UberMetalDood
New member
Well I picked it up around lunch time. My first look inside it revealed ElectroHarmonix EL34's and preamp tubes and a Mercury Magnetics transformer. The front looks nicer up close than in the pictures. There's a wire mesh over a wood plank covered in green tolex.
The layout is pretty handy but I wish there were indicator lights under the channel switching toggles. Instead they have little LED lights next to the volume control of each channel and it's not always easy to look at the amp and tell which channel you're on.
The head itself is relatively lighter and smaller than most standard sized heads. It has a 25/50/100 watt selector switch on the back panel.
It has a master volume control that works great. You can crank the channel volume for a nice saturation and still keep the volume at reasonable levels.
The clean channel is supple and warm, and has a tremendous amount of headroom. It's almost too easy to play, as if it lacks a little stiffness, but it doesn't. It very nice.
Channel 2 sounds exactly the same as channel 1 except with a subtle amount of gain. I didn't crank it at 100w to see how much breakup I could get, but pretty loud at 25w it broke up kind of like a Mesa Boogie clean channel.
With my OD, channel 2 was pretty sweet but it didn't get real saturated. You would still have to have a pretty heavy OD or distortion box to get enough gain for liquid soloing.
I have a love/hate thing with channel 3 so far, but I just got the amp several hours ago. One one hand, the clean channel is entirely supple and uncompressed, on the other hand, the lead channel is kind of transparent and very compressed as if a sheet is covering the speakers. It's not bad but reminds me of one of those Dumble clones.
My other complaint about the lead channel is the noise. It can't go past 6 without creating a lot of hum. Scoop the mids to try and get a metal sound and then it starts sounding like a blanket is covering the speakers. It's almost too smooth to do metal but the presence control does enough to pull out the metal edge. I think with some experimenting I can find a decent metal tone.
The good news is the lead channel has an incredible attack and you can pinch off harmonics all day long at relatively low gain. I think this amp has some limitations for playing metal without distortion pedals but it can do everything else incredibly well.
Playing lead on the Legacy II is amazing. In a way it's forgiving because it's so responsive but at the same time every nuance of your technique, good or bad, comes through. It rolls off notes in arpeggios from low to high and high to low with grace. Picked notes flutter and legato is liquid smooth.
I think the noise, compression and tone can be greatly improved with a new set of tubes. The Legacy II I played before getting this one was stocked with Groove Tubes. I guess it would be safe to assume that one way Carvin keeps the prices down is by loading them with cheap tubes.
Besides the tubes, everything else about this amp is particularly well built. They don't seem to skimp on using good components, including the Mercury Magnetics transformers, so I think the Legacy II is very high quality.
Overall this is such an amazing amp. I will be upgrading the tubes immediately as I think that's the only thing holding this amp back.
By the way, the gear I used was a 2x12 cab with Vintage 30's, a Fender American strat, and a Musicman Axis Super Sport with a JB/Jazz set.
The layout is pretty handy but I wish there were indicator lights under the channel switching toggles. Instead they have little LED lights next to the volume control of each channel and it's not always easy to look at the amp and tell which channel you're on.
The head itself is relatively lighter and smaller than most standard sized heads. It has a 25/50/100 watt selector switch on the back panel.
It has a master volume control that works great. You can crank the channel volume for a nice saturation and still keep the volume at reasonable levels.
The clean channel is supple and warm, and has a tremendous amount of headroom. It's almost too easy to play, as if it lacks a little stiffness, but it doesn't. It very nice.
Channel 2 sounds exactly the same as channel 1 except with a subtle amount of gain. I didn't crank it at 100w to see how much breakup I could get, but pretty loud at 25w it broke up kind of like a Mesa Boogie clean channel.
With my OD, channel 2 was pretty sweet but it didn't get real saturated. You would still have to have a pretty heavy OD or distortion box to get enough gain for liquid soloing.
I have a love/hate thing with channel 3 so far, but I just got the amp several hours ago. One one hand, the clean channel is entirely supple and uncompressed, on the other hand, the lead channel is kind of transparent and very compressed as if a sheet is covering the speakers. It's not bad but reminds me of one of those Dumble clones.
My other complaint about the lead channel is the noise. It can't go past 6 without creating a lot of hum. Scoop the mids to try and get a metal sound and then it starts sounding like a blanket is covering the speakers. It's almost too smooth to do metal but the presence control does enough to pull out the metal edge. I think with some experimenting I can find a decent metal tone.
The good news is the lead channel has an incredible attack and you can pinch off harmonics all day long at relatively low gain. I think this amp has some limitations for playing metal without distortion pedals but it can do everything else incredibly well.
Playing lead on the Legacy II is amazing. In a way it's forgiving because it's so responsive but at the same time every nuance of your technique, good or bad, comes through. It rolls off notes in arpeggios from low to high and high to low with grace. Picked notes flutter and legato is liquid smooth.
I think the noise, compression and tone can be greatly improved with a new set of tubes. The Legacy II I played before getting this one was stocked with Groove Tubes. I guess it would be safe to assume that one way Carvin keeps the prices down is by loading them with cheap tubes.
Besides the tubes, everything else about this amp is particularly well built. They don't seem to skimp on using good components, including the Mercury Magnetics transformers, so I think the Legacy II is very high quality.
Overall this is such an amazing amp. I will be upgrading the tubes immediately as I think that's the only thing holding this amp back.
By the way, the gear I used was a 2x12 cab with Vintage 30's, a Fender American strat, and a Musicman Axis Super Sport with a JB/Jazz set.
