I’ve just picked up a Laney Lionheart Studio 5 from Tone1 of this parish. What a lovely thing, perfect for home use. Although I’m only using it on the half watt setting it may well cope with gigging too, assuming a polite drummer.
The clean channel is great, really nice Voxy chime to it. The drive side hasn’t got huge amounts of gain but it does the classic rock thing very well and I can always push it with pedals. (It takes pedals beautifully too, doesn’t go to mush like some other amps I’ve had).
Next task is to get a cab for it. I tried it with my Blackheart cab, 1x12 closed back. It seems to suit it pretty well, although it’s quite toppy, not a lot of bass and doesn’t have the open quality I’d like. So... would an open back cab help? Would a greenback suit it? I’m just a home player these days, mostly playing things like ZZ Top, LZ, Hendrix, Pink Floyd. I like spanky inbetween Strat tones too... Richard Thompson, Mark Knopfler.
Comments
An open-back cab will sound a bit more ‘airy’ and open as well.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I’m looking at the Montage cabs, which ISTR you've said are decent enough?
Possibly stupid question here: the amp booklet says I can use any speaker from 8 - 16 ohms. Does it make any difference? Or are there any advantages? Only I notice some speakers come in both 8 and 16 ohm versions.
If you're only ever going to run one cabinet, it's more likely that the amp is optimised for 8 ohms since it's usually believed that a high mismatch is safer (which is not actually true...) so it would make sense that the amp would be 8 ohms but able to take 16 - so in that case I would get 8 ohms. If you ever want to run two cabs - which you can do by daisy-chaining from the first cab if it has two jacks - then you need to get 16.
There will be a slight tonal difference even if the power is not noticeably affected - 16 ohms should give a brighter, more open sound and 8 should give a fuller, smoother sound.
Montage cabs are good, and in fact they do a 1x12" with a removable middle back panel so it can be used open or closed.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
And as a matter of interest what was the speaker you swapped out?
I had been running Celestion G35s and / or G50s that have a lot lower sensitivity which meant I could use less attenuator and they're quite neutral but pretty characterless really.