lag and vs. lack, same vowel sound

As most of you know I have been pretty active lately with some Skypecasts for people to practice English. I am also collaborating with a group of active English learners on a new website dedicated to practice English. It's called Let's Learn English .
That type of work has taken me to discover the world ESL (English as a Second Language) or EFL (English as a Foreign Language) on the internet. There are several websites for ESL/EFL learners and many interesting podcasts.
One of them it's called Speaking English Podcast,a young guys that gives tips so learners can "sound like a native speaker'. One interesting aspect of his website is that he posts all videos instead of just audio.
While I was looking in his archives I discover Episode #22 – leg vs. lag vs. lack posted in the month of October, 2006
In this episode he presented the words "lag" and "lack" as having different vowels sounds. I was pretty sure they had the same sound and emailed him about it.

His response:

"hi paulino,
one word features a long vowel, the other one a short one. that in itself makes them different. as you know i like to over-pronounce the words so that the difference becomes really obvious. in every day use by a native speaker the difference might be minuscule ;-)

thanks for the feedback.
sebastian"

To which I wrote back:
"

well.. in all the dictionaries (regular dictionary and phonetics dictionary) i found that both lag and lack have the same vowel sound

if you know about IPA pronunciation they would look like this

lag   /læg/

lack  /læk/

keep up the good work!

take and give care

paulino

ps: and yes, i am aware of your over-pronunciation.. but that's not what i was referring to. :-)"

Finally he was kind enough to include my correction in one of his recent podcasts. My phonetic teachers at Cervera (institute in Santa Fe, Argentina where I was studying to be a Teacher of English) would be so proud of me!!

Thanks Sebastian and keep up the good work!

Here it is
December 03, 2006

Episode #27 – pen vs. pan

Today, it is pen vs. pan, here is the direct link.