Superb Value and seriously surprising

Gibson did a smaller version of the lab but at top of tree (below the head) they did 3 versions of same amplifier. L5 was 2x12, L7 was 4x10 and L9 was 1x15. They are all the same amp with diff speaker config. All had two channels, a basic clean one and the 2nd channel with o/d (although it goes from clean to dirty).

100w true RMS means headroom is epic, and it can go silly loud staying clean. In fact played clean there isn't a lot to seperate the Lab Series from an early fender valve amp in terms of sound at all. Only difference is Lab Series has even more headroom and will go a lot louder staying clean (if needed).

They take pedals well and are built strong enough they would survive a tumble down stairs.

They have a adjustable freq mid point on od channel and a filter control (which can be useful to get a kinda low fi effect). There is also a very high quality optical limiter which works superbly. Eg I can get a cranked Freddie King fender like tone on lead but a small reduction of picking weight and slight palm mute and produce a vintage clean with a little twang to it for Shuffle bit in between a quick tweak on compressor and you can set the cleaner Shuffle sound so its just the right volume to match band mix level. There are other amps that will clean up with reduced volume but not played one as responsive to it i don't need to ride the volume control and the compressor keeps it in mix rather than being too quiet. Impressive.

The very heavy OD (beyond Freddie king cranked fender point) can sometimes sound a bit fuzzier than I'd like but spending a bit of time with controls can pay dividends as all the controls work and have quite big latitudes in available adjustment so learning how to use controls and get sounds you want really makes a difference here.

So what we got? An amp that stacks up if not betters clean JC120 or fender black face and has a very dynamic touch sensative and useable O/D tone. Not for metal freeks maybe (though be interesting to see how it works with pedal for that). And s/h they simply sell for peanuts more often than not.

For clean, jazz, blues where you really want that easy access to varying the texture so easily then, no question, these are worth a look.