Aaaah!

Just a month after I got my 2nd hand laney, for £250, I found a 2nd hand AC15 floating around on the web, for £275! Why can't I be more patient!

I don't wanna say I told you so, but... actually, I know the ac15 you are looking at MUST be made in China, but is the laney made in China too? I know they used to be made in the UK when I had that GH50L.....

You never said anything mate! It probably is Chinese, I only remember it not being HW

I am always telling EVERYONE on this site to be patient and get EXACTLY what they want/need. that's how little all of you are listening because yall just gotta buy iSOMETHING now!

Offer a trade? Though if your Laney ain't high enough gain for you I doubt a AC15 would be either. That is very cheap for a AC15 though

the whole thing with the vox high gain sound is to run the amp LOUD to get the PI and el84s cooking... in 15 watts on a modern MV equipped vox AC30 I tend to get all brian may with it to achieve massive lead guitar distortion. I put a treble boost out front of the normal channel and run the master no lower than 2 o'clock, cut control wide open if I am using a vintage rangemaster type booster that loads my pickup;s upper register a little. This way every stage of the amp is producing a big wollop of distortion and if that's not enough, turning the booster past noon will use coax some drive from the single transistor as well as getting more grunt from V1. In the top boost channel I generally find that I can get a solid classic rock lead/rhythm with the channel volume between noon and full with both tone controls all the way down for a midrangey bark OR for for a less forgiving drive texture with more CRUNCH and definition try Bass between 9 and 11 o'clock and Treble between 2 and 4 o'clock using the cut control around noon to remove any unwanted harshness (if there is any, this is really dependent on your pickups, since going over to all nice pickups I don't seem to use the cut as much as when I 1st got my 62 and had inferior guts in my axes)... I would never run the master control below noon on one of these amps with stock gain structure. If you have something with an extra triode stage or an ef86 channel then you can pull the master down as low as 10 o'clock if you increase the input gain a little without losing much actual distortion, but your distortion character will get less saturated and more gritty as the balance between which tubes are distorting at what point in the signal path changes... if your amp eschews the vox cut control in favor of a Marshall 3 band tone stack remember that the miid control in this type of tone network is 100% passive and it eats gain, especially in the treble frequencies that give crunch. Running the mid below noon with limit your treble response to the extremeupper regions of the guitar's spectrum and will cut your gain substantially neutering your tone. On Marshalls 3 to 4 gain stages I run my midrange full up or close to it if I want heaps of classic british distortion. The gain and tone controls on british tube amps are HIGHLY interactive. Learn how they interact and the amp will obey you.

to summarizet, if you are trying to run the master low and tone controls for a scooped fender/mesa response so you have a clean sound that is bone clean even when you bash out chords using a heavy right hand strum with your guitar volume maxed then you are missing the point and would do better with a 40 to 50 watt class AB design that has a much gainier gain channel. For that application you are looking at a mesa or soldano type of design with lots of cascaded triode stages to produce a heap of distortion before the phase inverter at any tone stack setting. This style of amp doesn't work that wayas all of its circuitry is based around pre-mesa concepts and it is not for everyone. Channel switchers with stout power amps are continually popular as stage amps for a reason. They do MODERN sounds, bone clean to scooped sludge at the flick of a switch. They became popular because people were rustrated with their plexis and bassmans. The modern, fully featured amp thing is not MY sound, but if you think its yours take the laney to the shop and trade it for something designed for that kind of playing (the vox night train can handle this sort of thing and still retains some voxy character to the clean tone). Personally I like tog et lots of sounds with my hands NOT my feet. I like to prance around the stage, jump and kinda dance a little when I am rockin' out, so I don't wanna feel pinned to a lot of foot controls. When I m starin' at my shoes I am not giving the performance 100% emotion. 1 or 2 switches is all I wanna deal with and I like to take care of business with technique, my guitar knobs and the pickup selector. No one has ever accused me of having a boring, static sound or being a johnny 1 tone blues player. I have never met a gig that I NEEDED a whole lot more options on than what can be handled with 1 footswitch and the guitar. But I have been accused of being deafeningly loud when I think I am playing at a reasonable volume.

Just because laney added a switchable gain channel to this amp doesn't mean it can work the same way as a mesa. Even when switching channels, the Vox platform excels at the grey area between clean and dirty, going from sparkle to snarl with only a change in right hand technique and maybe a volume control adjustment. Switching to channel 2 should take you from clean arpeggios and a bluesy rhythm to a solid late 60s crunch seguing into 80s blistering grind as you dig in with your volume control at 10. Try my settings on channel 1 and try setting your neck pickup lower in your guitar's body so it is almost flush with the pickguard on the bass side and is about 1/8" above on the treble side (asjust the P90 polepieces up a bit on the bass side too). Run your neck pickup volume at about 3 for super clean being prepared to increase it to 5 or 6 for some rhytm grind and 10 for the BB king solo sound on channel 1. Make sure your lead pickup is as high as it can go before string pull (a good rule of thumb with humbuckers and P90s is to be able to fit 2 coins between the body of the pickup and the 2 E strings and then to tweak by ear from there very carefully) and try running it at 7 for rhythm thru either channel. If it sounds harsh take your tone control down to about 8 and leave it there. Then when you are on your lead channel open the volume up to max when you need more distortion and sustain and want to step out in front of the band for a solo.If you still need more balls you could run a simple OD out front. I like SD1 based circuits and rats for an ac30 as they are easiest to dial in to match the amp's natural OD character FOR SOME REASON. I dunno, because on a fender these type of pedals are kinda blah. The MXR custom badass M77 OD works super well.

Do not get the ac15 if you really need channel switching. Do get the ac15 if you wanna use pedals for all your grit.

I hope all this long-winded explanation helps you make the most of your 15 watter OR helps you choose the amplifier that is right for you. I remember when I branched out from my BF Princeton reverb and pedalboard around '99 having a lot of trouble navigating other styles of amp and I was more of a volume knob ad touch kidna player already than a lot of people are these days. Its hard to figure it all out, but I think the info I just gave you might help you find your tone with the laney or find out it can't do your tone at all. If you ant a pedal platform go with a stouter 1 channel design like a deluxe reverb. If you want he amp to do the heavy lifting but want to go all out all the time with hand technique and guitar settings get a channel switcher with a more modern layout like a night train 15 or 50 watter or an entry level mesa (I cannot believe I just recommended a mesa, I hate mesas, oh well).

If I grab a ac15 or 30 I will be sure to try all these settings and have wrote them down in my little tab book thingy that I write my own tabs in to my own stuff and the odd thing I workout by ear. I had ''Holy Mountains'' stuck in my head and just jammed to it andd worked the whole song out. I never used to be able to do this. Lately I have been doing it with a few songs and worked out the whole songs. Nothing hugely complex but its a happy feeling when you work out how to play something by ear. As I aint got a metronome I tend to tap my foot and sing the words either quitely or in my head to keep time or just play to the song.

I thought I wanted a amp with tons of headroom but I actually like being able to drive a amp into brakeup with my picking technique. Using heavier picks lately has helped me home in my picking dynamics or what ever as theres less give in the pick and also just holding the pick gently but firmly stops me hitting the strings hard. I think I may get lessons one day, I don't hugely need them but I taught myself and I feel I could improve alot if I bothered to get lessons. No harm in trying it if you ask me? Used to have a awesome guitar book with scales etc in it but lost it. I think I should buy a new one because ity was helpful and I really want to improve and learn more theory etc too. I used to know music at one point but forgot it years ago sadly.

With amps I think I want something vox like, I don't care about an amps own gain too much because I prefer to get my gain from pedals but I like my overdrive to come from a tube amp. My solid state sounds harsh and hrrid. I was paying it fairly loud today because I felt like it. had it about 3/4 the way up but the clean channel had to be turned down, just was getting really horrible the louder it got, same with the distortion but I can live with that. I think the 8'' speaker don't help, can't handle the signal being given to it as well as the amp itself sounding shit.

How does £250 for a vc30 sounding on the used market? It needs a retube but it all works perfectly etc, used from a small store somewhere. Also at the same time I get a tube amp I think I shall get a multimetre for biasing correctly. How often should a amp be rebiased? every month, 2 months, 3 months, what? I want to take care of the amp I get the best I can. I currently had £130 saved up and in a few weeks will have like £400. I may pay £250 out of my cash and then put the rest ona credit card and get a hw vox or what ever vox ac15/ac30 jim recommends most if the price is right providing nothing else tickles my fancy. I also love the palmer fat50 head which is a great sounding head but nowhere near by sticks them. has a bright switch that can give it a very vox like clean sound.

Choosing a amp is a very hard thing for me mainly because of the options but I mainly want a nice bright clean channel with lots of midrange and then just use the amps own distortion if its a two channel amp or use my stop boxes

voxes are self-biasing, what marketers call "class A" in guitar amps in the engineering world is really cathode biased class AB run with a nice, hot idle current and little to no negative feedback... no need to bias a vox, a fender 5x3 deluxe, a marshall 18 watter, a watkins dominator or any 15 watt supro, dano or harmony

pretty much all el84/6bq5 based amps are cathode biased because the tubes really lend themselves to this type of bias scheme, there are a few vintage exceptions as well as the popular fender blues jr which I believe is fixed bias.

if you wanna go stomp boxes voxes are kinda finicky and they are not channel switching, nor is the vox style really great when they add channel switching... not for the way you are looking to use 2 channels like a glorified stompbox.... for stompbox use get a fender deluxe reverb, many guys design their stuff with ths amp in mind these days, its a pedal champ with a fantastic clean tone and a shocking amount of headroom for a 22 watt 1x12... I love the deluxe reverb, it sits perfectly between the bigger fenders and the Princeton... a notable alternative is the discontinued ampeg jet j-20, handwired in Vietnam these amps are secretly a brownface deluxe in ampeg colors, great with pedals, better than a deluxe reverb for power tube distortion but with more clean headroom than a Princeton or tweed deluxe... it has a slightly browner clean sound than the blackface circuit (I know, brownface, brown, but I mean brown in the eddie vanhalen sense, midrangey and full of edge-of-breakup harmonic content the stiffer blackface amps just don't have)...

in affordable channel switchers in your wattage range make sure you try a fender supersonic 22 watt which is a hybrid bassman/vibrolux clean channel and a customshop prosonic gain channel married to a deluxe reverb-based output section (though the 6V6es are a little stiffer than a deluxe reverb when overloaded because it is diode rectified instead of using a GZ34 tube)... also, in the vox channel switching style the one everyone raved about when it was released was the mesa transatlantic 15 and 30.... its a scary small amp with lots of features jammed in, but I have yet to hear any maintenance horror stories and its capable of a wide range of tones from the 2 differently voiced and power scalable channels. I think it came in 15 and 30 watts and has not attained cult status, should be less than 1000GBP for a 30 watt head version.