Laney adds a pair of compact solid-state heads to its popular Ironheart Foundry range with switchable power and all the connectivity you need for stage, recording and practice
The small and portable amp trend continues apace, with most manufacturers featuring at least one pedalboard amp or micro-head in their catalogues. Following on from the success of its highly acclaimed Ironheart Foundry Loudpedal, which was introduced at this year’s rescheduled spring NAMM Show, Laney has now added two new solid-state heads that borrow from the Loudpedal’s design: the single-channel Ironheart Foundry Leadtop and the more feature ‐rich Ironheart Foundry Dualtop.
The Leadtop and Dualtop are built to Laney’s typically high standards, with heavy duty black vinyl over MDF sleeves and recessed grab handles for easy carrying. They look smart, too, with a silver Laney badge mounted on a tough front-facing steel grille that’s backlit with deep red LEDs. Both heads use an external 24-volt laptopstyle adaptor for power, making them very portable as there are no heavy transformers.
The Leadtop is a stripped-down singlechannel design but with some clever options that add unexpected versatility. There’s a stompbox-style footswitchable boost circuit that sits at the very front of the signal chain, with its own level control. This feeds a preamp that can be preset to run in Clean or Lead modes, with Gain and Volume controls and a conventional three-band passive EQ, augmented with a three-position voicing switch, which offers Bright, Flat and Dark options. In Lead mode, the Gain and Volume controls are both active; switching to Clean mode bypasses the Gain control for increased headroom.
On the rear panel there’s a cabinetemulated headphones jack and an aux in on 3.5mm jacks, with full-sized 6.4mm sockets for the Leadtop’s transformerbuffered series effects loop, with a send outlet that can double as a line out. The jack socket accepts a single-button footswitch to remotely control the boost function and a single speaker jack, with a small toggle switch that drops the Leadtop’s 60 watts of power down to one watt for home use.
The slightly larger Dualtop is more of a straight reimagining of the IRF Loudpedal. Again, there’s a footswitchable boost up front but this time feeding two channels, each with Gain and Volume controls. A three-way toggle switch on Channel 1 offers a choice of symmetrical or asymmetrical clipping, plus a clean option, with Bright, Flat or Dark voicing options on Channel 2, the Dualtop’s dedicated lead channel. Both channels feed a passive threeband EQ, and the Dualtop’s
