My customer brought this Laney VC30 from Worksop to my Newark workshop complaining that the clean channel distorted. It’s a pity, because he’d kept it in pristine condition!
Two other attempts had been made at repairing this fault. One by Laney themselves, and one by a local electronic engineer. Both had fixed the problem temporarily but it had re-appeared. Upon testing, the clean channel was very weak and distorted.
For this reason I took a different tack. At least one of the previous repairs had simply been replacing V1. This is a logical choice since V1A deals with the clean channel, but the valve tested as working and I suspected that the clean channel distorting problem was probably with an invisible dry joint in the valve socket. I reflowed all the joints on the socket and the problem dis-appeared. Of course I’ve guaranteed my work and in the unlikely event that the problem re-appears again I’ll take the amp straight back in.
I also noticed that the output valves were very poorly matched. This wasn’t causing the problem clean channel distorted problem, but it was worth rectifying to alleviate future issues.
I noticed some interesting design changes in the VC30 – compared to other Laney VC amps that I’ve repaired. Most interestingly, Laney have swapped their traditional spring reverb for a digital reverb based around the SPIN ASM reverb chip that they’ve used in other recent ranges, such as the Cub.
If you have a Laney VC30 or a clean channel distorted repair, please get in touch.