NPD: Laney Digbeth Preamp

[Skinnyman]

After I moved seats and stopped playing bass in the band, I sold my bass amps and cabs to free up some room in the house.

 

I do want the option of playing live now and again so I just got a Laney Digbeth bass preamp.

 

I’ve not had chance to use it in anger but so far it seems to be perfect for what I want. I’ve been able to dial in a really nice, fat sound that suits my Jazz nicely and the Ric sounds glorious when you hit the Tube switch with a small amount of drive dialled in.

 

The pedal seems really well put together and at £125 from GAK, was a bargain

[Raymondo]

Thank you Mr GAK for the kind review...

 

The cheques in the post.

 

Love Mr Laney.

 

[Skinnyman]

2 hours ago, Raymondo said:

Thank you Mr GAK for the kind review...

 

The cheques in the post.

 

Love Mr Laney.

 

Ah, you got me!

 

In fairness, I only got it from GAK because they were £25 cheaper than everywhere else and I figured it was worth letting everyone know 😁

 

I’m impressed with the little preamp though. I haven’t had anything from Laney since a little PA amp back in the 80s and I’d assumed they’d gone out of business years ago

[Osiris]

I do like the look of the Digbeth preamp, it seems to be well though out. The only that put me off getting one, other than a lack of video clips online, was the trauma that my first proper rig which was a Laney (amp, 4x10 and 1x15 cabs), back in the late 80's, which - other than the Trace Elliott SMX rig that replaced it - was the biggest turd of a bass amp that I've ever played through. But 35 years later I'm slowly starting to recover...

 

So anyway, you think it's good so far?

[Skinnyman]

30 minutes ago, Osiris said:

So anyway, you think it's good so far?

For me, definitely. 
 

I don’t use a lot of overdrive or distortion and I’m not a big fan of slap. I like a big, fat, old school kind of thud with, sometimes, just a little grit and sometimes a bit more treble or high mids to cut through.

 

I’ve had amps over the years with drive channels and I’ve not used them because they’ve sounded too harsh (to my ears). 
 

The Digbeth can do distortion if needed (I don’t) but, dialled back, it’s quite a usable sound. 
 

It reminds me a lot of my old Genz Benz Shuttle - and that’s a good thing in my book

[Osiris]

Same here, I don't do full bore distortion, just a bit of low gain drive to warm things up, because not very deep down inside I just want to be Geezer Butler*.

 

* Rather than George Roper. 

[Skinnyman]

31 minutes ago, Osiris said:

Same here, I don't do full bore distortion, just a bit of low gain drive to warm things up, because not very deep down inside I just want to be Geezer Butler*.

 

* Rather than George Roper. 

You’ll always be my George, George. 😍

[Delberthot]

I'm not a huge fan of wild overdrive so one of the things that I love about this pedal is that you can mix the Fet and Tube sides. I prefer mainly Fet with a little bit of Tube added in for grit.

[skidder652003]

Done 3 gigs with it so far this year, it's really good, very versatile and the FET/tube blend is brill as is the tilt knob if you need to add a little "heft" halfway through a song.