Yeah, Satriani has used a Peavey 5150 on some of his tracks on his recordings, but he uses a little bit of everything.

What sort of music do you play? If you could get a 5150 combo used that would be perfect for high distortion music (Metal, hard rock, etc). Lots of swedish metal bands use the 5150 to achieve some bad ass distortion. And a friend of mine owns a 5150 combo and you will just have to spend a bit of time dialing in a proper tone and then you'll be set.

I don't know too much about Laney though.