In praise of Laney

Jimbro66

You know that expression -  "Little things mean a lot"  No?  Oh well....

I have a Laney amp amongst others and a small part on it broke, don't ask me how but it was probably something I did. So I contacted Laney and asked if/where I could order a replacement part. They came back to me pretty quickly asking for my address and saying they'd send me the part FOC even though the amp is well out of any warranty period. The part arrived within a few days. They even chucked in a sheet of assorted stickers.

Now that's what I call looking after your customers.

I'd imagined having to go to some disinterested dealer who'd reluctantly place an order for me. Then I'd wait weeks. But no, lovely people that Laney are, they saved me any hassle. Part now fitted. One happy customer and the L5 Studio I'd been pondering for a while has even more appeal now

RocknRollDave

Excellent. Local to me, I believe, Laney.
My Laney has been going strong for years.

timmysoft

I used to have an endorsement with them, great guys and great amps! 

EricTheWeary

RocknRollDave said:

Excellent. Local to me, I believe, Laney.
My Laney has been going strong for years.

The Headstock warehouse ( full of Laney, Ibanez,etc)* is in Halesowen, the Laney factory was in Cradley Heath although I'm not sure if there is anything there now. The old HH speaker factory was opposite Cradley Heath railway station but all knocked down and turned into houses now. 

* about 20 mins walk from my house, if I was going to start a life of crime I might well start there...

Shark_Eyes

I bought the Laney L5 studio, and I'm over the moon with it. Been using it exclusively with headphones and it sounds great. Not tried recording with it yet, but it's on the to-do list.

Jimbro66

Shark_Eyes said:

I bought the Laney L5 studio, and I'm over the moon with it. Been using it exclusively with headphones and it sounds great. Not tried recording with it yet, but it's on the to-do list.

It'd be nice if you posted a review in the amps section after using it for a while. Did you go for the combo version or head + cab?

Shark_Eyes

Just the head, they didn't have the cab in stock, and the only 1 x 12 they had was an Orange, which was pretty overpriced.

The head version has additional features to the combo, such as emulated headphone output and direct to PC connection, which is why I chose that one, to be honest I'm not missing the cab at all.

I'll definitely write something up once I've had it a bit longer.

Jimbro66

Shark_Eyes said:

Just the head, they didn't have the cab in stock, and the only 1 x 12 they had was an Orange, which was pretty overpriced.

The head version has additional features to the combo, such as emulated headphone output and direct to PC connection, which is why I chose that one, to be honest I'm not missing the cab at all.

I'll definitely write something up once I've had it a bit longer.

Interesting point about the differences between head and combo. It appeals to me that the L5 Studio head can be used as a very portable practice amp using decent headphones in the living room while my lovely other-half watches TV (it's called togetherness) but in the den it can be hooked up to a cab for some volume playing or to the computer for recording. Great sounding amp in the YouTube demos (but aren't they all). I'll look forward to your review.

ICBM

Their customer service is good, but I'd be even more impressed with them if they built the amps so everything fitted together nicely, the vinyl was better quality and stuck down properly, and they weren't such an absolute pain in the backside to take apart and put back together for even the simplest servicing. I'm sure all the other techs know exactly what I mean...

I just did another one - a basic pot clean and check over - which took about three times as long as it should have because of the all too familiar battle with the cabinet covering snagging the chassis, and making the screws go back into their holes again. The build quality overall isn't really that bad, but they do annoyingly cut corners.

Jimbro66

Really interesting feedback @ICBM. In fact, it's exactly the sort of advice I was looking for in my other thread "Any Laney L5 Studio users here?". Any chance you could copy and paste your post into that other thread for the benefit of anyone looking there? Ta.

Telejester

Are the tube sockets on the L5 chassis mounted or circuit board mounted ?

thermionic

Reminds me of my first decent guitar, a Vantage Les Paul type that I bought used with the pickguard missing and the poker chip cracked and warped. I somehow managed to find the address of their UK distributor (not that easy in 1984!) and wrote them a letter asking if I could buy spare parts. New pickguard and poker chip arrived free of charge within the week!

strtdv

To be fair I've seen sub-par tolex on Matamp too, and the tolex on my Lionheart is still in perfect nick after 10 years

Voxman

strtdv said:

To be fair I've seen sub-par tolex on Matamp too, and the tolex on my Lionheart is still in perfect nick after 10 years

The Tolex on my Cub12R, VC30-210 and GS12VE cab are all in perfect nick too!  The Cub is around 5yrs old and the VC30 is around 10 yrs old.  

ICBM

Telejester said:

Are the tube sockets on the L5 chassis mounted or circuit board mounted ?

Chassis-mounted. They are on the L20 too, and I've repaired one where they'd forgotten to solder a connection on one of them, leading to two valves intermittently shutting themselves off. Actually no solder on the wire loop, not a failed/cold joint - just a hand-assembly oversight, and not at all unique to Laney.

Much less like to happen on a wave-soldered PCB .

Voxman

ICBM said:

Telejester said:

Are the tube sockets on the L5 chassis mounted or circuit board mounted ?

Chassis-mounted. They are on the L20 too, and I've repaired one where they'd forgotten to solder a connection on one of them, leading to two valves intermittently shutting themselves off. Actually no solder on the wire loop, not a failed/cold joint - just a hand-assembly oversight, and not at all unique to Laney.

Much less like to happen on a wave-soldered PCB .

Just curious if you've ever worked on a VC30-210 and how that is from a techs perspective (I assume the VC30-212 would be similar apart from the speakers and larger cab size)? 

ThePrettyDamned

I had an LH50 (not to be confused with the L50h) and can confirm it was a bit of a pain to take it apart for an inside look. 

With that said, the insides themselves looked (to my untrained eye, of course) tidy, and the valve sockets were decent quality. It never went wrong save for needing one preamp valve once and a new pair of power valves once. 

Quite well featured, smallish size, loud as hell, amazing clean channel, decent dirt channel... No idea why I sold it really. 

ICBM

Voxman said:

Just curious if you've ever worked on a VC30-210 and how that is from a techs perspective (I assume the VC30-212 would be similar apart from the speakers and larger cab size)? 

Yes, pretty much the same.

TTBZ

The tolex on my 10 year old GH50L is still fine as well. The rubbers started coming off at the handle though.

english_bob

@Jimbro66 how did you get in touch? I must have sent them half a dozen messages via their website about getting a replacement handle for my L20T and have never had any kind of response. I'd be more impressed with consistent customer service than somewhere on a spectrum between brilliant or non-existent.

Voxman

english_bob said:

@Jimbro66 how did you get in touch? I must have sent them half a dozen messages via their website about getting a replacement handle for my L20T and have never had any kind of response. I'd be more impressed with consistent customer service than somewhere on a spectrum between brilliant or non-existent.

Laney amps are distributed in the UK by Headstock Distribution:

Company name:	Headstock Distribution Ltd
Address:	Steelpark Road Halesowen West Midlands B62 6BE GB
Telephone number:	0121 508 6666