NAMM 2024: Laney has just launched the world’s most powerful FRFR guitar cabinet – and it’s biggest. The LFR-412 was developed in collaboration with prog metal guitar trailblazer Devin Townsend, and is the world’s first 4x12 FRFR, with whopping 2600-watts to play with.
If it is the world’s first 4x12 FRFR (full range, flat response) guitar cabinet, it might not be the last. With the digital revolution of electric guitar tone seeing more players swap analogue rigs for digital amp modellers, the is a growing demand for new options for amplification. This is clearly the nuclear option. It’s the one that can go the loudest, for sure.
This might be too big for some people but for pros such as Guthrie Goven, whom Laney says will be using the LFR-412 on the forthcoming Aristocrats tour, this is just the thing for moving some air about the room.
Laney says you’ll get a maximum of volume of 139dB from this broad-shouldered cab, which houses a quartet of HH Black Series professional 12” woofers, and a LaVoce compression driver. For comparison, a jet engine is typically 140dB at take-off. The LFR-412 will make itself heard comfortably above a chainsaw (120dB), and even a jackhammer (13odB), which is handy should you find yourself playing a gig with Jackyl, or maybe even Nitzer Ebb.
Laney promises low noise even at high volume. But story is not all about loudness. The LFR-412 performs just as well at bedroom levels, and it is designed to integrate neatly with your digital rig, with its onboard Laney Advanced Impulse Reponse (LA•IR) tech allowing you to use the guitar cab for IRs, freeing up CPU on your modelling unit.
The LA•IR system is based around 56-bit FIR filters, and there is a USB connection and an app to help you upload and manage your cab sounds directly, with dual selectable IRs for the cab and its DI output.
This allows players to use one IR for the cabinet on state and send a different IR to front-of-house via the emulated XLR DI output. Two of those IRs were designed by Townsend, both of which are preloaded on the cabinet.
The LFR-413 weighs 42.8kg, which is not necessarily lightweight, but it is equipped with removable castors. And if such a thing is possible, it looks pretty cool, too, with a downlight strip illuminating the front of the speaker cabinet when powered on. Other controls include volume, HF Trim, Speaker and DI out Emulation switch, ground lift, and a switch for turning the light on and off.
The cab is bought from plywood and covered with black vinyl with black metal corner protectors. As you would expect it is fully stackable with the other FRFR speakers in the Laney lineup, but we’d suspect that anyone wanting a 4x12 is going to want to pair this with another 4x12 for that full-stack, Hendrix-at-Woodstock-but-make-him-use-a-Kemper vibe.
Well, its certainly an option. The LFR-412 is available now, priced £1,099 / $1,799. See Laney for more details.
