Laney LionHeart
GREAT amp. really like the tone it produces. from mellow jazz tones, to crunchy rock. for metal it needs a kick in the ass :)
volume vise, you can get away with sub 30W amps, in a live setting (i'm talking about hard rock and metal here, bear with me) BUT, you need to run it pretty hot and that will
A: saturate the amp a bit too much and it will choke out (your tone will suffer and it wont be as defined). you'll lose a lot of headroom. you'll find this with amps with 10 and less watts. as you can imagine it becomes less of an issue as you go up in power
B: cut down the life expectancy of the valves
C: some reliability issues may pop up, constantly having the amp on meltdown.
30W for a club is OK, but it needs to be miced, if it's anything less than a 4x12, because the cone of noise coming from it, wont cover the audience. this is especially bad, when you got a 1x12 combo, sittting on the floor. the 3rd row wont hear anything but the drummer and vocals. though, this isnt particulary tied to the amp, but the cab moreso. with smaller amps, it's a question of being able to push the speakers enough.
my opinion. a 50W amp, with a 2x12 will cover smaller clubs, while for the bigger venues you'll need a 4x12 (though if the owner sees you lugging that 'huge' half stack through the door, he'll ask you where you're going and then you'll have to suffer the consequences by playing though a 1x12 spider or something like that... ugh. so sometimes less is more. at least you'll be able to play your own amp, if you got a 2x12)
50W because, it will get good enough tones in the 1st 3rd of the volume scale, for small venues and still wont be too loud, for bigger venues, you can crank it to 8 and sound like demos ascended from hell and started to obliterate the audience :twisted:
at least that's the deal with my laney. YMMW
as far as those hot rod fenders go.. they got two settings. cant hear shyt and $%&# THAT'S LOUD! :lol: good blues rock tone though
hope this helps
