NAM Universal

NAM Universal (NAMU) is great if you want to use NAM as a stereo instance on a rhythm guitar bus or if you want to run a stereo spring reverb in-front of a clean model without it getting collapsed back to mono. They've also included some other useful features like a tuner, pedal NAM model slot, dual IR loader and some useful effect modules. There are some problems/bugs and missing features that could be fixed in the future, but it already has a lot of advantage over the original NAM plugin.

The first thing I noticed with NAMU that I didn't like is how the gate responds around the threshold level. When the signal is hovering right at the threshold cutoff the sound becomes choppy and terrible. The gate in the original NAM plugin doesn't have this problem so this is probably the only advantage the original NAM plugin has over NAMU. I believe Wavemind could fix this behaviour by introducing a hysteresis parameter to the gate and setting it 6dB below the threshold or so. I hope they will do this in a future update.

The second thing that annoys me a bit, but is more of missing feature, is that the dual IR slots have no pan! Being able to load two different IRs and pan them left and right is such a useful feature and really a shame that you can't do it in NAMU. I really hope that they can add this feature in a future update as well.

I can't say that I understand or like the Instigator module that much, but you can use it as an extra tonestack to shape the signal between the pedal model and the amp model. The Aggravator module is great though. The tight and smooth controls are perfect for getting very boomy or fizzy models under control, and the oomph and sparkle can add some of the low-end and highs back in a more pleasant way. Really dig this one.

Definitely my favorite NAM loader so far, although it still can be improved.