NAD: Vox Night Train Combo

strtdv

Picked this up this morning.

I've been looking for a small combo amp that I can grab and go and is light and compact, as well as sounding good at low volumes (my Laney sounds good at low volumes but isn't very portable, my Matamp is fairly small but ridiculously loud, and my Orange is heavier than the moon and also ridiculously loud).

This ticks all the boxes, it's 15 watts but very good sounding at low volume, it sounds like a Vox should (although not quite like an AC15), it's portable, and comes with a very decent speaker for an amp of this type (a Celestion Greenback).

Used it at band practice today and everyone was very impressed, the cleans are fantastic and it looks very smart too. Series effects loop is a bonus.

The drive channel is a bit "Seasick Steve" sounding, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the situation.

My favourite sounds are the clean channel with the "thick" switch engaged which bypasses the tone stack. It's a fantastic sound, well worth what I paid for it alone.

Couple of pics (not mine). It's a good looking amp.

I paid £200 for it which is a serious bargain. It's easily nicer sounding than a blues junior and much cheaper too.

mellowsun

I've fancied getting one of these for a while. Can you expand a bit about the drive channel - are you saying it's a bit bee in a jar?

Jeremiah

I thought about getting one of these when GuitarGuitar were selling them for 299. Too big and heavy for what I wanted though.

strtdv

mellowsun;896519" said:

I've fancied getting one of these for a while. Can you expand a bit about the drive channel - are you saying it's a bit bee in a jar?

I've not used the drive channel a great deal so it wouldn't be fair to pass judgement yet, but it's quite loose and vintage.
Bees in a jar is something I'd associate with over-fizziness in modern high gainers so it's not that, but for instance with P90s and the gain turned up you can get the sound from the intro to "spirit in the sky"

I'll do lower gain classic rock-ish sounds, but the more gain you add the looser it seems.
I'll need to spend more time with it to really see what drive sounds I can get out of it, but the clean and nearly-tones are what were most immediately impressive

Neil

Don't know what they sound like but love the look.

strtdv

Spent about 3 hours playing it this evening.

Still absolutely love the clean channel, both on "bright" and "thick" modes. There really isn't a bad sound in there, both pristine clean and very slightly breaking up.

Drive channel is still taking a bit of tweaking. I made progress though as I worked out that the channel 2 volume control doesn't defeat the other volume control (it was confusing me that the drive channel was so quiet).

The drive opens up a lot as you increase the volume. It's got lots of treble, it really needs dialled back much more aggressively than any other amp I've used, and the mids turned up more than I generally would, and it's best at low to mid gain sounds (like most vintage voiced amps I find).

You could argue that it would be better having it as a single channel amp with a switchable gain boost.

Still very happy with my purchase, the cleans are fantastic and I'm getting there with the drive channel too.

I'd say it was the best £200 I've spent on an amp, but I bought my Orange for £150..

stickyfiddle

I had one of the heads when they first came out. Really great sounding thing. One of these for 200 is amazing!

Beexter

I've got the original 50w head and it makes a great pedal platform. The clean channel is lovely but the dirty channel is too much for me so tend to use pedals in the clean channel which works great

thomasross20

What's the name Night Train all about? Surely not a reference to the Guns song? 

strtdv

I wouldn't have thought so. Maybe because it's meant to be a bit of a "sleeper" amp?

Beexter

thomasross20;902352" said:

What's the name Night Train all about? Surely not a reference to the Guns song? 

I wouldn't be surprised if it was as the Gain channel (on the 50w head at least) delivers a shed load of gain, very much in to hard rock territory.