Laney Ironheart IRT-Studio All Tube Guitar Head 15W USB Interface

I like metal. This amp is great in size, headphone out, and a variety of features. I wanted to love it. Unfortunately I didn’t. It’s too dark. The variety of tweaks and changes in eq and various settings overall just either produced a bit much hiss or just didn’t mix well for me.

Brave decision to build a tube amp for studio. I was surprised when I first use it. This is a great amp. You can have wide range of tone with 3 preamp tubes and 2 power tubes. Don't worry about your amp becomes too loud in high gain mode because you can have high gain and even boost with low volume. I connected the amp to our studio mixer, it sounds great. Also I use it with a Line 6 DT25 cab (1x12), it sound great with that too. I have not tried recording using USB cable. It comes with bracket to attach the amp to studio rack, or you can use it without a bracket on desktop. It is beautiful in both was. I wish the equalizer knobs were in different color. I may buy the 120 watts version in future, because it seems it has built-in attenuator. Very generous manufacturer in comparison to the others.

Pros:+Versitile+Sounds Great+Easy to use+Reverb is beautifulCons:-It feels different dialing in compared to other amps (not really a con once you learn it)-A decent amount of background noise, but in a mix its not super noticable-Pre-boost is almost unusable because of the noise-The clean channel breaks up pretty fastOverall for the price its a steal. You get 3 channels, a digital reverb and a very awesome sounding amp. It can do anything from a subtle crunch to raging distortion. The only problem I have with this amp is it's noise and its clean channel breaks up really early (Not that its a huge problem as I'm using it in a studio session).Also I find the amp simulator to be pretty useless. If you're just practicing through headphones that's fine; don't expect it to replace your amp in recording though. Also I wish the reamp function could be used by an xlr or 1/4 as opposed to usb.

Alright, so I had this thing for a little over a year now. Let me tell you when i first got this, I was a little disappointed. It was hard for me to dial in a sound, if you read certain reviews youll find people saying it sound really ice picky, or alot of high end coming through, this is because i wasnt use to this amp. Dialing in tones is very different, but awesome once you get it. Its true the push/ pull knobs don't do a whole lot i guess, but i learned thats the beauty in them. It actually makes them way more usable, especially when using it in the studio mixing it with other instruments, it keeps the quality of your tone, yet pushing you into the mix or pulls you back. The tone knob and gain knob are going to be what characterizes your amp.I recently played this thing next to a Blackstar ht-20 and i was almost positive the Blackstar was going to shine over the Laney, but let me tell you, i fell in love with Laney even more sore after the comparison, Its just so nice and beefy, and has this electrifying overdrive to it, but the once downside is when you pull back the gain, that electrifying gain is still there this is a pro and a con i guess, if you want more crisp thick blues overdrive tones, i suggest a pedal for the amp which is what i did, a real tube overdrive preamp pedal, when i want something a little different.The boost is freakin awesome! i dont know why people hate the boost, its especially nice to have you dont always have to use it. I dont know how people are using the boost but it definately isnt too noisy?!?! i mean if i have the gain at 7 and the boost at 7 yeah its going to get pretty messy but thats not how this thing works, i mean if the gain is at 7 i boost to about 2-3 and it adds such nice saturation, and colors all the notes even more. if i have the gain at 3-4 i can boost all the way to 7 , idk i thought this was common sense. i use a noise gate as well which is a must for any tube amp, so again i dont know why so many gripe about the boost, i love it, and couldnt imagine the amp without it.Lastely 20w is freaking loud! i mean loud! 1w is even too loud for my bedroom a lot of times.Had it for a year and still falling in love with it. only concern is i want the 60w version now :D

Havent purchased through here, but this is a great head, can do great cleans, putting the crunch in the clean channel can take you to a good blues sound (in which this amp is good but not thaat great, with a tubescreamer type pedal in the clean tho, the blues comes to life), and in the lead channel it goes into full overdrive and its very versatile.The usb out and line out works great, although I get way less latency with the line out into an interface than with the usb out, the option to turn the emulation off is great for using cab emulations in the DAW (besides the cabinet emulation within the amp isnt very good, good enough for headphone practice but not much else)The push pull controls, except for the treble, dont do much difference, the dynamics neither (maybe it shows more at high volumes but at bedroom level or even high volume into the daw I cant tell), tone control is useful for controlling the fizz and harshess depending on the cab.Some controls tho, are very flimsy, like the back panel control for ground lift and -10 db in the line output, those switches feel like they are gonna fall inside the amp if I touch them once more, so they are "set for life" settings (which isnt much of a problem for me, but may be a problem for others)