Dark sounding LC30

suspiciousminds

A few months back i bought a laney lc30 locally (my vc15 had recently packed up so i thought i’de give the lc a go).
Anyways, on clean it sounds great and i usually use pedals for drive etc but i find the gain on the LC30 really poor.
I often used the gain on my VC - it had a great “rock” sound but the LC sounds very very “dark” - certainly not that usable (at least to my ears.
i dont know if the valves need changing but would that change or improve the sound of the gain or is there any other mod i can do?
As i say, clean channel is very nice

TheMarlin

Are you using particularly long cables?  Some amps are more sensitive to cable capacitance. 

One is my amps really darkens down when I use a white coily cable vs shorter straight run. 

ICBM

If the clean channel is good and the overdrive channel isn't, first change preamp valves V2 and V3 (one at a time so you know which is the faulty one, if it fixes it) - if you don't have any spares, you can swap them for V1 and V4 at least to test it.

V3 is a cathode-follower and prone to failure with Russian-made and sometimes JJ valves, so if possible avoid those two types there - standard Chinese (Shuguang) are fine, and they're easily identifiable by the two bright chrome strips on each side of the internal structure.

If it's not a valve problem it will need to see a tech.