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Laney Nexus (valve)

Reviews

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Description:

Designed to produce the ultimate in big bass tone, the NEXUS range of amplification represents 40 years of cuttting edge bass amp development. The NEXUS TUBE pumps out 400 watts RMS of pure, uncluttered bass tone, via a unique preamp and power amp package, containing 3x 12AX7, 1x 12BH7 and 8 - count 'em - 8, KT88 power amp tubes

review:
i bought this amp a couple of weeks ago as i was after a high power valve amp with enough wattage to get past 2 ver loud guitarists

BUILD QUALITY:
overall the build quality on this amp is very good nothing was loose when it arrived and stripping it down and changing tubes is pretty hassle free although you WILL need the instruction book the 1st few times

FEATURES
for a valve amp this thing has bags of features most of which are selectable via a footswitch
it would take a lot of typing to list all the features here so i'll list a few of the neat ones
it has a tube gain dial so you can force the distortion out of the tubes without having to run the amp at high volume it also has a 6 band EQ, presence dial, sub bass dial and an oversized volume control

SOUND AND USABILITY
the amp is pretty straight forward to use despite having a lot of dials and after you familiarize yourself with it a bit it will become 2nd nature although at 1st you'll spend most of your time with your nose in the manual trying to figure out why there's no sound

the sound out of this amp is fantastic and combined with the EQ there's no sound you cant achieve be it death metal or funk laney really have done the bee's knee's on this one and produced a very special sounding amp evn the ampeg boys will be asking you about it

THE GOOD BITS
very loud and powerful you wont need to go louder than this untill you play wembley arena

fantastic sound: nice and warm with a good "full" sound right across the strings and sounding very "natural" with just about any bass

versatile and easy to dial in just about any tone you could want

footswitch makes muting and eq options available at the click of a button ideal for solo's or tuning up mid set

neat little features like tube warning led's and built in compressor cuts down on additional pedals and fx units and makes tube failures easy to diagnose and fix

good build quality and added confidence that every amp goes through quality control before being shipped

oversized volume knob makes small adjustments very easy when onstage

value for money considering the great sound and the amount of features built in to the amp compared to others in its price bracket

THE BAD BITS
its heavy.... very heavy and combined with its square shape it makes carrying it a real pain

the switches and dials can be a bit overwhelming at 1st

the tube gain sounds a little fake sounding more like an onboard effect rather than true tube overdriven distortion

separate 4 band high mid and low mid controls are pretty useless unless you want buckets of mid/treble

long delivery time due to laney's quality control

not all options are switchable via the footswitch

the amp needs to be removed from its case to change the front 2 preamps

looks like the front of a ford pickup truck

8 power tubes and 4 preamp tubes mean it takes ages to warm up and replacing tubes will be an expensive task

OVERALL: 9 out of 10
a great amp with some great features the only letdown is some of the features you'll use once and never again and the preamp tubes at the front are hard work to change should you be caught short onstage

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