Very quick and dirty audio tour of the Laney VH100R:
I bought this amp new in 2008 and used it for a number of years in my band 'Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster' - I did eventually sell it to our other guitarist because I wanted more channels, but coming back to it after a long time I really really like this amp! I'm even hoping to buy it back from him now that he's left the band.
For all it's faults, it just sounds brutal in the room. Can't really capture how huge it sounds when micing it up, but it's just massive. Hopefully my audio demo captures some of that.
Both of us have used this amp then since 2008 for gigs, rehearsals, and recording. It's needed a couple of tube changes since that time, but has always been reliable and a bit of a stalwart.
- Two channels
- Each has a footswitchable boost
- Built in spring reverb
- A master effects loop, as well as each channel having it's own parallel effects loop as well
- Has line in to the poweramp, and line out from the preamp. Good for recording quietly if you need to.
- The amp is insanely loud, one of the loudest amps I've ever used!
- This model has side handles because the amp is so heavy. Which is actually really damn useful when transporting the thing in and out of venues.
It's quite a noisy amp compared to some other high-gainers. I've spent many years chasing the perfect noise floor, and I've basically realised that outside of digital modelling, it doesn't exist. So you just need to embrace the noise of the thing, as with any amp.
To me it sounds like a Marshall but with less abrasiveness. It's really just a very powerful workhorse, and I really recommend getting one if you're after four different tones in a big fat large box.
Things that are a bit annoying:
- Switching channels has a tiny little gap of silence between them. You don't notice it live, but you do notice it when recording.
- The effects loops always run, which means it is possible to hear what you previously played come back at you when switching channels - say you're using a delay... you'll hear the previous phrase come back through the delay when you switch to the channel the delay is connected to. Hope that makes sense!
Any questions, fire away. Any demo requests, fire away.
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