Laney Review: LC15R

History: I have played since I was 12 or 13 and I am 42 now in march 2007. I like classic rock music likes of neil young, love, the who, new wave late 70's early 80's the likes of television the teardrop explodes echo and the bunnymen and everything between john martyn, nick drake, the doors, nirvana you get the picture. I also like the old school hip hop like bambata and the old tommyboy stuff, and house music, and modern stuff white stripes, blur, killers, arcade fire, tapes'n'tapes, artic monkeys, oasis, ETc, ETC, ETC.

Purchase: I bought the amp from ebay for £135, the amp was £199 @ the time, these amp do keep their price. I bought it because I wanted a small valve amp with reverb. I have had the amp for approx 2 years.

What I Like About This Laney LC15R: The LC15R is pretty well equiped for the price @ the time there wasn't many valve amps around in the cheaper bracket, there seems to be more and more cheaper small amps around now like the ones from ibanez and epiphone. The amp has 2 inputs one brighter than the other, it has bass, treble, middle, gain, volume, and reverb. It also has an effects loop, direct out, ext speaker, and a reverb on/off footswitch, which work with any latching switch. It has quite a lot of gain so you can get the full range of sound and volumes from it. The amp is pretty well featured and the tone is pretty good for an amp of the price.

What I Do NOT Like About The Laney LC15R: What I have noticed about these and other equpment reviews is that people arn't too objective about their equipment, I mean whos gonna say well I went and bought a piece of crap, or perhaps people just wouldn't go and be bothered writing about something the don't like. But anyway this amp comes with a crap speaker ( I believe that it now comes with a celestion tube 10). I replcaed the original one with a nice webber signature 10, I also junked the sovtek valves and put in a set of JJ's, the amp really sound nice with these alterations. I also rigged the speaker up so it plugged into the ext socket because when you plug into the ext in the original config it didn't short out the internal speaker so I wasn't too sure about the ipedence. The other thing with the amp is that the pots are really small with tiny chicked heads and some are getting a bit scratchy but it is a cheap amp.

Laney LC15R Quality Rating: The build quality is a bit harder to say the cab looks like it's made from MDF, the finish is a bit rough around the back but hey. The tolex looks perfect so far and the amp is made in the UK, which I am not sure about the newer ones, I noticed in a review of one of the larger Laney amps that it was made in the far east. More and more British amp companies seem to be doing this IE Vox, Celestion, Marshall (their cheaper amps anyhoo), Orange, and Laney. To me this seems wrong especially for the like of Vox and Celestion, people pay for a product that is associated with Britain and they are made in China vox and celestion arn't cheap either, if Marsahll can manage to make all their more upper class stuff in the UK I don't see why they can't. The other nice feature about this and all of Laney's stuff is the chrome front panel very classy.

Review Summary: The bottom line is that this amp is a good buy @ the price, when you compare it to say the fender blues junior @£325, with no reverb, the laney @ about £200 or less, and with reverb is a good deal, and with the non reverb version @ about £160 they are well priced. Check it out yourself try ebay or as I said they are pretty cheap new and if you don't like it you will get rid of it on ebay and you won't loose much.

Rating of this Laney product: 4

This Laney LC15R Guitar Amplifiers Review Submitted By: andy mackay

Review Date: 2007-03-11