Price paid: $ 750
Purchased from: Musirama
Features: I can't tell for sure the year of manufacture of the amp, but I think it should be in the last two years. By itself this amp is versatile enough for me and my music altough it's better when you plug a multifx unit before or some distortion stompboxes if you're into metal. This unit, as said in its specs, has two channels, clean and crunch, obviously with a Switch in between (also you can use a footswitch for this), it has an effects loop, a headphone jack, an auxilliary speakers jack, and a RCA left and right CD input. I should say I'd wish more on-board distortion, but everyone has a distortion pedal so what the... I don't think I'll never use anything from it, it will depend on the situation.
I've been using this amp at home, but I'm sure I'll use it if needed in Live performances in places like bars and pubs or small auditoriums. So far now I can say it delivers more power than that I need... This amp is a full solid state amp equiped with a 12" Celestion driver, solidly built, protected with a tough steel grille, bass, mid, and treble controls for each channel, and a XTS Switch that when on increase some mid-high frecuencies. // 10
Sound: I use this amp mostly with an Ibanez RG370DX with its Infinity pickups, humbuckers and single, sometimes I use a Strato style guitar with single coils. No need to say that for metal it sounds better with the first one. For playing metal, as I said before, it's better to use external distortion units to achieve an efen better, richer, condensed distortion, for hardrock and blues, it sounds great by itself.
It shows some noise when used with the single coils, but that's a (d)effect of the pickups not the amp (and these pickups are old and cheap, so...). The LX65R has very cristal clear clean sounds, you can play mild crunch sounds, punk like sounds, bluesy and old rock overdriven or distorted sounds, and heavy metal distorted sounds, perhaps not the more extreme ones (sorry Korn/Slayer fans), not without the aid of stompboxes. At the levels I've used this amp the clean sounds never get distorted or crunched, someday I'll give it a try at it highmost levels and I'll update this review. // 9
Reliability & Durability: This seems to be an amp you can trust and depend on. It seems to be very well constructed, I've never seen the circuitry yet, but outside it feels like a tank. It's made with 15mm wood (or surely wood compound), covered with the typical black vinyl or tolex (don't know the proper name of it, some variant comes covered with green camo fabric), the corners have metal protection, and the speaker is protected with a metal grille not fabric, so it seems to be durable. // 10
Impression: I'm mostly into heavy metal, the 80's style, for that, it is a good amp, a good choice. I've been playing for some ten years now, and I've used Crates, Peaveys, and Marshalls, but this is the amp I own. I use it with the guitars above mentioned and mostly with the Zoom G1X.
I think I'll replace it with the same or any similar amp if something happens to it (I hope not), and I mean any other Laney. I should say that I love it construction and look, the sound range that comes out of that huge Celestion, the outputs and inputs it has, and the independant equalization and volume for each channel. I "hate" that the footswitch it's not included with the amp.
I compared this amp to those I've used sometimes, those I mentioned before (can't tell exact models now, except for the Peavey Bandit), and I choose this one based on my experience with a Richter bass amp from Laney a friend has, and the price of it, altough inflated (it is complicated the situation here in this country), reasonable compared to other brands (not to mention variety it's not an easy option).
Sometimes I think it would be useful it had a master volume to control both channels at once, but I can live without it and I guess you too. // 10
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