EVH Gear joins the “lunchbox” trend with the 5150III LBX Head, a compact 15W version of the popular 5150III amp.
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This compact amplifier packs the popular 5150III tube driven circuit and it’s fiery rock and metal friendly tone inside a compact amp head, competing against other lunchbox style guitar amplifiers.
This is an interesting incarnation of Van Halen’s 5150, making its sought after signature high-gain tone more accessible for budget conscious players, and more comfortable to carry around. And its interesting how they do so while retaining important control features as found on the bigger models.
For an amplifier this small, the EVH 5150III 15W LBX comes packed with quite the tube muscle. Featuring a total of seven tubes, with five ECC83S (more popularly known as 12AX7) on the preamp section and two EL84 tubes on the poweramp section, more than enough to get this 15W amp screaming with the same high-gain tone found on the bigger 5150III amp head.
While other compact amplifiers settle for straightforward single channel operation, EVH Gear equipped the Lunchbox style 5150 with more tone variety via the two channel selection, first of which is the Blue “Crunch” channel and the other one being the Red “Full Burn” channel. As the name implies, the Crunch channel offers a more classic friendly voicing ideal for lower gain settings, while the Full Burn channel drives the tubes to high-gain saturation that the company continues to develop with every iteration of the 5150 signature amp.
Further tone shaping is provided by the 4-band EQ which lets you adjust the lows, mids, highs and presence. This versatility is a welcome addition because other compact amps are not as generous when it comes to precision tone controls. From the mid frequency heavy classic rock tones, to popular Variac-less “brown” sound, and even to modern scooped-mid high gain, this compact amp is designed to deliver. As expected gain and volume knobs are included for adjusting the distortion and output level of the amplifier, completing this small amp’s front fascia interface.
The MSRP for the new EVH 5150III 15W LBX is $965.50. For further details and the complete specifications of the amplifier, head over to EVH Gear.
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