FORTIN NATAS

[Pale Rider]

Prefer this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jkhMwix31M&feature=related

Ah yeah, it's mean!

How much for that beastie?

[Stevepage]

I think it's like £3000. Not entirely sure but it's pricey any way.

[Pale Rider]

Yeah just found this: http://www.tonemerchants.com/products/amplifiers/dar/forza/

[Frank]

I'm going to sound stupid here but are there any clips of these amps being played clean?

Or are they just £3000 distortion pedals with a power amp at the other end?

[Dmoney]

The DAR's are output transformer-less, right? I prefered the Fortin videos.

I like fortin modded 800 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opxcniXR3hw

Jet City would be a good idea, but I would have thought a JMP or JCM would be better. PCB based amps being more hard work to mod than others. The Hulk Modded superlead is (I believe) the precursor to the Natas. I think it was close to a total rebuild of the amp that was modded. This is the one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD4SauyEBb8

It's most likely easier to mod an amp like that then a PCB based Jet City... not saying that he couldn't mod a jet city and make it sound even better though.

all marshalls are PCB since mid 1973, except the overpriced handwired reissues

I'm thinking of the older ones then... so probably a bit steep to buy for a mod! My point still stands. PCB is harder to mod than other build styles and getting in touch with Fortin about to find out what is good amp to take a particular mod is probably a good idea.

[Dmoney]

I'm going to sound stupid here but are there any clips of these amps being played clean?

Or are they just £3000 distortion pedals with a power amp at the other end?

Does every amp have to do clean? I feel like "distortion pedal" is a bit of an over simplification of a high gain preamp.


EDIT: for £3000 you want it to do something pretty well!

[ericsabbath]

The DAR's are output transformer-less, right? I prefered the Fortin videos.

I like fortin modded 800 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opxcniXR3hw

Jet City would be a good idea, but I would have thought a JMP or JCM would be better. PCB based amps being more hard work to mod than others. The Hulk Modded superlead is (I believe) the precursor to the Natas. I think it was close to a total rebuild of the amp that was modded. This is the one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD4SauyEBb8

It's most likely easier to mod an amp like that then a PCB based Jet City... not saying that he couldn't mod a jet city and make it sound even better though.

all marshalls are PCB since mid 1973, except the overpriced handwired reissues

I'm thinking of the older ones then... so probably a bit steep to buy for a mod! My point still stands. PCB is harder to mod than other build styles and getting in touch with Fortin about to find out what is good amp to take a particular mod is probably a good idea.

95% of the Fortin modded amps I've seen were 100% PCB
his own amps are PCB as well
he mods Bogners, that are quite a pain in the ass to work (mounted tubes, mounted pots, scratched components, some boards with the parts facing the inside of the amp)
Jet City amps are much more simple and easier to tweak

[Frank]

Does every amp have to do clean? I feel like "distortion pedal" is a bit of an over simplification of a high gain preamp.

Well without a reasonable clean sound they just strike me as a bit of a one-trick pony, hence the distortion pedal analogy. Maybe it is an over simplification but if the preamp doesn't do clean tones then isn't that by definition an over-simplified amplifier?

EDIT: for £3000 you want it to do something pretty well!

EDIT: For £3000 I want it to do everything very well. For that much money I want clean, crunch, distortion, a switch that makes me play better, a bum note filter and a groupie magnet. And I want the amp to carry itself into gigs and tune my guitars for me.

[Dmoney]

Fair enough he mods them. I'm just saying modding PCB's is harder than modding eyelets or turrets. Nothing wrong with using PCB's. It's a testament to say he can works on Bogners and such. The Uberschall I had looked like a nightmare to get into. Doing intensive mods on PCB amps must be hard work. Especially is its things like the Bogners or Dual Rec's, or stuff using double sided PCB's and so on.

I haven't really into the Fortin stuff much. I like the idea of the Bones, being a single channel amp with a lot of options for added stuff, and his mods sound good, but thats all. I didn't know his gain circuit was vastly different to any other common ones. Is there a place where the Fortin stuff is discussed more?

[Dmoney]

Does every amp have to do clean? I feel like "distortion pedal" is a bit of an over simplification of a high gain preamp.

Well without a reasonable clean sound they just strike me as a bit of a one-trick pony, hence the distortion pedal analogy. Maybe it is an over simplification but if the preamp doesn't do clean tones then isn't that by definition an over-simplified amplifier?

EDIT: for £3000 you want it to do something pretty well!

EDIT: For £3000 I want it to do everything very well. For that much money I want clean, crunch, distortion, a switch that makes me play better, a bum note filter and a groupie magnet. And I want the amp to carry itself into gigs and tune my guitars for me.

haha. true! SLO100 and Decatone are about £3K. How much is the Herbert? all those have clean crunch and lead right? now we have robot guitars maybe someone will make an amp that tunes your guitar via bluetooth or something! £3K for a single channel amp is a lot. I like simplified amps but I wouldn't call some of those lead circuits simple, although some of the best ones are! Probably why so many things that make good rock or metal amps pop up all the time across manufacturers.

[viking]

On Rig-talk,everybody used to talk about Fortin ,esp. when the Natas came out  8)...It's very much appreciated there but i didn't look recently.

[Dmoney]

aaah.
I only really use this forum. The natas isn't really my thing. I do like the modded 800 though

[ericsabbath]

I'm going to sound stupid here but are there any clips of these amps being played clean?

Or are they just £3000 distortion pedals with a power amp at the other end?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGDrWWPQqoE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-LqIugpbIg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgtiPrSOUOk

[Frank]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGDrWWPQqoE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-LqIugpbIg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgtiPrSOUOk

Well that answers the question very nicely.

First clip, lovely.

Second clip ... meh, scratchy trebly for 38 seconds before someone says "MAX OUT DA GAAAAAIN" then it's high gain and scratchy trebly, not my all-time favourite guitar sound.

Third clip managed a whole 36 seconds of very nice clean tone before someone pushed the wardrobe over and hey, we're doing the Saturday morning guitar store boogie again and I honestly wasn't madly taken with that distortion tone. Maybe I could tweak it into something usable.

I suspect these amps aren't aimed at strat and tele players though.

EDIT: oh wow

Prefer this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jkhMwix31M&feature=related

This clip is just ... dreadful. The sound, the "tone", the "playing", everything. Just dreadful.

Is it meant to sound like that? It sounds broken. I used to get that exact tone plugging my plywood Hondo Les Paul copy through the mic input of my parents' stereo when I was 13.

[Pale Rider]

btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opxcniXR3hw&feature=player_embedded

that's scary...