Songworks Lil' Lanilei

Dilapidus · Tadpole Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 20

I sat down with the builder, listen to this, and ordered it.

http://www.songworks.com/3350lt.html

I was very pleased with the sound. yes it's a hybrid, and yes I bought a full tube classic amp as well, but I suspect that I will use the LL a whole lot more because of it's recording and room friendly features.

After a bit, I'll have some comparisons to upload on the LL vs the '62 Gibson GA-5 (Skylark) I have ordered.

In the meantime, I thought I'd get the threads started here.

owwdatune · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:11 am Post subject:

cooooool....looking forward to reading your thoughts on both. Cool

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Dilapidus · Tadpole Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 20

I really love the Lil' Lanilei. I can't beleive that I'm making that sound at midnight with my kids asleep. This won't be a full review (no time tonight) but I'll cover a few things.

Sound: Crazy good. You can get to a decent clean sound, but that is not why you buy this amp. You buy this for drive and the driven sounds are incredible. Bends ring, sustain is long, false (or thumb mute) harmonics just sing through this thing. And you can get most (if not all) of this amps sounds at whisper levels with no obvious changes in tone. I'll get around to some sound clips someday. This is a type of hybrid, and I don't know the circuit, but the claim is that a second tube is used as a 'power soak' to give it the true tube responsiveness but still allow for a solid state power amp stage whose job it is to faithfully reproduce what it's been handed. That is something transistors can do Smile

.

Volume: For me this is a studio/practice amp but it can produce a stunning amount of volume. With just the 6" driver, it gets muddy at volume, but through a cabinet (Tris claims it will push 2 4x12's) it is LOUD and clear. I'm sure it will gig fine.

Results with my guitars : (Note, since I bought this and the skylark, I haven't used a single pedal, all these comments are for straight through)

2001 Strat (Mexico) [Stock pickups : Elixer 11's] : Just ok on single coil pickups (single coil hum is there but minor). Much better with two pickups and you really gotta bring the tone down on the guitar so soften up those strat highs.

1997 Epi Les Paul (Korea) [Stock pickups : unknown strings] : Really rocking. I can't think of a sound that is exactly the same but I was happily close to Zeppelin, Aerosmith, BOC, TRex sounds and this amp seems capable of just about anything but severe thrash.

2006 Ibanez SG520QM (Korea) [ Stock SD/Ibanez pickups : Elixer 10's] Much hotter than the LP, but still not overly ratty. Astonishing sensitivity over these pickups .. it really forced me to be more careful with my bends and finger vibrato as you hear the entire bend clearly.

With this and my Skylark (Gibson GA-5 crestline), I have every base covered I want (for under $700 !)

Dilapidus · Tadpole Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 20

It's 1.5 meg and it's on my blog .. I think I'm still not trustworthy on his site, but my sig has the blog address. The title is "Sound Sample for Lil’ Lanilei 3350LT"

It's just a bit of noodling, but it's an idea of the kind of distortion you can do with this amp at room temperature Smile

R
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