NAD: Armored Haters Unite!

[MatrixClaw]

Picked this up last week. Been curious about these amps, but the reviews on them have been VERY mixed, especially on RT... but I did it anyway and I'm completely blown away. Maybe the original generations weren't as good, but the Gen 3 Sabot is a freaking monster. This thing is like the most pissed off Marshall ever, with absolutely crushing metal tones - it's probably the most brutal sounding amp I've ever heard. The build quality is absolutely top-notch and I really feel like these amps got off on the wrong foot because I can't imagine a single person disliking this thing. It's quickly becoming my "desert island" amp - it's not nearly as versatile as my 101b, but for all out metal aggression, nothing in the past ~20 years I've owned or played beats it.

Tonally, it is very similar to more modern Jose-modded amps, like the Fortin Cali. It leans toward the darker side, but with the Presence up, it gets aggressive AF. Lots of cool options on the switches, plus power options on the back. Absolutely insane amounts of gain - but not in an unusable way like most - high up tends to increase saturation and is just a lot of fun to play with lots of gain, which is usually the opposite of how I use amps. Amp is basically all metal, all the time, but that's okay, cause it's awesome.

 

[311boogieman]

Congrats Derek - never heard of these.
Of course, I had never heard of Splawn either until you got one
Need proper recording bro and its *deserted island, as in no one is there.
j/k a bit and bustin yo chops
Have fun mang

 

[MatrixClaw]

Congrats Derek - never heard of these.
Of course, I had never heard of Splawn either until you got one
Need proper recording bro and its *deserted island, as in no one is there.
j/k a bit and bustin yo chops
Have fun mang

Haha! I really do need to dust off the cobwebs on my recording gear, but I've got kids now and finding time to set all that stuff up definitely hasn't been a priority

 

[JackBootedThug]

Never heard one… sounds awesome though…

 

[ClintN667]

He pretty much shut down production. They were everywhere for a bit. A friend of mine had one and complained about the build quality and the noise floor. He ended up really digging it after a bit more time with it.

 

[MatrixClaw]

Never heard one… sounds awesome though…

It does!

He pretty much shut down production. They were everywhere for a bit. A friend of mine had one and complained about the build quality and the noise floor. He ended up really digging it after a bit more time with it.

Yeah, supposedly he's working on a new amp that's based off the Sabot platform. He posted how to mod the Sabot to the new specs, which I'm mildly curious about, but this amp sounds perfect as-is, so I'm afraid I wouldn't like it as much, haha! That surprises me that the build quality was bad on his - I opened this one up and it's super solid. Mine was a v1 that was recently updated to v3 specs. It IS a bit noisy as far as hum is concerned, but it also has gobs and gobs of gain, so it seems fine to me. Definitely not as quiet as the KSR Orthos I have right now, but this amp absolutely kills the KSR in tone, like - not even remotely a contest.

 

[MatrixClaw]

In other news, I also picked this up yesterday on a ridiculous trade:



Initially, I wasn't very impressed, then I plugged it into a 2x12 instead and... it's pretty damn awesome. For 20w, it's incredibly loud, as well! I'm not generally a booster (though I own a bunch of them), but I'd watched Ola's video of it beforehand and I decided to try my Dirty Tree with it, since it had a ton of bass and that pedal is good at making bassy amps super tight and there it was. Fantastic tone for stupid cheap. Too bad that 1x8 sounds like hot garbage, cause the size is awesome.