Mesa/Boogie Nomad 55 112

tons of features, loaded. see other reviews.

muddy, mid-range laden lead channel 3. channels 2 & 3 have a nasally pinched sound that just won't go away. this could benefit from a 5 band EQ like the mark series has. clean tone is pretty good. reverb is nice on clean channel, but is unusable on channels 2 & 3.

couldn't stand the terrible tone long enough to find out.

mesa support is always top notch

lot's of features, but the tone is terrible. waste of money. there will be others trying to convince themselves that it sounds good, to justify the money they spent, but don't be fooled.
you can put all the greatest features on an amp and if the sound blows, the amp does!!!!

A great sounding amp but not enough for the money. The clean channel is never truly clean unless you are at very low volume. Very noticable hum. No markers on the knobs which are all black very difficult to see settings in low or medium light. The spring reverb is useless. Nice crunch at low volumes tho and generally rich tone except for lack of a good clean channel. I didnt buy it I tried it out with my band for a day and we decided good amp but much better can be had for the cost or a little more taking it back to try out something else - Maybe a Mark IV or a twin reverb

This is my third review. I've been going through my typical "lets try something new" phase. I can't find anything out there that I like better than my Nomad. Being a true musician it will not suit everybody but it should get close if you know how to work it. I'm planning to put a THD Reactive Rectifier in it to add some sag to the amp. I miss that in all modern amps (except for those with a tube rectifier, not many out there).

First of all, ignore the statements that its not a high gain amp. It is very high gain, hence people frying their tubes. But, it is different than Marshall or Recto distortion. Marshalls and Recto's are very "in your face" and ear splitting. The Nomad is rounder with a less harsh top end. Its like a super higain 70's amp or vintage Marshall. If you use the Modern setting on Channel 3 or 2, it will sound very close to a Recto or Marshall. Keep in mind it is NOT a tube rectifier circut. That's a BIG part of the Recto magic. NOTE: to get the best distortion, the master on each channel should be at least set at 1:00 to 2:00 and use the Output to vary the overall volume. The best gain is from 12:00 to 2:00 on the gain control. If you have the Channel Master set low, the gain is buzy and not very tight. If you try this in the music store, don't crank the knobs all the way up. Mid point (12:00) is the best range of tones on the treble, mid, and bass. Bass can be altered dramatically. I wouldn't move the treble or mid above that range. Also, a very slight tweek of the controls yields very DRASTIC changes in tones. Changing the midrange from 11:00 to 11:30 yields an audible change in tone and feel. Thats barely an 1/8" window on the tone knob. Wo what i'm saying is ASK TO SEE THE MANUAL IF YOUR TRYING IT IN THE STORE, OR BETTER YET, DOWNLOAD THE MANUAL FROM MESA'S WEBSITE AND PRE-READ IT.THEN YOU'LL BE BETTER ARMED TO MAKE A GOOD DECISION IN PURCHASING.

No problems as of yet.

this is my 3rd mesa system. they've always answered emails and have sent schematics when requested.

Features mentioned earlier, though a basic review of them would include: 50 watt, three channel amp, each having two specific modes, seperate preamp/master volume and tone controls. One overall master volume control and a solo control used for boosting...you guessed it, solos. 1-12" Mesa/Celestion speaker rated at 90 watts. Sounds like a higher powered Vintage 30 to me.
Parallel effects loop with mix knob. Bias switch for using EL-34 or 6L6 tubes. Mute switch for bedroom recording.
Nice footswitch containing 5 switches, used for selecting channels 1-3, solo and reverb.
I can't think of any other features I would need. Maybe a foot switchable effects loop that would take my rack gear out of the loop for true bypass. (as opposed to just switching the effect off).

The bottom line is that this amp sounds great.

Channel 1 is a perfect fender clean sound, with the added ability of getting some low gain distortion sounds with the flip of a switch.

Channel 2 is a medium to high gain affair, but with a very roundish if not soft type of sound. Perfect for Stevie Ray type sounds.

Channel 3 is the real gain channel. Vintage mode is perfect for strat style single coil pickups while modern mode really excels with humbuckers.

Note: I use the channel 3 modern mode, but with a little less treble and preamp gain. It sounds like a midpoint between the two modes.

Another thing I've found is that if you keep the channel 3 volume lower, then crank up the overall master volume, the amp is more grainer/buzz like. Reverse the two settings and the amp becomes smoother. There really is a nice interaction between the preamp and master controls.

There can be some hissing from the amp at very high gain. I haven't heard a high gain tube amp that didn't.

I've gotten some nice Jimmy Page, Eric Johnson and Gary Moore sounds out of this amp. Chickin pickin using a Strats two front pickups on the clean channel produces a quack like sound a duck would envy.

I do feel the sound of this amp improves with the use of a closed back cab. (It's well known most amps do. Still, One may want to consider purchasing the Head version if portability isn't an issue).

To my ears, this amp does not sound like a Rectifier or any newer Marshalls (as some have said). It's not as agressive as those amps. A reviewer before mentioned it as having a smoother/fuller quality. I would have to agree.
It does have a 70's rock type vibe, but with higher gain and more features. I would use this amp for any style of music except the so called "Nu-Metal" which I don't play anyhow.

This is my current playing out amp and I couldn't be more pleased with the sound it.

I bought this amp new in late 2001. Hence the 9 month wait til I had enough experience using it in a variety of situations.
(I love when people play a guitar or amp in a store for 20 minutes and feel they can write a well informed review. How about playing with other people or in a studio. You know, that's what we actually do when we play music).

While not any major problems with the amp, I did have a preamp tube go microphonic very early on (first month). This is much more common when using combo amps as the increased vibration from the speaker can affect the internal mechanical parts of a tube.

This is in no way a fault of the Nomad, just a basic problem with combos in general.

The tube was still under warranty. I didn't bother to call Mesa as I had some old Mullard preamp tubes that sounded even better.
(I know Mesa tests all it's tubes. Problem is their using cheap chinese preamp tubes to begin with. Hey Mesa switch to a Russian preamp tube. It will save you alot of phone calls).

This amp has been used in the studio as well as on stage. Hasn't let me down yet, as I consider tubes to be a seperate issue.

I called Mesa to see if they had any channel switching mods.
They actually have a mod to break out the channels to 1/4" jacks. This would allow me to use a Ground Control/GCX switching unit two not only change channels, but also effects via midi at the same time.

I actually left a message for a Mesa tech. I was called back in less than 24 hours with the exact info I was looking for.

I've been a guitarist and amp collector since I was 15(Yikes, that's 20 years ago), and can honestly say this is a great amp for most situations.

The price is very reasonable, considering I haven't seen a better amp for less money.
I needed a great sounding, portable, gigging amp so the hunt was on.
This amp was compared to Peavey, Crate, Randall, Line6, Marshall, Tech21, Laney and Fender combos in the 50 watt range, both Tube and Solid State.
None of these amps had the sound along with the features of the Nomad 55. (Granted, most of these amps were cheaper, but not even close to being in the same league as the Mesa. It was worth the extra $$$)

I also checked out other Mesa amps as well. They all sounded pretty good, though none of them sounded quite like the Nomad 55.

One thing to note. I own many of the great classic British tube amps of the 70's (Marshall, Orange, Hiwatt, Park, Soundcity. These amps were actually very cheap when I bought them used back in the mid 80's).
They all have a particular sound that make them unique and even sought after today.
The Nomad 55 sounds as good as any of them, but with the added versatility of usable modern features.

Will I ever sell my classic amps? NO, but I won't be selling the Nomad either.

Take care,
Chris

This beauty is the gymnast of the amplifier world-- flexible as the day is long. Each of 3 channels has two modes, for a total of 6 preamp combos. It also has a spring reverb unit and a parrelel effects loop, making it the perfect tube combo for any musical application.

AHHH. Sublime. Channel 1 has nice chimey highs when played with the middle pickup of my strat, and gets some delightful meaty tones when you flicked into pushed mode. Channel 2 is incredibly fat (even with single coils) and i find it excellent for slow, burning blues. Chanel 3's modern mode is a little too gainy for my style of playing, but i usually run the gain at abouut 2.5 and the master at about 5 for some great old school tube overdrive sounds. It also can produce those wonderfully nasty tones of early Led Zeppelin and The Who (think communication breakdown!) Absolutely wonderful.

I have only had one small altercation with this amp. once the knobs on channel 3 got banged in and the pots lost their connections or something, but all it took to fix it was a quick call to Mesa to get knew pots, and then a few days with the local tech to get it up and running again. my channel one is a little noisy, but it probly just needs to be replaced as its been in there for well over a year now.

With only around 80 employees worldwide, when you call the mesa headquarters, you know that you're talking to someone who knows the amps. when i had to get new pots, they just sent them right out, and didnt charge me. i give them a nine because the guy was a little condescending when he was telling me to be careful with the knobs (like i didnt already know).

I play a mexi strat with duncan pickups (i love that guitar!)through a boss CE-5 and a boss DD-5 into the boogie. I mostly play blues and classic rock (Page, Clapton, Vaughn), but this amp sings with any other style too. it does take a little while for you to bond with the amp and learn its sweet spots, but let me tell you, its time well spent. Terrific!

Good grief - this amp has EVERYTHING on it, and then some: most versatile amp I've ever laid hands on: three channels, eahc of which has its own treble, mid, bass, gain, volume, presence, and reverb knobs; ech channel also has a toggle switch: bright/fat on the clean, and vintage/modern on the two dirty channels; finally, a master output and solo level control is available... oh, and of course an effects loop. Tubes: 2x6L6 for power, 6x12AX7 for preamp. My combo was obtained used and had a Celestion Vintage 30 in it instead of the stock speaker.

I've played through it with an Ibanez RG770 (Tone Zone, Hot Rails, and Paf Pro pickups), and G&L strat with Kinman pickups, and a stock McInturff Sportster with Zodiac pickups.

The clean channel is excellent: great reverb, and great bite to the sound. The dirty channels are also very good.

My only problem with this amp is, if you don't like the "Mesa midrange" that tends to limit Mesa/Boogie amps to being useful for nothing more than death metal and so forth, then you won't like this amp either - it's got the Mesa midrange that cannot be gotten rid of. I knew about the problem with mids when I got the amp, but figured with individual controls on each channel, including presence controls, I thought I'd be able to dial it out. I was wrong: unfortunately, overall, I just don't like the tone of this amp. I won't bag on it too much, though: it sounds like a Mesa/Boogie. If you have a Dual Recto, and want something in a light, lower powered combo format, this is your amp. If you want a happy marriage between Fender and Marshall, look elsewhere.

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I've been at it 14 years or so... my main guitars are listed above. I've played numerous amps thus far, and my main one at present is a Rivera Fandango 55-212. In fact, I got this Nomad since the Rivera is currently on the fritz. When the Rivera is fixed, I'll sell this off again. It's nice (VERY nice), but the Rivera doesn't have the problem of too much midranginess. If stolen, no I wouldn't buy it again.

Love: the versatility... Hate: the excessive midrange.

See my review below. This is just an addition.

Try THD EL84 Yellow Jacket convertors in this amp. This is what you'd get if a Mesa Combo mated with a VOX AC30. VERY WICKED!!! The amp is loud, chimey, and harmonically rich. Low end is sacrificed but its like getting a hyper-moded VOX. The cleans are sinfully glassy with single coils and toneful with humbuckers. The distortion is incredible. Very tight, focused, upper harmonics leap out of the speaker, and shreds. Killer, I don't think I'll go back to EL34's or 6L6's.

see below

see below

Just wanted to add in another review. This amp is so versatile that I wanted to exploit it even further. As mentioned in my previous review, the amp was great in stock format. No other amp in its price range (and in the stores)could hold a match to it. With the addition of the Weber speaker and THD yellow jackets, I just added a whole new dimension to the amp. The perfect marriage of American gain and British tone. The amp just sings now. Gain is so wickedly smooth,chimey, and readily available from the lowest settings.

Feature loaded amp. Its like getting 6 different amps. To my ears, its more like 4 different amps. The clean is one, the pushed another, then the two other modes. The other two modes (2 and 3)have Vintage and Modern switching. They do sound different, but not so much to consider them totally different IMHO. Footswitching and a great Solo boost function.

IF YOU OWN A MESA NOMAD AND WANT TO KNOW HOW TO IMPROVE THE SOUND FOR AN EASY $75 FIX? BUY A WEBER THAMES 12" SPEAKER (UNDOPED OR LIGHTLY DOPED). THE MESA IS TRANFORMED INTO A SUPER DYNAMIC, CHIMEY AMP. CHANNEL TWO IS VASTLY IMPROVED, TIGHTER AND MORE FOCUSED AND ALL AROUND SWEETER TONE. Stock the amp sounded great, but the speaker was too tight and "flatulant" sounding to me. The Celestion has a harsh upper end and doped so much that the texture and dynamics are killed. TRUST ME, CHANGE THE SPEAKER, YOU WON'T BE DISSAPOINTED. Even without the change, the amp is phenomenal. PSSST - try a Crispy Creme Treble booster (WWW.Treblebooster.com) through channel two....you'll wet yourself (it will make a Triple Rectifier blush).

I've only had it a few days now. Mesa's tend to be very reliable, we'll see (fingers crossed).

They've been great in the past. I also own a Mesa Triaxxis / 20-20 rack system.

I've been playing for 18 serious years. I'm in 3 differnt bands and I needed something smaller and portable with plenty of tone and volume. I've tried and returned the following: Replitone, Flextone, Behringer, Fender HotRod Deluxe, Marshall AVT, and Traynor. They are all cheaper and lighter, but I've been playing long enough that tone, feel, and dynamics are the most important. I can't play a crappy amp, I just lose interest. Sure the Nomad is heavy and expensive, but at least it fits in your back seat and will crunch and shred with the best of them. Also, the clean pushed gives the sweetest Funk 49 sound ever!!! Its just a great amp. You can play everything from country, funk, blues, rock, and metal and the amp will sound awesome for EVERY one of those styles. Not many amps can do that.

Nomad 55 1x12 combo has three channels with totally independent controls (even presence). For each channel, there are two voicing options. There is also a recording output and speaker mute (so you can use headphones/record out only), and for the effects loop you can use an effects mix control, which I find particularly handy. I think that "versatile" is the word to describe this amp.

I use Nomad mainly for jazz, some rock and pop music. It has plenty of power, more than I ever need, I think. For power tubes I use original 6l6 (green), for preamp Mesa 12ax7:s with two 12AT7's (a bit less gain) in the beginning of the signal chain. This has fixed the "hum" that some have commented, and also opened the sound a bit.

My main guitar is a stratocaster with texas specials and a pearly gates plus in the bridge position. In the effects loop I use Rocktron Intellifex for reverb, chorus and delay. I find Nomad very suitable for modern jazz sounds (Pat Metheny) and plugging in a Brian Moore Custom some high-gain material (Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Brett Garsed).

I think that the strength of this amp is that it sounds "soft". Even with a good amount of gain it won't really sound harsh. On the other hand, this might not be the amp for those who like a Marshall half-stack full cranked, or those playing punk. The sounds or this amp are more of a "rounder" profile.

This amp can make several good sounds. It is very hard to distort the clean channel in the normal mode, but if you switch it to "pushed", you can get a warm overdrive and increasing the gain a good distortion (put treble and bass controls near zero and increase the mid control for gain).

The second channel is voiced quite "fat". I mainly use it for rhythm sounds while letting channel three handle the solo sounds (in vintage mode). The third channel gives sounds that are bit more tighter or focused than in the second channel.

This amp has not broken down on me. One minus, however - if you are not careful with the amount of gain, it will fry your preamp tubes in a second. If you can settle to reasonable amounts of gain, it will work just well. As the manual says: Don't turn the gain all the way up!

I have also a Mesa/Boogie Studio .22+ that I could use as a backup, but as I said, Nomad has functioned great thus far.

Haven't dealt with Mesa.

I have had this combo for about nine months using it on gigs as well as playing at home. I think Nomad has the most versatile controls of the amps currently in the market. However, be prepared to tweak it a lot. Nomad doesn't surrender the greatest sounds easily. Take the time.

It's too bad that some of us have got negative experiences with this amp. It is hard to comment on them, for I have got no big problems with Nomad. All I can say is that this amp is definitively worth to try.

3 channels....by now you know the deal...a great sounding amp but with a tendency to break down. I have alot of experience with this amp using it for gigs sessions etc. It is a great sounding amp. Channel 3 can get a killer Stevie Ray Vaughn tone, channel 1 when pushed is great for country, channe 2 is thick and good as well.

Enough said here...a very good tone.

Very unreliable in my experience. The problem with the nomad is the tone controls (and their are 20 of them) get uncrimped inside and will cause all kinds of cutting out, noise, crapping out and shorting out like problems. The problem is the "Thomas" pots. If you have these pots mesa will replace them. Mesa claims that this problem is caused by handling and what-not but my experience is that the knobs can get loose just from using the amp. I think mesa is working to correct this problem but this amp has been a bit of a pain.

I am one of those irresponsible people that never reads manuals or send in the warranty card...I just expect for a thousand bucks the amp should work. I called mesa to complain and was actually called back and they are currently sending me some washers which may correct the problem in the meanwhile the amp is sitting useless as a doorstop, while I have to haul out my back up a way to powerfull for clubs triple recto. Mesa was cool though and admitted that there is a problem with the amp and were helpfull, so I give them that.

a five for not being reliable if this amp was a warhorse i would give it a 9.