The story of my Friday (Part 2)

Here's Part 2 of my Friday episode & it had nothing to do with any egocentric senior citizens (sorry to disappoint some of you). I duly arrived at Beat Spot & was very anxious to try out that amp I mentioned- it's Laney's new Ironheart series, touted as a metal-friendly unit & I'm definitely interested to hear it in action.

The cleans here are quite Marshall-esque but there's less chime in the works maybe due to the in-house custom drivers on board & the fact that it runs on 6L6s in the power section- I did mess briefly with volume but there's no master section to stretch this to the limits, just the channel volume. The rhythm channel has that signature crunch for a typical classic rock spin but it's nothing too aggressive. I didn't have the opportunity to plug a Tubscreamer pedal or any of its derivatives to hear further tonal definition but I bet it's gonna sound sweet should this happen.

Lead, lead, lead! It's the killer lead channel if you are into intense distortion. The overall character here speaks of clarity & acute saturation which doesn't turn the top end too prickly. I was drawn to this very Peavey JSX drive voicing but the difference here is that the Ironheart has a more outgoing drive voicing so if you are not too inclined to favour a smoother distortion, the amp's midrange can bring you into black metal territory. I can't help but link this to Blackstar's SERIES 200 amps, very similar but less nasty in the top end spectrum. Thumbs up to Laney for delivering their claims & more importantly, giving us a good amp per se.

Kudos to the good people at Beat Spot for letting me have a go at this amp.

Part 3 coming up...