Laney LC15

Not much in the feature dept. one channel. HI and LO inputs, knobs for gain, low, mid, hi, and volume. bright switch, and a line out for recording. i'd say its best feature is the tone this beast can create, but we'll get to that later. 15 all tube watts, more than enough power for me. i use it at home only.

Using a Fat Telecaster (humbucker neck). i changed the stock tubes to JJ's from Bob at www.eurotubes.com and it made a world of difference. i also have a Jensen C10Q 10" speaker on way to replace the stock piece of shit, i think it is called "the invader". Suits my blues/rock style just fine. This little beast is what i wish my old Peavey Classic 30 could have been. Tone, tone, tone... i am hesitant to even buy a fuzz/distortion stomp box because this amp has the best range and quality of distortion i have ever witnessed. goes from pretty clean to raunchy dirty (not hi-gain nu-metal sounds, go somewhere else for that shit.) can do early zeppelin easily. kind of noisy when the gain knob is turned up but it could be the single coil pickup on my tele since i haven't shielded it yet. basically, this is a poor man's Orange amp.

here in lies the problem. i heard all the tales of overheating, so i picked up a little 6" clip-on fan and it has worked wonders keeping this baby cool. i have heard if you turn the amp upside and play it, that will help keep the heat off the goods if you dont have a fan. ALSO, the input jacks for HI and LO do not work properly. i have to plug in, then pull the cable out of the HI jack just a little for it to work. and the LO jack doesn't work at all.

haven't used this yet but i probably will end up taking it in to get those jacks fixed.

i wish i would have known about this amp before i went and spent $$$ on a Peavey Classic 30 and upgraded the hell out of it. this is THE amp for practice/recording or small gigs. highly recommended.

Mine was made in 2004. This all-valve 15 watt combo has 1 channel, two inputs, a gain control, 3 way passive EQ, a volume control and a bright switch. Also features a line out which I never tried. It has a 10 inch Celestion Tube 10 driver built in. The cabinet is made of 1/2 inch ply I think, and is quite small. The tubes used are 2x Ruby Tubes ECC83, an unlabeled ECC83, and 2x Sovtek EL84.

This amp isn't really versatile (like say a modeling amp), but it has some tones which are really good. It resembles me of a VOX AC15 when run clean, and a Plexi from the 70's era when the power valves are driven hard.

I only use it for practicing, but always crank it up.

I use an Ibanez GSA60 (HSS) directly plugged into it. I also tried an Epiphone LP. I mainly use the bridge pickup, which sounds more lively on the Ibanez.
I play mersey beat (Beatles, and some Hungarian bands you don't know I guess), classic rock (AC/DC, Hendrix), and also like playing blues.
I think this amp is very suitable for these styles. I always turn up the master to full, and play with the preamp volume to get the power amp overdriven.
I'm simply in love with the middley, and treblish (chimey) clean sounds. It's like a VOX. When pushed a little bit into clipping, it produces a well defined, pleasing overdriven tone which I like too.
The overdriven sounds aren't fair though. Preamp distortion is OK, but you have to keep the bass on 0, or it gets really bassy. When the treble knob is turned past 1-2, and the distortion is beyond 7-8 you can hear a very harsh trebly sound like a crisping paper bag.
Unfortunately you can't get a dynamic overdrive with preamp distortion, so you have to crank the master up. In this case the EQ is also very inresponsive, and above all you don't have enough clean preamp headroom to 'cean boost' your power valves. The power amp has to be pushed really hard to get good (I mean infinite) sustain, but in that case it lacks middle frequencies. At least it is really responsive, and compresses well.
One more thing. The speaker has a 11oz ceramic magnet. It's bad. It has too much bite, and when driven hard it goes muddy and harsh, it becomes very agressive at pick attack.

The amp is barebly loud when crancked, but much above bedroom levels.

Even though there are several throwbacks of this amp, I find the circuit design basically good, so tweaking it a bit might sophisticate the sound a lot. I am gonna try the following modifications in two weeks:
-gonna change the preamp tubes to JJ/Tesla ECC83, the phase splitter to ECC81.
-change the power tubes to Sovtek EL84M, or NOS Tungsram EL84s.
-change the voltage divider before V2a tube to 1:3 ratio (which will present more gain, but I will then be able to 'clean boost' the power amp.
-make an 1x12 pine speaker cab with an Eminence Red Fang speaker (a replica for the Celestion Alnico Blue).

After all this is done I post a Sound Quality Rating too.

I haven't owned it for so long yet (about 6 months), but it seems to be reliable. Quite hot, but never broke down, even when playing at full volume for hours.

Haven't dealt with Laney yet. And after the mods I not likely to do so too:)

I've been playing for 4 years. I owned a solid state amp. This sounds heaven compared to that.
If it was stolen I would finish my homemade amp:) Or I would buy another one, it's well worth the price.
Overally it's quite good, I LOVE the clean sound. I also wrote about my dislikes.
I tried several other amps too in the studio I play (Laney TF350, Laney Klipp, Fender Princeton, Marshall Valvestate), and it sounds quite OK compared to them, without the features. I choose this one because it was the cheapest all-valve combo I could find.

I submitted an earlier LC15 review on 03/28/1997 (scroll down to find it). I thought I'd add a fresh set of comments based on the more recent reviews.

See 03/28/1997 review

Alot of people seem to have been having reliability problems with this amp. For what it's worth I have two of them, both bought 1997. I use one at a time for practice (most days an hour or so)and both for playing live via a splitter box. I've averaged 60-70 gigs a year since 1997 - not major venues (apart from the largest folk music festival in Europe) but local halls, clubs, pubs etc. Live I set the master on each amp to over 7 (it needs to be this high to get good power amp overdrive and compression with input gains between 3 and 5.

One amp is fitted with JAN Phillips valves throughout, the other with Phillips in the preamp with its power amp retaining the stock Sovteks.

I have had no reliability problems whatsoever. Each amp has required one revalving of the power stage (and I guess I'll need to redo the reamps before too long). For a valve amp in regular use for 7 years that's not bad at all. Other than that one pot's had a dose of cleaner and I can't remember needing to do anything else other than re-gluing a bit of the cover on one and replacing a damaged power lead (it got trapped between bits of staging - no lead would have survived - luckily the amp was off when it happened).

The valve bases on both my amps are not plastic - they are good quality ceramic components. The PCB around them is a little darkened by the heat from the EL84s but is in no way damaged. The speakers are still fine.

One thought - this is a Class A power amp (not A/B) and they do run hot, so decent ventilation around the amp is a good idea. If you revalve the poweramp you *must* rebias to avoid all kinds of problems. The bias voltage is -11.5V cathode-ground (according to Laney technicians) and the bias pot is easy to spot on the PCB.

I've always found Laney very helpful, though I used to work a couple of miles down the road from them and I live about 15 miles away so contacting them is no problem (the company name is BLT Electronics by the way). Last year we took an ancient (mid 80s) PA head in for repair (buzzing a bit - new capacitors needed). They stripped it, ran all the boards through their quality control system as used on new amps, replaced the faulty board, decided to replace 2 pots they considered marginal, replaced the cooling fan which had been noisy for a while, cleaned everything, reassembled and tested as per a new product. Total cost was about 50UKP and took under a week. Not bad at all.

Years ago Laney fitted into many people's "it ain't very good but at least it's cheap" category. Over the last few years they've done much better than their previous reputation would lead you to expect. The valve guitar amps introduced in the 90s played a very large role in this.

See 03/28/1997 review.

#160 bought new 2003. one channel, bass, middle and treble controls, bright switch, hi and low input,the stock speaker is a celestion V10 silver series. sometimes i wish i had got the reverb version, but to be honest it sounds so sweet that i don't really miss it now. a headphone socket would be nice as i often get the urge to play late at night and have two young children. by the way i think that the amp is really nice looking, particularly like the mini chicken-head control knobs. play a bit of everything,veering towards rock, probably use 50/50 clean to dirty sounds.i use the amp at home and to be honest it's almost too loud for what i need. i can only really crank up it when the girlfriend/kids/neighbours are all out.

i play a brian moore mc1 composite, one piece neck/body, H/S/H, this guitar has a wide range sounds and they all sound good through the laney. because i generally don't play it very loud i can get a sound which is nice and clean without any problems. as you start to wind the gain up things start to get bluesey, then everything starts to get nice and crunchy and by the time you've got the gain at full, there's more than i would normally ever want. it is a little noisy when cranked up but as soon as you're playing all you hear is that rich valve tone. i've had only had transistor amps in the past and the laney has been a revelation to me. my guitar being composite and hollow it quite bright so i don't tend to use the bright switch too often. sometimes i'll plug into the low imput as my SD pickups are very hot and sometimes it can be a bit much in a small room. only effects i use through it are a marshall guv'nor distortion, dunlop wah and boss chorus. i got given the guv'nor just before i bought the amp and to be honest hardly use it, the amp just doesn't need it and i don't like to muddle it's sound. my wah-wah sounds lovely through it especially clean. this amp has all the sounds i need.

i've read all the reviews here and know about the poorly mounted valves and heat issues i've had it for eight months and it has worked perfectly, however it has only been out of my house a couple of times. my kids have knocked it over a few times. i guess i would'nt trust it if i was a working musician. it does run very hot. but then again it is primarily a practise amp, so it was probably not designed with prolongued periods of full volume/gain levelsin mind

n/a

been playing for 18 years, had an early japanese squire strat for years which i played through a small vox then a 50w peavey. just sold the peavey and strat to buy the laney and my beautiful simon and patrick accoustic. if it got nicked i'd be well pissed off and buy another, probably with the reverb, maybe. i love it's crunchy overdrive and the fact that it's nice and compact but packs a serious punch. i tried a few other amps vox, crate, marshall, peavey, but for me the laney stood out a mile in terms of tone, plus i like to buy british. i nearly bought the little vox with one valve and 8" bulldog speaker. but they're now manufactured a million miles away and it didn't sound half as good as the laney. i love it. it could be better in terms of finish and manufacture(vavle mounting and retainers) but then you couln't buy it for so little money. a class A valve amp for 160 quid is a serious bargain especially when it sounds this good.

Just your basic features here, nothing special. All tube, single channel, hi and lo inputs, gain, lo, mid, hi, and master. There's a line output jack that is taken off the speaker output so it's a true line out vs. a preamp out jack as found on many other small tube combos... The amp isn't incredibly versatile, but it is very good at what it does, so long as you've got the right tubes in it. It has plenty of power to cut through in small club and rehearsal settings. Of course, you can always utilize the line out and slave another amp onto it or mic it if you need more volume. Small amps have never presented much of a limitation to me...

Okay, here's the deal. The stock speaker is pathetic--think pure mississippi swamp goo here... I exchanged the stock 10 incher for an 8 inch speaker I had lying around (I built a new baffle for it). That improved the tone greatly in itself. I also swapped out the 12AX7 in the phase splitter position for a 12AT7 (a tube with moderately less gain than the 12AX7). I tried a 7247 NOS in the first tube position, and it sounded great, but was microphonic so the stock tube got put back in. I plan on trying a 12DW7 in that spot (that's a tube that is like a 12AX7 in the first triode, more like a 12AU7 in the second one). The reason for all the changes is that the amp's stock distortion was kind of splatty. I surmised that there was just too much gain getting back to the power tubes and swapped out some tubes to compensate. I still haven't replaced the Sovtek EL84s, but plan on dropping some JJs in soon (along with the 12DW7). In it's stock condition, the master began to break up at around 3 and the gain would just push it too far too soon. With the tube changes I can run both channels on around 5-7 and get a nice early breakup, AC-15 type sound. engage the bright switch and you've got the top boost thing going on...very cool. I use a MIM Fender Strat (with upgraded pickups) and it mates to the LC-15 very well. It's easy to get a bluesy grind going on, as well as a sparkly jangle on the lower gain settings. I play straight ahead songwritten rock (think Black Crowes) and this amp suits that style perfectly. It's not overly noisy when you get a decent tube in the first postition. There's not tons of headroom available, but c'mon man, it's only 15 watts...what do you expect. If you want tons of clean headroom get a Twin! If I'm recording and don't want the hiss, I will just jumper a 12V dome lamp (like you find in a car) across the speaker leads--a cheap noise reducer for all you DIYers out there. The stock sound gets a 5 while the modded sound gets an 8. More tube changeouts would probably increase this rating to a 9 (with 10 being reserved for the rare, vintage glory amp you wish you could afford).

This amp is only somewhat reliable. I've never had it completely kick the bucket on me, but I've had some annoying pops, whirrs, and intermittent power losses due to the tube sockets not making good contact. Contact cleaner helps, but doesn't completely alleviate the problem. I also worry about the board mounted tube sockets. I've owned other amps that had the tubes mounted in this way, but they were all heads, not combos, and the heat was allowed to dissipate and rise out of the circuitry instead of up into it. I wish more of the small amp manufacturers would use chassis-mounted sockets wired to the circuit boards...but that would drive the cost up and the volume of sales down...oh well, I'll cross my fingers...

Never had to deal with them so I don't know.

Overall, it's a fairly decent amp for the money. I have been playing for nearly 20 years and have dealt with a fairly advanced stage of G.A.S. for most of that time. I've had better amps, and I've definitely had worse. As with most cheap tube amps, there is need for plenty of little upgrades, but then again it goes with the territory (e.g. MIM strat and stock p'ups...) I would like to see chassis-mounted tube sockets at least on the power tubes--it would make me feel better. Also the tube retainers are kind of cheesy, but you can update those for yourself if you're so inclined. Overall not too bad.

This is an update on my previous review.
Very basic amp, absolutely no frills, one channel; one high and one low gain input; bass, middle, and treble controls; volume and gain controls witha bright switch and a line out jack. 3 12AX7 (ECC83) preamp tubes and 2 EL84 power tubes on a printed circuit board.

I recently purchased a strat with Rio Grande Halfbreed pickups and it sounds wonderful through this amp, though I may soon replace the HH speaker. My '59 Les Paul Standard doesn't sound that good using this amp as the pickups seem to be too hot and distorts very early on into the power span of this amp. This sucker is an extremely loud 15 watts and sounds even louder through a decent speaker cab loaded with a couple of 12" Celestion V30's. With the gain turned up this little booger turns into a nasty chainsaw that cuts through pretty well in a small club situation. Recently I've been experimenting using the Laney's line out jack into my '66 blackface Fender Band-Master with fairly pleasing results. The Laney makes the Band-Master break up pretty well and adds some sustain to that extremely clean Fender sound. I use an A-B switch to jump between the Fender set clean and the Laney driven Fender. It's almost like an overdrive pedal, but a little smoother. I also replaced the Sovtec EL84s with some JJs and the Chinese 12AX7s with some Electro Harmonix tubes and it smoothed out the harshness of the amp somewhat. I may try some lower gain tubes in the preamp at a later date as the amp developes much more gain than I find necessary.

This is where my problem with the Laney has been... it hasn't proven itself as a reliable amp. After sending it in to Laney twice to have an output transformer replaced with the amp not lasting more than a month between repairs, I relegated the beast to a nice place in my closet for several years. I finally dug it out and decided to repair it myself (it needed yet another output transformer), had a VERY difficult time locating a US distributor from which to order the part (no local dealers in my area anymore). Laney's website was absolutely no help in this matter and I finally found an address in a discussion group. After getting the part in and taking the thing apart I found out why I was having so much trouble. The circuit board and ALL the wired connections were rife with cold solder joints. There were also big globs of some kind of glue that had dripped down onto the board from the heat of the tubes that needed cleaning off. After spending considerable time cleaning up the mess and resoldering the bad connections, I installed the beast's third output transformer and put the thing back together. It has been working fine for the last 9 months, though had Laney's quality control been better, I wouldn't have rated the amp so low in this area. I'm giving it a 3 because of that. After I fixed it myself (though that souldn't have been necessary), I'd give it at least an 8 since it's been working for the last 9 months with no problems, no even a fuse that it used to eat regularly.

Another poor area for Laney... they'd love to sell you one, but they don't have much use for customer support it appears. Their east coast distributor was very helpful after I finally got an address and phone number to contact him, but getting that information wasn't as easy as it should have been. The warranty period was a year... I had the amp for about 2 months of that period and it was in Laney's shop for the other 10 months.

I have been playing for 35 years. My other gear is a '66 Fender Band-Master head with an Avatar cab loaded with Celestion V30's. I only hope the Laney is more reliable now, God knows that 38 year old Fender has been. If the Laney were stolen, I'm not sure I'd buy another. I'm having trouble developing much trust in it, though since I repaired it myself, it has worked flawlessly and really sounds good now. I would give it a better overall rating had I not had to fix all the sloppy work that Laney did on this amp.

Very basic amp... completely no-frills.

I've played for 30 years and use a '59 Les Paul Standard and mainly bouth this beast as a practice amp., however it was very loud.

This is where the problem begins... I had the amp for a short month and the output transformer went out. My dealer wasn't very helpful in repairing it and the beast had to be returned to Laney for service. They kept it for 5 months before they returned it and it lasted another 2 weeks before the same problem occured. Repeat of the prevouis scenario except it took only 4 months for Laney to return it this time and by this time the warranty period was out. A short month later it suffered another output tranformer failure and I gave up the ghost. I wouldn't consider gigging without a truckload of the bastards handy...

Absolutely none to speak of... Laney was a real pain in the ass to deal with and of course all the amp's problems were deemed my fault.

Sounded real nice the 3 months that I had it working, but I really wish someone would steal it so I could collect some insurance on it. A complete piece of crap!!

Hi/Lo input. Gain, Treb, Mid, Bass and Volume. All you need.
Cost me #149. Have changed the valves for Harmas from Watford Valves - brilliant company and excellent advice to help you choose the right valves to help get the sound you are after. Use it at home in the dining room. Bags of volume.

I use a USA 57 vintrage re-issue strat and a Boss GT5. This set up gives me everything I need from Hank Marvin through to Gilmour (clean and dirty), Santana, Gary Moore, Satriani and Jeff Beck type tones as well as my own sounds. Wish my playing could match the sounds. I love the amp and it flatters my playing. Sounds really good with wah wah. Tend to keep gain around 4 and volume maybe up to 5. Hurts my ears any louder! Nice and quiet providing I use noise gate to tame the effects.

Never let me down.

Been playing since 1973. Had a crappy Zenta, then a crappy none-trem 1974 Fender Strat and a Yamaha B212 100 watt combo. Had a strat plus in 89 which I never liked and a Peavey Bandit.
Wish I had an Ibanez Jem and a Univibe.

Basic but enough. Hi/Lo input. Gain, Treb, Mid, Bass and Volume. Line out at the back. What there is, does the job!

Bloody great right out of the box. I gig this amp. Have it as a monitor and mike it thru the PA. Just using a standard USA Strat and a JD Wah. That's it. Keep it simple. You need to crank it but that's why you've got it??? Can't beat a cranked class A amp! This one lets you keep your hearing too. I wind the volume full on then use the gain to control things. At gain 3 or 4 it's plenty driving for classic rock. Back the gain off and the volume and you can get some nice clean tones (not fender) but powerful, maybe a bit darker than a Fender amp (e.g. my Fender Rivera Concert 2x10). Overdrive sound is way way better than Fender and better than a TSL601 I tried for one night (then returned it...usual sounded good in the shop...) More like JTM 45 sounds.

Been OK so far. Just ordered some JJ's and Harmas from WatfordValves.com and keep the Sovs in reserve. Derek at watty vales reckons Sovs last 3 months with regular use (working!) and the Harmas (ref Brian May) about 8. Going to also try a different speaker (Jensen C10Q) but the stock HH package sounds excellent. Most people need to understand how hard this thing drives the power amp valves. The amp does get hot but blow a fan at it or allow air to get to it.

Never dealt with Laney. Their website is a bit pants but plenty of reviews of their gear else where. For once people in the UK get a good deal.

Been playing about 20 years and gigging 10. I've put this in as my main amp. Left my disto pedals behind and come home being able to hear!! Even our loud drummer can hear this thing (as I have it in a monitor/side fill situation pointing back at me and mike it up for out front).
You can't beat working valves!!
Excellent price (even new). It's tiny and weighs nothing (compared to a 2x12 combo or 4x12 + head etc etc). Buy two, think I will if I see another one.
Email me if you have any questions about this amp or other guitar stuff.

I bought my amp this year second-hand for #160.00.
My amp has been upgraded somewhat. The valves were replaced with harmas from watford valves. And the speaker was replaced with a fane 10" (as used by hi-watt) Also the valve holders have been replaced with a better heat conducting solution.
I mostly play metal and hard rock and find it is great for this.
It is of course valve and that makes one hell of a difference. the distortion is just lovely.
It only has 1 channel though, which isn't a problem with me because if i want a clean sound i'll just back of the volume on the guitar.

I use a gibson gothich explorer with original high output gibson pickups (which I love btw). It really suits my style well, it's clear, lovely harmonics beautifull tone.. exceptional.
It's VERY LOUD. do not be put off by the low ouput rating, I had an 80watt 2x12 amp (solid-state) and this blows it away for sheer power and volume).
I can't give an accurate description of the clean sounds because I havn't much need of a clean sound and have nothing to compare it to, but I think it's nice and does a job. Distortion wise, I think it's very very good. Even at low volumes (around 1 or 2) in the bedroom it still has a nice tone, but when you crank it.. oh boy !!
This is very versatile for distortion, can go from lovely warm bluesbreaker type overdrive to black sabbath fatness through to metallica type crunch. I love this amp !

I havn't had it long so can't really comment. It seems sturdy though, maybe there should be a standby switch to help the valves but i havn't had any problems.

Not had to deal with with as yet. Although I'm from the UK and know all about laney's great reputation for service and loyalty.

I have owened a laney linebacker, trace elliot supertramp twin, boss metal zone, od2 and various other pedals, gibson sg's, explorers, bc-rich warlock and a westbury double cutaway and a jackson kelly ke-1. I can say that this amp has been my best ever purchase, I just wish I bought before all the other stuff and I would have saved a fortune. Is this the best kept secret in the amp world?

I love the tone, I love the distortion, I love the volume, this is the perfect amp for me (except for maybe a low watt power duel rectifier with custom 2x12 cab) If i lost it or it got stolen, I would definitly without doubt get this one.. or maybe it's big brother for the other channel.