GrumpyRocker

British amplifier manufacturer Laney has announced the new Tony Iommi signature amplifier - the TI100.

This two-channel 100-watt 6L6-powered amp looks suspiciously like the Laney Ironheart, albeit with that amp's clean channel removed. That's not necessarily a bad thing - it's a beautiful sounding amp - but still something of a surprise.

I wonder where I could get a lovely Iommi front-grill to still on my Ironheart.

Anyhoo, all the details of the new amp after the jump.

British advertising bullshitter and sometime amplification manufacturer Blackstar has unveiled its latest state of the art marketing nonsense. The company describes its latest verbal slight of hand and customer misdirection as revolutionary.

"We were a technological innovator with our introduction of the phrase 'Pure Valve' in our mostly transistor-based technology in recent years," said Blackstar CEO Bob Scraggs. "However our world class engineers have been hard at work delivering more powerful state of the art bullshit that's sure to be a big hit with clueless customers and puny editorial lapdogs such as Guitarist Magazine."

"Today Blackstar is proud to unveil our latest product phrase 'True Valve Power' which we will believe will fool even more customers than ever before. With 'True Valve Power' we're extending our previous abilities of not having many valves in our valve products to now having no valves in them instead. Raising our 'no actual valves' to 'valve based marketing bullshit' ratio to 100 percent. I believe Blackstar is the first amplifier manufacturer to completely remove valves from over-hyped valve related products. This will enable us to continue to charge British-built prices for a range of Korean-made tat."

'True Valve Power' marketing bullshit will be available as an expensive range of literature and badges this summer, and will be bundled with a free modelling amplifier that's almost as good a Line 6 Spider for three times the money.

The presence of any valves has yet to be announced.

Full press release follows.

More than a few people intrigued by my purchase of the Laney Ironheart amplifier have asked how I'm getting on with. Perhaps they are thinking of trying one themselves, or perhaps know like many guitarists we buy gear and discard it at a silly pace.

The Ironheart is still with me and I'm enjoying its sound and features more than ever. As with my amps I did go through a after-the-honeymoon period with it. Couldn't quite get the high-gain tone I was after and was struggling a bit all round to feel satisfied.

I discovered the main problem was concentrating too much on trying to get a good metal rhythm tone using my Les Paul Traditional. The Gibson 57 pickups in that guitar are pretty low output but more importantly their EQ profile isn't naturally lent to chugging metal. Once I shifted my metallic search to my PRS SE Custom - loaded with Irongear Hot Slag pickups - I soon found the sounds I was looking for.

POD HD users were looking forward to getting hold of firmware 2.0 this week - which includes new bass/mic functionality along with a new guitar amp and plenty of goodies for Variax users. However a more serious problem has recently reared its ugly head - that of ear-damaging sound spikes when using the PC editor.

Line 6 has really been on the ball though and already has a fix out there. You'll need to update HD Edit on your PC and the firmware of your POD HD500.

Details and link below.

POD HD500 Flash Memory v1.43 and POD HD500 Edit v1.08
These updates address a bug which allows invalid data to be introduced to presets. In rare instances recalling presets containing invalid data may cause intermittent high volume events, as reported by a small number of POD HD500 users. We are targeting updates for POD HD Pro, POD HD, and their respective editors in the weeks following. For more information regarding these updates please read the detailed release notes at: http://line6.com/software/.

Harry reviews the new high-gain guitar amplifier from Laney. But is the Ironheart a one-trick metal pony, or much more than that?

Find out after the jump.

Okay here we go with a little rough and ready demo of the Laney Ironheart I9;ve just spent half an hour recording. This 6L6 (changeable to EL34) powered amp head is clearly aimed at the metal crowd but it has a lovely clean channel and the two dirt channels are capable of a bluesy crunch.

The amp features a solid state boost at the front end and a serial FX loops, both of which can be switched out of the signal path. The boost can be engaged on any channel. As far as I can tell so far the rhythm and lead channels are identical, The only difference being that the rhythm channel shares a three band eq (and pull pot controls) with the clean channel.

So then, the City Link has just arrived with my new amp. I've taken a punt on a Laney Ironheart. There was nowhere to try one around here and so I thought I'd take advantage of being able to try one at home for seven days thanks to online sales blah blah.

I've just completed a list of all the guitar gear I've owned over the years. Some of which I still own. What strikes me is the number of cheap and nasty multi-effects units I've wasted my money on.

And how many lovely electro-acoustic guitars I've had to sell because I was so brassic I couldn't afford to eat. This actually happened to me twice - thanks to two separate period of poverty.

Of course among all the junk there's still some very good gear in there. My Vintage VS6 is one of the least expensive guitars I've owned but one of the best. The PRS SE is ridiculously good for the price and my LP Traditional is very special.

And what of the amps? A pretty terrible solid state effort followed by some rubbish modelling amps. However things got tubey later on and I've got a couple of good amps now. No not expensive boutique nonsense but I'm not a great believer in hand-wired snake oil.

Anyway should you be interested in seeing how much junk I've owned over the years check out the list after the jump.

Here's the update POD HD users have been waiting for. This evening Line6 release firmware v1.31 for the POD HD line, which adds new amplifier models and more importantly much more control over the modelled power amps.

Check out the full changelog after the jump:

This is a very quick and rough demo recording made using with some new gear. The recording was made in Reaper and is made up of four tracks. Tracks 2, 3 & 4 were recorded using a Behringer XM8500 mic into a Line6 UX1 audio interface. No modelling was used, nor any post-recording FX.