The Steel Guitar Forum

does anyone play thru a Lab AMP. i know that
Kenny Grohman does. i have a chaance to pick one up cheap. just wondering about if it is good for steel??


p.w

Do a search in electronics. Some guys used them and liked them. The one with the 15” was popular. Heavy, but most amps of that era were.

I did years ago. Great amps.

Paul, had the Lab L9 many many years ago, was a great amp for guitar but did not like it for steel, found it difficult to get a good tone, was a bit dirty.

As I recall, Kenny Grohman, from San Antonio, plays through one.

I picked up a 100 watt Lab L5 w/2-12s in 1978 for $200 and loved it for my ZB pedal steel - and guitar. It was a huge step up from a Twin to my ears. Part of what made it better was the parametric midrange EQ, the built-in compressor and the 12" EV SRO speakers I put in it. Also very dependable and never broke down. I played it until 1990 when I stepped up to a Session 400 which I still have.

Yes I did in the late 70's and early 80's. What a great sound for steel and Tele. Fabulous compressor too! It was an L5 and I sold it to a friend. I guess we all think that they are gonna be made forever. Wish I still had a bunch of stuff I sold over all these years!

I have an L5 (100W - 2x12" Celestions) that I use with a D-10 Fessenden w/ Truetone pickups. I find it to be a clean sound with lots of power if needed. Controls allow for a fairly wide range of tone. The built-in compressor is a nice feature. I've had it since 1976 and has needed only minimal maintenance. If you are getting it for a good price, I would recommend it.

TTT

What a Twin shoulda been.....

Here's some stuff I found on Lab Series amps you may find interesting. I pulled it from a couple different places on the internet so take it with a grain of salt.

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Historically, Gibson Lab Series electric guitar amplifiers are Moog designed electric guitar amplifiers – i.e. Moog the famed electric organ maker of the 1960s – were very well made and quite dependable but probably often misunderstood for its time. Lots of different settings were available which made most guitarists during the latter half of the 1960s feel a bit overwhelmed when performing in hastily set-up gigs. Veteran electric organ designer Bob Moog did not realize that he was a few years (maybe 25 years?) ahead of his time – as in this was before the amp tweaking rack friendly era of late 1980s hair metal. Originally made by Robert Moog’s company which was bought out by Norlin – who also owned the Gibson brand at the time, in consequence, the amps were marketed through Gibson outlets, which is where the Gibson association comes from. But the Lab Series amps weren’t actually made by Gibson.

Most of the Gibson Lab Series amps on the second hand market were manufactured by Gibson via Gibson’s subsidiary Norlin in the late 1970s to the 1980s. The onboard effects and preamplifier was manufactured by keyboard maker Moog and has their name on it. The Gibson Lab Series 2 was made by Garnet round the 1970s. The input and tone control sections’ active devices were standard integrated circuit (I.C.) circuits of that time and the power amp’s output stage consisted of 10 TO-3 packaged NPN transistors in a quasi-complementary push-pull configuration which was deemed an “inferior” design in comparison to high end solid state high fidelity audio amplifiers at the time boasting a full complementary NPN-PNP output stages. Was the use of quasi-complementary output configuration the secret of the Gibson Lab Series amp’s tone?

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Bob's major contributions to the Lab Series was the EQ and the tube-like SS distortion circuit. Bob started out in the 50s making theremins with tube circuits, and while designing solid state circuits like the synthesizers he relied more on his ears than his bench equipment - he designed his SS circuits to emulate the sonority of his tube designs. That design philosophy carried over into the Lab Series. There's a couple of patents covering the Lab Series stuff.