Mesa Boogie Nomad 45 Combo

Titch

Has anyone had any experience with a Mesa Boogie Nomad 45 Combo?
info would be greatly appreciated.

timmysoft

i had the 55 and it was a great versatile combo

Jalapeno

Ditto the 45 combo - flipping heavy though

ICBM

I liked the 55, loved the 100, and hated the 45. They sound a *lot* different. That said, I never owned or played live with any of them, just played them when they've been in the shop.

richardhomer

Versatile and complex, with the worst knobs - in terms of knowing where it's set at a glance - ever.

@guitars4you had one as his shop demo amp (I don't know if he still does) - it sounded very good with a wide variety of different guitars.

Price-wise they seem to go for very little money, given their origins and price when they were new.

Titch

There's one for sale locally for around £650 and I'm wondering whether that's a bit over the top or about average S/H price.
Anyway thank you all for your replies.

timmysoft

£650 is top end, they for between £400-£550 quite regularly. they're very good amps, but its hard to get a modern metal sound from them.

richardhomer

Titch said:

There's one for sale locally for around £650 and I'm wondering whether that's a bit over the top or about average S/H price.
Anyway thank you all for your replies.

That sounds dear to me.

Mesa prices don't seem to hold up well - particularly with older/less desirable models.

guitars4you

richardhomer said:

Versatile and complex, with the worst knobs - in terms of knowing where it's set at a glance - ever.

@guitars4you had one as his shop demo amp (I don't know if he still does) - it sounded very good with a wide variety of different guitars.

Price-wise they seem to go for very little money, given their origins and price when they were new.

Still have it and as a demo amp in store it does me well - sounds good with many guitars and for clean, to crunch to hi-gain and a great jack of all trades - Possibly my best salesman as it has sold lots of guitars for me over the last 12 years or so

Benson

Owned a 45 combo and loved it, I'd buy another now at the right price, tried a 55 which I believe has different KT66 valves and really didn't like it at all though. 

Jalapeno

Comments about the knobs are correct - it is a complicated amp with 3 channels, each with voicing switch and 6 controls.

You do need the crib sheets from the manual (still downloadable) for basic setup, and blanks to record your preferred settings.

You can get teh brutalz sounds - but you have to set the controls & voicing (to modern) - there's a crib sheet in the manual.  Never used it myself.

Sounded bloody great to me.

webrthomson

The 45 has 4xEL84's - didn't really like that one!

The 55 is back to 2x6L6's and sounded better.

The 100 is 4x6L6's and graphic EQ and is amazing IMHO

All are totally underrated, but they replaced the DC series, which are slightly darker, but I think better amps - still gig with a DC5.

And yes the knobs are shit, as noted above. £650 is pretty steep for the 45, I'd hold out for a either a 55 or a revision B DC5 which will be ~£500 or, if you need more volume, a DC10 which will not really be that much more.

Benson

webrthomson said:

The 45 has 4xEL84's - didn't really like that one!

The 55 is back to 2x6L6's and sounded better.

The 100 is 4x6L6's and graphic EQ and is amazing IMHO

All are totally underrated, but they replaced the DC series, which are slightly darker, but I think better amps - still gig with a DC5.

And yes the knobs are shit, as noted above. £650 is pretty steep for the 45, I'd hold out for a either a 55 or a revision B DC5 which will be ~£500 or, if you need more volume, a DC10 which will not really be that much more.

Horses for courses. For my money the 45 combo was better than any of 'em. To say one sounded better than the other is subjective and a matter of personal preference really, although I agree £650 is bloody expensive. 

Jalapeno

Benson said:

Horses for courses. For my money the 45 combo was better than any of 'em. To say one sounded better than the other is subjective and a matter of personal preference really, although I agree £650 is bloody expensive. 

This

ICBM

webrthomson said:

The 45 has 4xEL84's - didn't really like that one!

The 55 is back to 2x6L6's and sounded better.

The 100 is 4x6L6's and graphic EQ and is amazing IMHO

All are totally underrated, but they replaced the DC series, which are slightly darker, but I think better amps - still gig with a DC5.

And yes the knobs are shit, as noted above. £650 is pretty steep for the 45, I'd hold out for a either a 55 or a revision B DC5 which will be ~£500 or, if you need more volume, a DC10 which will not really be that much more.

I could have written exactly the same, except that I eventually traded my DC-5 for a Trem-o-verb.

I went to buy the 55 when they first came out - on paper it looked like the perfect amp for me - but came away with the last DC-5 in the shop, which sounded better to me. The 55 was just a bit characterless somehow.

The 45 was surprisingly different - but I found it very shouty and grating.

Richardj

Very heavy, I thought it had EL34s, a lot of knobs to twiddle to set up and the one I had was very noisy.  It did however make the right noises once I had spent time with it.  Perhaps too many options for each channel. The Mesa distributor in the UK sent me a set of stickers to put on the knobs as they were almost impossible to see, which was good of them.

The Koch Twintone II I had at the same time had a similar valve and channel layout and was better in pretty much every way.

I'd personally recommend trying one of those instead for less money.

kjdowd

Had a 45 years ago. I loved the sound of it, and the versatility across the 3 channels, but it was the least reliable amp I've ever owned and suffered from a very audible gap when switching channels. Moved it on because it was just too much hassle. 

That said, I bought it from Music Ground so who knows who actually built it ...

webrthomson

Benson said:

webrthomson said:

The 45 has 4xEL84's - didn't really like that one!

The 55 is back to 2x6L6's and sounded better.

The 100 is 4x6L6's and graphic EQ and is amazing IMHO

All are totally underrated, but they replaced the DC series, which are slightly darker, but I think better amps - still gig with a DC5.

And yes the knobs are shit, as noted above. £650 is pretty steep for the 45, I'd hold out for a either a 55 or a revision B DC5 which will be ~£500 or, if you need more volume, a DC10 which will not really be that much more.

Horses for courses. For my money the 45 combo was better than any of 'em. To say one sounded better than the other is subjective and a matter of personal preference really, although I agree £650 is bloody expensive. 

Yup - it's all totally subjective and those are all IMHO! If 4xEL84s your thing its clear which one you will like - I didn't, oddly I do tend to like 2xEL84 amps but I've always found Mesa's 4xEL84s very harsh, mainly the nomad and the first version of the studio 50 watt before they moved to 2x6L6's.

Still to try the Blue Angel but I hear that's a totally different beast

Either way I still think the OP is better off with a DC5 or if they don't need the watts a Studio 22+. The Studio 22+ was the first Mesa I tried and I've loved the basic DNA of the mesa tone from that to this day, a vastly underrated amp IMHO!

ICBM

webrthomson said:

Yup - it's all totally subjective and those are all IMHO! If 4xEL84s your thing its clear which one you will like - I didn't, oddly I do tend to like 2xEL84 amps but I've always found Mesa's 4xEL84s very harsh, mainly the nomad and the first version of the studio 50 watt before they moved to 2x6L6's.

It's nothing to do with the power valves as such. I love Vox AC30s, and hated the Nomad 45. As you said, *Mesa* 4-EL84 amps tend to be harsh - it's the way the circuit is designed. I'm not a fan of their 2-EL84 ones either though really.

webrthomson said:

Still to try the Blue Angel but I hear that's a totally different beast

It is - and sounds totally different from all their other 4-EL84 amps. In fact totally different from all their other amps. It's the 'anti-Mesa'… no channel switching, no MV, and specifically designed so there is no preamp overdrive. I wish I'd never sold mine - but to be accurate, I never ran it in the 4-EL84 mode either! Only in 2-6V6 or Simul.

webrthomson said:

Either way I still think the OP is better off with a DC5 or if they don't need the watts a Studio 22+. The Studio 22+ was the first Mesa I tried and I've loved the basic DNA of the mesa tone from that to this day, a vastly underrated amp IMHO!

Boogie, not Mesa . It's very much a small Mark series. I find them very hard to get what I want out of, even the + version with the GEQ and the Lead Master - which are both essential, I wouldn't advise anyone to buy the earlier version without.

It is at least extremely light for a Mesa/Boogie though.

Plukky

FWIW I had a Nomad 45 2x12 and then the 1x12. The 1x12 sounded very boxy  compared to the 2x12. Sold the 1x12 in favour of the DC5, which lasted a lot longer with me, mainly because I'm not clever enough to make the most of the 3 channels with so many options. Seem to remember some issues with the Nomad having valve sockets soldered direct to PCB, might have been TGP cork sniffery to which I am sadly susceptible. 

ICBM

It does, but the reliability problems with them were caused by the pots, which are *not* on the PCB. Typical TGP logic .