EVH LBX 2

[philthis]

Ok so I have the first one and I like it. What's the difference?

So I spent some time with one this afternoon to see what was up with it. To be fair I played it through an EVH 2x12 cab to play it in its element. I plugged in an American Strat with a shawbucker in the bridge. I wanted to use a fairly regular guitar that a normal player would have.

They've been touting the clean channel as the biggest difference between the two LBX models so I tried that out specifically first. Playing it straight up through the strat with single coils that were not noiseless the neck single sounded good. Not great but good. Good enough to get you through a gig with reverb on it. However it was.....meh just kinda bland but definently clean. I then decided to jack the volume to almost 10 and use the gain as the volume knob instead and the amp really came alive at that point. The clean was much more dynamic and punchy and had that kinda cool fenderness about it with the strat. All positions of the strat could be heard well and not overly compressed. It was loud bringing a manager over to see what was up and I only had the thing up a quarter of the way. This was a good tone that is very usable. Better than a fender Twin?......no but certainly as good a clean as some of their other models have. It's not great, but it's good.

Next I hit the high gain channel and I instantly loved it. It's more then the gain of the rhythm channel on the first LBX but not as over the top gainy as the red channel is. It's more clearer but still blistering gain and clip. It's a great tone and my favorite of all the LBX amps. I turned my guitar volume down to around 6.5 to 7 ish to see how it smoothed out for rhythm and it had a nice distortion crunch but not undefined or too distorted. Then I turned up the volume on my guitar for some percussive harmonic crunch leads and harmonics and squeals came alive. The speakers roared and the closed back cab delivered tight punchy base as I chugged away on Holy Diver, Heaven and Hell, Dead or Alive, and Dance the night away. Yup this thing is sex in a small box. Good punchy cleans and great distortion tones.
For Kiks we plugged a mahogany Yamaha neck thru with soap bar pickups in for a round fat tone. This too roared to life and had a big fat round tone which suggests a good slide amp. The cleans were nice and jazzy. They.were good tones. Certainly any audience would like it. Several people checked out what combination of guitar and amp I was using to get the tones I was getting out of that little amp head. You really can't go wrong with this amp head and speaker combo. It's beyond bang for the buck good and goes into classic great tone for that combo of head and cab.

 

[jclogston]

Re: EVH LBX 2

Was there loud popping when switching channels? The first version did and hence why I sold it.

 

[jmh151]

Re: EVH LBX 2

I sold my first LBX since the first blue channel was noticeably louder than the second red channel. The blue didn't have enough gain while the red had more than enough to spare. Looks like they resolved the issue with the LBX II

 

[philthis]

Re: EVH LBX 2

The second version channel.switching pop running it with the gain as the volume on the clean channel will be more noticible but a strum of your strings will cover as the pop is not over the top loud. I always used my guitar volume on about 6.5 to 7 as my rhythm channel and jacked the volume to 10 on my guitar for solos. The amp has so much gain I never needed a bunch of distortion pedals to push it. You could however use the EVH distortion pedal for an extra channel for gain to get three channels out of the EVH LBX2. I like the gain channel by itself and would maybe just use my guitar volume to control it and maybe a compressor for added sustain tone if I wanted it. I wouldn't use too much junk on the distortion channel.as it sounds good now. Maybe a tiny bit of compression and reverb, or delay, or chorus, or flange.but it already sounds good. I kept the tone control settings for both channels the same. Bass and treble at 1 o-clock and the mids at around 11 o-clock for both channels this sounded great. I never had the gain or presence over 12 o-clock for the gain channel. There just was a sh!t ton of gain even at that setting. The gain sounds more gritty and defined. It would easily cut through a mix.

 

[stupendous silly]

Re: EVH LBX 2

The second version channel.switching pop running it with the gain as the volume on the clean channel will be more noticible but a strum of your strings will cover as the pop is not over the top loud. I always used my guitar volume on about 6.5 to 7 as my rhythm channel and jacked the volume to 10 on my guitar for solos. The amp has so much gain I never needed a bunch of distortion pedals to push it. You could however use the EVH distortion pedal for an extra channel for gain to get three channels out of the EVH LBX2. I like the gain channel by itself and would maybe just use my guitar volume to control it and maybe a compressor for added sustain tone if I wanted it. I wouldn't use too much junk on the distortion channel.as it sounds good now. Maybe a tiny bit of compression and reverb, or delay, or chorus, or flange.but it already sounds good. I kept the tone control settings for both channels the same. Bass and treble at 1 o-clock and the mids at around 11 o-clock for both channels this sounded great. I never had the gain or presence over 12 o-clock for the gain channel. There just was a sh!t ton of gain even at that setting. The gain sounds more gritty and defined. It would easily cut through a mix.

Phillip McKnight comments on a couple of videos that the LBXii sounds like a 'broken radio' at bedroom volumes and comes to its own a bit loud. Also that the first LBX didn't have that problem. What is your take on that? And anybody with experience...