New member, new amp, newish guitar

[Fikealox]

Hey guys,

I just got my new amp today, and I got the guitar on the right a week or two ago, so I figured I'd take a snap :D

Amp: Laney Lionheart 20W
Left: ESP M2 Custom Neckthru
Right: ESP Vintage Plus (soon to have Apaches!)

[Ratrod]

Cool. How's the Lionheart? I've read mixed reviews.

[Fikealox]

It suits what I play exactly. Very nice tones, from warm cleans to a beautiful overdriven sound. The drive is lovely, but it really acts like overdrive and not distortion. That is, it's a gorgeous broken-up sound, but not terribly aggressive. Clean-sounding pickups still sound clean with the drive cranked; so if you want really distorted metal tones you'd need Warpiggish pickups, or a distortion/fuzz pedal.

In short, it has some of the best cleans I've heard, and it'd be good for a wide range of music, but more on the classic rock/blues end of the scale than the metal end. But what self-respecting metalhead plays a 20W amp anyway? lol

I hope that rundown makes sense. I'm not sure if I'm using the right terms to describe it all, lol.

Now, time for me to find a good fuzz pedal :D

[Will]

You described it pretty correctly from when I played one anyway, just not my kinda thing really.

pretty nice set up all in all!

[Fikealox]

Thanks dude :D

[jibidy]

The lionheart sounds really great i've been considering the 5 watt combo for a while. I'de probs use a boost/overdrive pedal in front.

Ive just been on the seconds out forumn and there a nice MI Audio crunchbox going for Fifty ££.

Would you say it would be usable for gainy almost rock/almost metal tones(definatly not scooped)?

Lovely looking setup there mate. Nice guitars!

[Fikealox]

Oh yeah man, you could definitely get it into that territory, probably without even using a pedal if you've got aggressively-voiced pickups. With any sort of distortion/fuzz pedal you'll be able to get some heavy sounds out of it. It'll never be a 5150 or Powerball, but I haven't got a doubt that you could get into the metal spectrum :)

Edit: Give the clips on the website a listen; they're really very representative :D

[TwilightOdyssey]

Nice setup!

[jibidy]

Sounds good!!  :D

[noodleplugerine]

Great setup!

I LOVE those Vintage Plusi.

[FernandoDuarte]

Really liked the samples from the laney website!
NIce set!

[Fikealox]

Thanks guys! I actually have an Edwards strat that is nearly identical (in appearance) to the Vintage Plus coming soon, too :D

I've trimmed down my collection a lot lately, and I'm used to copping flak because family and friends can't understand why I need more than one guitar... with two visually identical guitars, I expect I'll cop a lot more, haha :)

I'm looking forward to putting Apaches in the ESP. The Edwards is coming with a Duncan Texas Hot set, so I'm hoping they're decent and a bit different from the Apaches so I won't have to change them out too soon.

[hunter]

Apaches will be great in that guitar. They will be lower output than the Texas, but have much more character.

I just installed a no load fender pot on my apache tokai, nice to have a tad more treble and punch available if needed.

[Fikealox]

I'm not sure what happened, but somehow I ended up impulsively buying a Warpig and and Trilogy neck (w/ zinc baseplate) for the M2, so now I have to wait for my acoustic to sell before I can get the Apaches, lol.

How do you think the Warpig and Trilogy will sound in an Alder superstrat like the M2? I think between the three guitars I'll cover a pretty broad spectrum of music :D

I'll have to look into those no-load pots. They seem like a simple and effective mod :)