Guitar Friday 8

Selling the Little Lanilei.



I've decided to sell my Little Lanilei 1/4 watt amplifier. It's a very nice amp but I just don't play it that much and I need to make room for my new amp. It probably has less than a few hours on the tubes. I bought it when the company was still called "Songworks" but now is called Mahaffay Amps.

The Little Lanilei costs $369 new.

Mine has chicken-head-style knobs on top. Finally, after 2 years, I measured the output level SPL. With its own speaker I could get A-weighted peaks of 83 to 85dB SPL at one meter, playing a Gibson Les Paul Custom into it (as hard as I could strum). When I plugged the amp into my Celestion Alnico Blue I could get a peak of 89 or so dB SPL (A-weighted). Thanks to Tom Rowen for helping me test!

The amp has been kept in a studio its whole little life so far so it's pretty much in the same condition now as when I bought it. I almost changed my mind about selling it when I played it the other day but then I thought "No, I must sell it to make room for other stuff."

Here is a recording of the amp set to its "hi gain" setting. I'm not making any excuses for my guitar playing. This is a Gibson Les Paul Custom going straight into the amp. The gain and master are "dimed" or brought up all the way to full. The microphone is an AKG 460 with a CK61 capsule feeding a Brent Averill modified Neve 1272 preamp and then going to an Apogee mini-me converter with some soft compression. I think I rolled off some of the low end in Samplitude but that's the extent of the effects. Yes, it's a very high end signal chain but it does tell you how this little amplifier sounds (and remember, it's no louder than 85dB one meter away.) Oh, and this is the built-in 6" speaker too.


Now here I was going for something a bit cleaner. But I didn't go all the way down to the "lo gain" setting, just the "mid gain" setting. I may have rolled off some volume on the guitar itself for a little bit:

The amp is very musical and the sound sits well in tracks. It's too quiet to play with a band but it's awesome for practicing and for recording. You can tell it's very touch sensitive.
Oh, one thing about it: the "headphone out" isn't really a headphone out. It can drive headphones but it's only in the left channel. You'd have to get an adapter to get it to drive both sides of a pair of headphones.

I do reserve the right to get a Mahaffay "Leslie" sometime in the future.