressed for any. I'm not a fan of knobs being on the rear panel. MV1, MV2 and response are on the back. My home setup makes them harder to get to if I want to make adjustments, but that's nitpicking. In reality I've set them where they work for me and don't really need to touch them again anyway. The only other thing I can note is there's the slightest pause switching between vintage and modern voicing. It's not 100% seamless, more like 98-99% seamless; similar to when you click on/off a stomp box and nothing that's going to interrupt your flow playing. And for me it's 100% inconsequential and doesn't ever come up because I'm not changing voicing mid riff.
Lastly, I want to mention the build quality. I finally popped the chassis out the shell this past weekend to take a look inside. Jason already said it was a PCB so no surprise there. I know some people can get all uppity about that though, especially when the tube sockets are direct mount. Let me say that the board is of highest quality; thick and sturdy. It's not going to cave in or snap changing tubes. It's not a rat's nest of ribbon cables either. It's all quality resistors, capacitors, et. all other components laid out in a well organized manner. It's just like you'd see in any other high quality hand wired amp, just on a PCB instead of turret board. I also need to mention how tidy all the solder joints and wire runs are done. Perfect solder joints, wire leads are only as long as they need to be, and again everything is tidy and well organized. I'm not sure which parts Jason did and where Shea picked up. Either way they both did a phenomenal job on the build quality.
I did take a couple of quick pictures of the board, but I'm not going to post them yet. It's not my circuit design so I don't want to put pictures of others' work on the web all willy-nilly without their permission. If @burger is okay with letting everyone have a glimpse of the insides it I'll post them.
Before I wrap up one last little teaser for everyone. Shea contacted me the other week that he's starting another run of Skeleton Key's and I've put my deposit down. I'm looking forward to putting the Alta and Skeleton Key side by side to see how they compare. I have a feeling it's going to be a battle of heavyweights. Like Tyson vs Holyfield back in the day. Let's just hope when it goes down no one loses an ear LOL!
So overall I'm still loving the Alta and it's up at the top of my list of favorite amps; right along side my Naylor Superdrive and Mesa Mark III. In the long run it's one of those you can bury it with me when I die amps. It's extremely versatile and can cover most any Marshall type tone you'd want. It is a bit of an investment dollar wise, but I whole-heartedly feel it is worth every single cent.
The newness is starting to wear off, but I still love this amp just as much as I did on day one. Really, I love it even more than on day one now that I've become familiar with it and settled into my preferred settings. First off I'll start by saying that my initial impressions still hold up. You can read them here:
https://www.rig-talk.com/forum/threads/nad-it-has-arrived-headfirst-alta-100.259864/
I've been playing it primarily through my 212/115 cab loaded with 2 12" Weber Grey Wolfs and a 15" Weber Alnico Blue Dog. For reference the Grey Wolf is like a mix of a V30 & CL80 and the Blue Dog would be similar to a Celestion Blue with extended lows. All together it's midrange punch, Voxey sparkle and extended low end.
As far as Marshall tones go, there's not much the Alta can't cover. It does cleans to high gain and everything in between.
Ch 1 covers the cleans to dirt and can be pushed into AC/DC style saturation. While you do get the saturation, I feel it is pushing that channel close the max so it may not have the feel you'd want. For me it's better to keep Ch 1 in the edge of breakup to moderate dirt area and let Ch 2 take it from there into the classic rock territory.
Ch 2 and 3 catch everything else. Both Ch 2 & 3 have similar amounts of saturation so there is overlap. Ch 2 stars off with less gain and Ch 3 can be pushed further into higher gain. I've set mine for Ch 2 to cover lower gain rock and Ch 3 for high gain metal. I've set the gain on both channels to just shy of 3 o'clock. From there I can switch between vintage and modern voicing depending on my mood and what I'm playing.
With that general setup on Ch 2 I'll use vintage voicing for the 60's to 70's classic rock and jump it into modern voicing for hard rock. Ch 3 is the same concept but vintage voicing hits classic and 80's thrash metal and modern voicing covers anything past that. In any setting I use Bright 1 & 2 to taste and use the diode clip + MV2 if I want an extra push. As far as EQ goes, everything sound pretty much how it needs to with all knobs at noon. EQ adjustments are about aligning the tone with the speakers and room acoustics more than trying to dial in a good sound. For me. bass is set to @ 11 o'clock, mid at noon, and treble a @ 1 o'clock. Depth, Presence, and response are pretty much the same way but for the power section. Set them to taste. All three knobs do interact together. It's all well balanced with knobs set a noon. But if you dial up the response you may way to dial back the presence a little. Same thing with depth. Dial the response down and you may want to back off on the depth.
A note on the response knob... It controls the negative feedback loop and has a big impact on sound and feel. Noon is a good balance that for me that works well across the board. Dial it back and you get a smoother, darker response. I won't say it becomes overly polite. Let's just say it becomes courteous, but you still know there's a beast lurking under the surface. Dial the response up and you start letting that beast loose. It becomes brighter and has a good feeling aggressive bite. Like I mentioned, noon is a good spot for me. My analogy is like letting the Rottweiler snarl, bark and scare the shit out of everyone, but you still have him on a leash 100% under control. Lower the response you're tightening up the leash; up the response and you're giving that leash more slack.
As for negative aspects of the Alta, I'm hard pressed for any. I'm not a fan of knobs being on the rear panel. MV1, MV2 and response are on the back. My home setup makes them harder to get to if I want to make adjustments, but that's nitpicking. In reality I've set them where they work for me and don't really need to touch them again anyway. The only other thing I can note is there's the slightest pause switching between vintage and modern voicing. It's not 100% seamless, more like 98-99% seamless; similar to when you click on/off a stomp box and nothing that's going to interrupt your flow playing. And for me it's 100% inconsequential and doesn't ever come up because I'm not changing voicing mid riff.
Lastly, I want to mention the build quality. I finally popped the chassis out the shell this past weekend to take a look inside. Jason already said it was a PCB so no surprise there. I know some people can get all uppity about that though, especially when the tube sockets are direct mount. Let me say that the board is of highest quality; thick and sturdy. It's not going to cave in or snap changing tubes. It's not a rat's nest of ribbon cables either. It's all quality resistors, capacitors, et. all other components laid out in a well organized manner. It's just like you'd see in any other high quality hand wired amp, just on a PCB instead of turret board. I also need to mention how tidy all the solder joints and wire runs are done. Perfect solder joints, wire leads are only as long as they need to be, and again everything is tidy and well organized. I'm not sure which parts Jason did and where Shea picked up. Either way they both did a phenomenal job on the build quality.
I did take a couple of quick pictures of the board, but I'm not going to post them yet. It's not my circuit design so I don't want to put pictures of others' work on the web all willy-nilly without their permission. If @burger is okay with letting everyone have a glimpse of the insides it I'll post them.
Before I wrap up one last little teaser for everyone. Shea contacted me the other week that he's starting another run of Skeleton Key's and I've put my deposit down. I'm looking forward to putting the Alta and Skeleton Key side by side to see how they compare. I have a feeling it's going to be a battle of heavyweights. Like Tyson vs Holyfield back in the day. Let's just hope when it goes down no one loses an ear LOL!
So overall I'm still loving the Alta and it's up at the top of my list of favorite amps; right along side my Naylor Superdrive and Mesa Mark III. In the long run it's one of those you can bury it with me when I die amps. It's extremely versatile and can cover most any Marshall type tone you'd want. It is a bit of an investment dollar wise, but I whole-heartedly feel it is worth every single cent.
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