Lab Series L9

Wow, lots of features. 2 channels - channel 1 has Vol, bass, mid, treble, bright switch. Channel 2 has volume, bass, frequency (for mid), mid, treble, multi-filter, reverb, bright switch. Master volume, compressor (switch in or out). 100 watts of solid-state running into a Electro-Voice EVM15L speaker. I imagine this thing gets ungodly loud.

I'm presently playing a bass through it (P-bass, Alembic series 1) but have tried a silvertone and a SG with soapbars. Seems to distort nicely and gradually, almost tube-like, but it occurs at very very high volumes. Haven't been able to crank this sucker continuously due to presently being an apartment dweller. Noticed a cabinet buzz when playing bass, took a while to tighten things down. The sounds you can get from this amp are numerous given all the usable controls it has. Line out but don't hook up until you have powered on - HUGE turn-on thump. The EV speaker is a really nice touch as it sounds so much better than most generic crap. One warning - the amp stays very clean to very high volumes and therefore lets every mistake or fret noise shine through. If you use a distortion box it just makes the box sound lifeless and tinny. Again, this amp seems best with no effects except your playing technique. A "Fat" sounding guitar would work best. A Tele would sound like razor blades scraped on a mirror. I think this would be about as ideal as you could get for something like an ES-335 or other semi-hollow gibson product.

Works fine for me, however I noticed a possible problem - the potentiometers are protruding out the front of the amp and the amp weighs over 75 pounds - so, it looks easy to put some serious force onto the knobs when you carry it and lean it against your leg or hit a wall. . . .

Ex-Gibson/Norlin product. What customer support? Uses discrete transistors rather than integrated circuits, so if anything blows up anybody can get parts for it.

I really like this for a solid-state amp. Very versatile tones, etc. Very clean sounding at first so you must have good style (I don't)unless you run some sort of effects box up front. If you got your chops down this would sound awesome with a cord from the guitar straight into the amp. If I'm not mistaken this is the amp BB King used a lot . . . .