NAD - Carol Ann Satin

Pete24v · March 2015

After a crazy two years of changing amps i think i've finally found the one!

I have two favourite amps, but both have their drawbacks.

An 80's Fender Concert 1x12, the Rivera designed amp. Great clean channel up to 5 on the volume, anything past that and the low notes just fart. It's had many valve changes, and currently has a Jensen Blackbird 100w Alnio speaker in it.

Or my '72 Fender Dual Showman Reverb head, that's been Blackfaced. Amazing cleans, but very different from the Concert. They are quite stiff, and nearly aggressive.. if you know what i mean! and being 100w it's crazy loud, but sounds ace with the master up full and the channel volume on 4, more often than not the channel volume is just past 1 though!

So i started looking into other 'Clean' amps, i'm a pedal whore and never use drive channels. I was going to get something build, but then i came across the Carol Ann Satin.. Not much info about so i ended up messaging the owner/builder Alan Phillips over in the states. First thing that struck me as odd is that he's an English chap, who 10yrs ago used to live 3 streets away from me! Anyway, from his description the amp sounded ideal for me, and he was nearly finished building one that was going out to Peach Guitars. The amp left the states on a Friday afternoon, arrived at Peach on Monday, was then forwarded to me on the Tuesday.

Initial thoughts, It's Fendery. but it's got it's own thing going on. The 'Feel' control is great, all the way to the left and the amp is really tight, with some low end removed. All the way to the right and the sound is much bigger, and saggier.

It has a Gain control for the preamp, this stays real clean all the way up to 8/9, even with Humbuckers!

The footswitchable mid boost is great. I had something very similar on an MJW built Ceriatone HRM Dumble type amp, but it wasn't footswitchable without a mod. I used the mid boost on a few solo's at last weekends gigs, it really did lift and cut though.

Being a clean amp, every drive pedal really does sound great into it, even ones i was thinking of selling

There is a nice external Bias control, with a colour changing LED. The amp was slightly under biased when i received it (blue LED), so with a slight twist of a screwdriver i made the LED turn green for perfect bias. If the LED went to red, it would have been too much

Here it is

It works well into the Matamp 1x12 with a Celestion V-Type

Alan recommended an EVM12L for this amp, which i've had before and really enjoyed with the Dumble type amp.. so maybe i'll get a 2x12 with a pair of them in!!

Pete