Fortin does a spectacular job of converting its legendary NATAS High Gain Amplifier into pedal format

I do love a well put together high gain distortion pedal - and this new Fortin Natas is for sure one of the very best that I’ve encountered. There’s not too much to see when you pop off the back of the pedal - but you do immediately notice a big plastic covered block - which very much looks like an audio transformer - which goes a great deal towards explaining why this pedal sounds so well-balanced.

It’s properly high gain - with killer low-end response - and with its 3-Band Active EQ plus Grind (Sharpen), and Girth (Fatten) - its tone-shaping prowess is next level.

There are seemingly lots of clever things happening inside the circuit as it maintains a fairly tight and even profile right across its gain range - and obviously has superior power management in tandem with that transformer - as you don’t get that electric discharge sort of texture / timbre / flavour that you get on some high gain pedals when you fully crank them.

I think the words I’m looking for here are ’Poise’ and ’Precision’. There’s some inherent internal magic here which is making this pedal so well balanced - pretty much whichever way you set the dials. It’s kind of like a precision engineered high performance sportscar - and I guess there are some parallels in its looks too. Everything here is just perfectly calibrated - as if this pedal has been sort of race-tuned!

Controls - Active Bass, Active Mids, Active Treble, Volume, MidShift : Scooped / Humped, Grind (Sharpen), Girth (Fatten), Kill Footswitch (Boost / Adds 1 more Gain Stage), On/Bypass Footswitch.

I really feel the high performance racing car analogy holds water here - as everything on this pedal is so pin-point precise. You feel like you’re in control of a proper supercharged V12 engine with all the mechanics honed to perfection for precision handling.

With everything fully cranked - the pedal is properly full-on - but still controlled and incredibly  well balanced - tight and articulate and percussive - with excellent under the finger feel and attack.

When I saw the $299 price tag on this I thought it needed to really impress to justify that level, as there are some truly superb monster high gain pedals out there for quite a bit less. But I need not have worried as I am properly impressed by just how beautifully balanced this sounds - you can feel and hear the engineering that’s gone into this pedal - and it’s definitely pretty special.

This is surely one of the very best High Gain Distortions - for that near as darnit Metal amp feel! I am hugely impressed with this every which way - one of my favourites of its type for sure!

My current favourite settings are : Bass @ Max, Mid @ 3 o’c, Treble @ 2 o’c, Volume @ 3 o’c, Scooped MidShift, Gain @ Noon, Grind @ 10 o’c, and Girth @ Max. For a truly stupendous full fat metal sound!

Available for order from the Fortin Webstore for $299 as mentioned.