Calling Landry amp users

cragginshred77

cragginshred77

Well-known member
Looking for a backup to my Wizard and after looking at Marshalls I keep going back to Landry. Context for amps I've owned -pretty much every Friedman, Settled on Smallbox until the MC II arrived, nuff said. Owned and gigged Slo's, EVH's, and others.
Spoke with Bill Landry who is a great player and guy but he dials in his amps differently than I would coupled with the way and room he uses to record the clips in don't really make them jaw dropping so I opted for the Wizard a few months ago. I bring that up because now that i own a Wizard and have tried to capture it's immense sound and punch in the room (you cannot) on video sound bites I assume it's the same way with the Landry.

My buddy who has owned a lot of the same amps I have bought a Lexi recently and loves it so it made me revisit the idea of getting one. He made this video below the other day. Then yesterday @Bronco reached out to me with a used one he may sell. Curious about the Lexi 100w and the LS30 which has the Lexi in it with a lower wattage perhaps more useable platform due to the Lexi being a 100w beast that most stages will never allow me to tap into?

'100w head has bigger iron in transformers -if played at 1 or 1.5 on volume are we actually tapping into that 'big iron'?
Any LS30 users here?

I have other questions as Landry users chime in. Context of tone is pretty much what my friend Patrick is playing here

 
I’ve owned 4 wizards for context and own a 100 watt G3. I, personally, love the Landry and don’t own wizard any more. The wizard, as you pointed out, is difficult to capture effectively. The Landry is easier. The two are very different. The Landry is very much a modded JCM 800. It’s very versatile. It has a killer clean channel. It has a lot of settings and a very effective master volume so you can really run it hard and it sounds great at lower levels.

The wizards come off as more immediate, tighter, and more dry. The Landry can get super saturated (or more dry) but won’t get to be as tight or dry as the wizard. The feel is also quite a bit different. But I’ve owned a lot of amps and the Landry is still here and will remain here. There are other amps In similar price point to the Landry that are more similar to wizards in my opinion, and the Landry is it’s own thing, but I would think of it more as an alternative to a wizard than a backup in the same voicing.

Quick add on, the Landry and the ground zero moab are my 2 favorite modded Marshall flavor amps ever (I also believe bill can add the Lexi flavor into a 100 watt g3)
 
I found the 30 to have noticeably less punch than the 50. I know that sounds obvious but it was quite apparent at all volumes, not just a headroom / high volume thing.

No experience with the 100, but I would imagine the 50 is beefy enough for most situations these days.
 
I have an LS100G3 from 2016 and continue to find new sounds in it. I don't have experience with Wizards other than clips, but my sense is that the Wizard will be more "glassy" while the Landry will have a more liquid tone and feel to it, like a Mesa Mark series (but without the Mesa EQ). Based on an email conversation with Bill, the Lexi isn't terribly different tonally than the LS100 since it was his way of getting around some pandemic parts shortages that preventing building LS100s, with some additional tweaks for tone (because why not?). There are specific sounds and behaviors Bill seems to like to hear in all his amps.

My Landry has probably the most dialed in midrange of any amp I own short of my Dr. Z CAZ-45. Sometimes it's almost too perfect. The amp sounds very refined but can get mean if you want it too. More gain than I will ever need, will chug when asked. And if you play lead I can't think of a better amp to cut through the mix and sound musical.

It doesn't do in-between, low gain dynamics as well as my other Marshally (specifically my Dr. Z and BE-50) amps. Even with the gain low it still has a good bit of gain. That said, it does clean up well when lowering the volume knob.

The clean is quite good in the sense that it sounds like a more silky, yet still traditional, Deluxe Reverb with way more clean headroom. Some out there were done with a Marshall style clean, too, which I am guessing is more Plexi inspired.

The master volume is also very good, though I run my almost exclusively direct these days. Running into my PS2 I don't need to take the master higher than 3, and if that was in the room it would be killing small animals.

One thing to consider is that the amps before the pandemic and parts shortages used Classictone transformers (basically they're a JCM 800 transformer set), and I understand that Classictone went out of business (which is super sad). I'm not sure where Bill is sourcing his transformers from now for the Lexi, but I suspect that'll contribute to tonal differences between the Lexi and LS100.

I hear the LS30 is also great (especially the form factor), but it definitely isn't going to punch as hard as the Lexi 100W will.
 
I've had my Lexi for over a year now. It's my favorite amp to play and gets played the most from my arsenal. (Marshall 2555x, Mesa Mark IVa, Bogner Goldfinger 45-SL). I have a Morris UK'78 coming my way sometime in September.

The Lexi is tight(but not stiff like a Fryette), juicy, and musical. For a shared EQ, the Lexi rips on either channel. Craigginshed and I have the same music tastes. This amp delivers for those genres.
 
I made a quick clip of my LS100G3 through my PS2 into the Axe FX for a Friedman GB cab sim with a ribbon mic.



Not my greatest playing but I was making it up to demo the amp :)

Note the reverb is the Axe FX not the amp. The reverb on the versions with the spring reverb isn't that great (even Bill admits he prefers adding a digital reverb circuit since he could never get the spring reverb to sound the way he wanted).
 
ZEN Amps said:
I found the 30 to have noticeably less punch than the 50. I know that sounds obvious but it was quite apparent at all volumes, not just a headroom / high volume thing.

No experience with the 100, but I would imagine the 50 is beefy enough for most situations these days.
Click to expand...
50W Lexi or? I'm confused was that an LS model or? Also the 30w has 2 el34's so that would equate 50w typically right? Not sure if it's the voicing or transformers or?
 
Variable said:
I made a quick clip of my LS100G3 through my PS2 into the Axe FX for a Friedman GB cab sim with a ribbon mic.



Not my greatest playing but I was making it up to demo the amp :)

Note the reverb is the Axe FX not the amp. The reverb on the versions with the spring reverb isn't that great (even Bill admits he prefers adding a digital reverb circuit since he could never get the spring reverb to sound the way he wanted).
Click to expand...

Cool thanks!
Was the LS the version before the Lexi?
 
itsgoodnow said:
I’ve owned 4 wizards for context and own a 100 watt G3. I, personally, love the Landry and don’t own wizard any more. The wizard, as you pointed out, is difficult to capture effectively. The Landry is easier. The two are very different. The Landry is very much a modded JCM 800. It’s very versatile. It has a killer clean channel. It has a lot of settings and a very effective master volume so you can really run it hard and it sounds great at lower levels.

The wizards come off as more immediate, tighter, and more dry. The Landry can get super saturated (or more dry) but won’t get to be as tight or dry as the wizard. The feel is also quite a bit different. But I’ve owned a lot of amps and the Landry is still here and will remain here. There are other amps In similar price point to the Landry that are more similar to wizards in my opinion, and the Landry is it’s own thing, but I would think of it more as an alternative to a wizard than a backup in the same voicing.

Quick add on, the Landry and the ground zero moab are my 2 favorite modded Marshall flavor amps ever (I also believe bill can add the Lexi flavor into a 100 watt g3)
Click to expand...
Does it tighten up with an OD into the front? not as tight as the Wizard is not a bad thing.
 
cragginshred77 said:
Does it tighten up with an OD into the front? not as tight as the Wizard is not a bad thing.
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It does. Very responsive to boosts and a great pedal platform. I owned a production Fortin Cali (which is a pretty tight amp) and with a fortin boost in front of the landry it was similarly tight to that amp.

I believe bill can add additional features if requested--mine has switches to affect how modern and tight it is or vintage and loose in the back (and I believe these features are standard). On the master volume front, there is a master volume on mine for the power section but also a global master volume as well which you can use like an attenuator where you can run the preamp and power section in whatever ratio you want and bring it down in the back globally to whatever hearing safe level you want.
 
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itsgoodnow said:
It does. Very responsive to boosts and a great pedal platform. I owned a production Fortin Cali (which is a pretty tight amp) and with a fortin boost in front of the landry it was similarly tight to that amp.

I believe bill can add additional features if requested--mine has switches to affect how modern and tight it is or vintage and loose in the back (and I believe these features are standard). On the master volume front, there is a master volume on mine for the power section but also a global master volume as well which you can use like an attenuator where you can run the preamp and power section in whatever ratio you want and bring it down in the back globally to whatever hearing safe level you want.
Click to expand...
Systems volumes are the best. The Wizard has levels on the loop I use that way. The 3rd power kitchen sink has what they call a hybrid bypass which allows you to bypass the system volume for solos which is ingenious

Does the Lexi have that system volume and the modern/vintages switches stock?
 
cragginshred77 said:
Systems volumes are the best. The Wizard has levels on the loop I use that way. The 3rd power kitchen sink has what they call a hybrid bypass which allows you to bypass the system volume for solos which is ingenious

Does the Lexi have that system volume and the modern/vintages switches stock?
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That I'm unsure of. I know it has a voicing switch but just looking at pics the options on mine do not look available on it. However, my understanding is Bill can likely add whatever options you want to whatever amp you want for a price. I also believe Bill is able to add a switch to the LS100G3 to give the lexi voicing (and perhaps the other way around as well). Apparently the two amps are close enough internally where a switch can emulate the other.
 
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