NAD: ELAN MK2 PRE BY METALHEAD ELECTRONICS - DINO FF TONES!

yea the rectifier isn't even close to this honestly... really different feel and sound when your playing it, I'd describe this like a fat sounding marshall, fairly tight , it's almost kinda like an engl savage, meets a great sounding modded marshall...
 
I just bought an Excalibur from a guy in Germany a few days ago. Guess I'll have to figure out what to do for a transformer replacement if I decide to keep it. I'm going to use a step up transformer in the meantime.
 
richardt4520":v34169g8 said:
I just bought an Excalibur from a guy in Germany a few days ago. Guess I'll have to figure out what to do for a transformer replacement if I decide to keep it. I'm going to use a step up transformer in the meantime.


nice!
 
Hey guys thank you for posting this very cool video and comments. I am Elan's brother and we use to own Metalhead Electronics back in the days. Just to let you guys know we are thinking on reviving the AMP and Preamp and come out with the Elan MKIII (updated to today's environment) and a FULL head as well.
any thought or remarks?
:)
 
Absolutely! Would definitely love to check one out as well! There are a lot of guitarists out there who love the sound Dino Cazares got out of his Elan modded Marshalls so I think you'd already have a lot of interested customers.
 
I almost had one that was up on ebay 2 years ago...it was a JMP 50, late 70s that had an 'unknown' mod to it..guy wanted 850 shipped. It had that signature "urinal cake" inside the chassis....had the cash the next day but it was gone... :aww:
 
The Excalibur preamp that Elan got screwed on was the Axis Excalibur EP-1. If you search my username on photobucket you can see pictures of it. Unfortunately I cannot comment on how it sounded because when I got it, it came damaged and DoA. I had it repaired at Savage Amps (don't ever go to them for amp work, ever) and I'm 99.9% sure they fucked it up and didn't repair it right while charging me an arm and a leg.

I've wanted to buy another one that is not fucked to see if it really does sound like my repaired one did, or if it really is amazing like every other Elan modded/made thing I've heard.
 
I picked up an Excalibur a year or so ago on eBay. It was in a bit rough condition. The push-pull knob that controls the noise gate wasn't working. That was too bad I thought because I had read the noise gate being engaged was part of what made it sound more metal. I opened it up and found that a resistor had come desoldered. Soldered it back on and everything worked!

It has the heaviest tone of anything I've tried and is the closest thing I've heard to the Demanufacture tone. It loves downtuned guitars. I used an ESP with EMGs tuned to B. Sounds great!

What it doesn't like is an E standard guitar with mid-gain pickups, especially if you roll the volume knob on the guitar back. Nope. And yuck. The Excalibur is pure metal. Put a guitar with high output pickups through it, tuned low, with the volume knob at max. :rock:

One thing is weird about it. It is extremely picky about tubes! I've never encountered anything like this. There are certain tube positions where swapping the preamp tube for another brand will cause one channel's gain to change dramatically. In some cases in a very bad way. I did some tube rolling and settled on a combination that works well. But I could see how somebody would think this thing sounds awful just because of the tubes used, or because of one of the tubes in one of the positions.

It's a unique preamp though. If you want metal it's quite impressive with the right tubes and paired up with the right guitar.
 
Sounds killer :rock: :rock:
I never had any luck running a preamp into an amp. The line level signals were too much going in (I guess) Is the Elan a line level out?
It sounds like it matched up pretty good. Is the Marshall stock? I know you have some killer modded Marshalls.
Thats a killer combo, I guess I'm trying to figure out why. I've tried it with some different preamps/amps over the years with no success.
Just thinking out loud, any info would be appreciated ;)
 
JTyson":1c184at2 said:
Sounds killer :rock: :rock:
I never had any luck running a preamp into an amp. The line level signals were too much going in (I guess) Is the Elan a line level out?
It sounds like it matched up pretty good. Is the Marshall stock? I know you have some killer modded Marshalls.
Thats a killer combo, I guess I'm trying to figure out why. I've tried it with some different preamps/amps over the years with no success.
Just thinking out loud, any info would be appreciated ;)
It's line level but there's an easy fix for using it with an amp! Just run it straight into the amp's effects loop return. That will bypass the amp's preamp and it should be expecting a line level signal at the effects return.
 
True, I just did not know if thats how he was running it (or not)
So that tone is all Elan?
 
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