Laney VC-30 2x12 Reviews 5

I bought this from Paradise guitars for $1400 Australian dollars which is about 900-1000 U.S. I had always played Marshalls but needed something with a cleaner and tighter sound for playing Funk, Soul and R&B music. After test driving a few new amps I decided that it was the best value for money and the most suitable for my style of playing.

Like most valve amps, when you warm it up a bit it starts to send a chill down your spine. Its 30 watts class A and when I played it next to my 50 watt Marshall combo, it absolutely overpowered it. Even on a clean fender twin type tone it was louder than the Marshall fully driven! I basically use the clean channel and run the Mesa boogie v-twin pedal for all my bluesy and harder tones. Its a fairly basic setup but I have learned over the years to keep you live setup as simple as possible.

Theres not much I don`t like about the amp. Its quite high and slim though which could result in it being easily knocked over but touch wood, that hasn`t happened yet. If you are looking to get a variety of tones then this is not the amp for you. It has your nice clean fender and vox type tones and can be slightly overdriven with the boost channel, which has a seperate drive control. You can`t really get a metal tone out of it but tehre are pedals on the market that can fix that.

Most Laney gear I have tested seems to be really well built and the VC30 is no exception! It has been built to resemble the old deville style amps with the control panel on top which is hard to get at for some quick tweaking on stage but once you have got that tone you want, you don`t really need to get to it unless you are adjusting reverb and eq. The reverb unit is fairly basic but does the job and sounds respectable. Reverb is reverb in my book. If you are that worried about reverb, go and buy a alesis quadraverb or something.

If you like that vintage tone but don`t have the money for a twin or bassman, then this is a great value for money replacement. Why buy an amp that has been to hell and back just to say you have a Fender? I play my Strat, Tele and George Benson Ibanez through it and I get all the tones I will ever need. I have owned Fender, Peavey, Yamaha, Trace elliot and Marshall amps in my time and I must say this Laney is becoming my favourite! Enjoy your music!

Scotti rated this unit 5 on 2004-04-10.

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