Mike:
We had a blast cranking, tweaking, testing, tearing it up, and then Dave tracking with that amp, over at the studio. It's a true professional piece of hardware for the touring pro or recording artist. It holds up to anything you plug into it and anything you plug it into. We have any and every amp and speaker combination at our disposal, and the NATAS is not only impressive, it stands well above, like everything you build or mod, Mike.
The NATAS' gain is raw, brutal, grinding and tight, like a good super-rodded marshall in some ways, but with your personal flair, and with much more punishing punch, girth, and clarity. It has excellent flexibility. The components, build quality and attention to detail are totally top notch, and that amp is rock solid, with loads of boutique finesse. Boogie, Engl, Bogner, Deizel, and other store-bought and semi-boutique cheese whiz is dead meat in the wake of the NATAS. By comparison, most of that other stuff sounds like fizzy, slushy toys, and practice amps for kids, after you spend enough time with a serious amp like the NATAS, consistently at the staggering volumes demanded for thrash metal shows in large venues around the world. This amp will do it all without breaking a sweat, from band practice in your basement to wowing huge crowds at Wacken, and anything in between. Your amps are the real deal, and we don't see that too often at all.
The NATAS' eq points and girth/grind controls allow its voice to be tailored to a variety of totally different speakers, very effectively, and it works equally well with celestion or eminence products. The super-flexible power tube bias features had us testing pairs of 6L6s, EL34s, and 6550s in different combinations to tailor the low end response and overall tone of the NATAS at ear-destroying volumes. If you want four EL34s, 6550s, or 6L6s, or ANY combination of pairs of all of the above tube types to work their tonal and distortion characteristic into the sound, you got it, in 20 seconds or less (with a voltmeter, a small flat blade screwdriver, and an oven mit (LOL). The effects loop is also very transparent and very effective.
Most impressive, we couldn't overload, overheat, overtax or saturate the trannies, which stayed clear and brutal with tons of ridiculous headroom and articulation in the sound, despite a healthy dose of power tube raunch, at crushing volume levels and sick low-end damping that threatened to unsettle multiple 4x12 cabs being flailed by it in a huge recording hall that eats up volume like Roseanne Barr eats Chips Ahoys. This is the only the third amp I've seen with enough authority and headroom to give a 600 watt 4x12 loaded with Texas Heats a run for its money. The other two amps are highly customized secret-weapon celebrity-owned marshalls with enough punchy gain to shred plywood.
Mike, everything you've sent our way has been highest quality and performs at peak levels, above expectations. We're a brutally jaded crew not easily entertained or satisfied. Anything that doesn't score an 11 out of 10 gets chucked in the corner, pissed on out of spite, and passed over. Your amps are going on stage and into professional recordings, and that speaks volumes on your abilities, professionalism, and standard of excellence in tube amp craftsmanship. Fortin amps are world class works of art and a lesson in the new brutality of a good modern metal amp using the best components available today.
It's one thing to listen to clips and think you know what's going on. It's another thing to sling on a les paul, crank that NATAS up to about 60%, plug in some 4x12s, stand in front of it for yourself, and rip loose. The NATAS dishes out nauseating waves of sonic punishment on a whole other level, with astounding clarity that makes you think some of the other guys' amps are only running on half their power sections. It is what it is. If you can't get ultra heavy with the NATAS, then go home and knit a sweater for your girlfriend's puppy because you can't dial an amp or play metal guitar.
We're already in the studio brutalizing another one of your sick amp creations, the one and only Fortin Red Death : ) Thanks Mike, for bringing back the old-skool, filling a custom amp void that has been largely missing from our scene for over 20 years, and bumping it up to the next level. There were some pretty sick under-the-radar amp guys in the thrash and metal scene decades ago, and now you're doing a killer job carrying that torch, with technical skills and knowledge that's even higher in some cases than some of your retired predecessors. We couldn't be happier, and you're a cool cat, to boot. When your amps show up in the shipping container, it's Christmas in July over at the studio. But you knew that.
Best,
MGS
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