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Old 08-19-2021, 12:38 PM
Dru Edwards Dru Edwards is offline
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Default Peavey Amps and Guitars.

Here's my first electric guitar amp, my Made in USA Peavey Rage that I bought in 1987. 15w solid state. Very small amp.

I hadn't turned it on in over 15 years but I picked it up from my dad's house, plugged it in and there are no issues. Clean tone is ok, gain channel is as I remember it - terrible . It's built like a tank and will outlive me.

What are your experiences with Peavey amps? Electric guitars?

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Old 08-19-2021, 12:46 PM
jricc jricc is online now
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Hey Dru, my first good amp was a PV tube amp. It was a Classic, 50 watts with 4 10" speakers. This was around 1976. Great amp, built like a tank and weighed almost as much! Sold it around 1982. They've always built good stuff for reasonable money.
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Old 08-19-2021, 01:08 PM
Dru Edwards Dru Edwards is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jricc View Post
Hey Dru, my first good amp was a PV tube amp. It was a Classic, 50 watts with 4 10" speakers. This was around 1976. Great amp, built like a tank and weighed almost as much! Sold it around 1982. They've always built good stuff for reasonable money.
Joe, I've read great things about the Peavey Classic. Those old ones can be picked up at great prices (at least they could a couple of years ago).
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Old 08-19-2021, 01:57 PM
guitararmy guitararmy is offline
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I have probably owned at least 8 Peavey guitars over the years.
My favorite was a Generation model-the USA made one with the active pickups and the arched top.

I used to own a pair of their Ultra 112 tube combo amps--had this dream of running them in stereo--currently still have a redline Bandit combo amp with the Transtube circuitry. It sounds great!
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Old 08-19-2021, 02:00 PM
Steve DeRosa Steve DeRosa is offline
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If you play an old-school piezo-bridge acoustic-electric, IME the low-gain input of an '80s Peavey Bandit 65/Special 130 1x12" combo is as good as it gets for live performance: the limited frequency response over ~5kHz filters out the nails-on-a-blackboard highs and "quack," and since the Saturation control in the Lead channel is defeatable you can set up a separate level for single-string leads or fingerstyle - used one for years with my first-gen Ovation Custom Balladeer, and it actually sounded like a loud acoustic guitar rather than what presently passes for "acoustic-electric" ...
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Old 08-19-2021, 03:27 PM
Chickee Chickee is offline
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Two different Peavey amplifiers for me.

I used to use an old(circa 1974)USA made Nashville1000 with that crystalline clean sounding 15” Black Widow speaker when playing my Fred Justice built pedal steel.
It was a tank for sure, but never a problem with it. Guitar center gave me $150 more for it than I bought it for when I traded it in. Go figure.

Currently I have a five year old ValveKing II 50watt 1x12 combo. Not overly heavy, which I like, but somewhat sterile. Peavey was trying to be too many things to too many players with this one. Presented as a thinly veiled Fender clean channel with a Marshall drive channel, it does neither convincingly. Complete with a bright button and a more gain button in its respective channels, it always sounds fizzy. I think I may install a 75 watt Celestion Creamback speaker with a good set of tubes(Genalex Red Lions are incredibly rich sounding) and see if I can save this little beast from itself.
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Old 08-20-2021, 03:26 AM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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I had an American-made 2003 Peavey Delta Blues 115 (15-inch speaker model) that sounded great. A niggling thing I had about the amp was when activating the tremolo circuit the volume would drop a bit. Also, the "tweed" cabinet covering was actually tweed-looking vinyl. Other than those points, it was a wonderful amp that put out a full and robust tone! The Peavey Delta Blues 115 is now made in China.
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Old 08-20-2021, 07:33 AM
Paleolith54 Paleolith54 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dru Edwards View Post
Here's my first electric guitar amp, my Made in USA Peavey Rage that I bought in 1987. 15w solid state. Very small amp.

I hadn't turned it on in over 15 years but I picked it up from my dad's house, plugged it in and there are no issues. Clean tone is ok, gain channel is as I remember it - terrible . It's built like a tank and will outlive me.

What are your experiences with Peavey amps? Electric guitars?

Never played a Peavey guitar. I thought the amps were hit-or-miss, especially in the company's last ten years or so. They seemed as bad as Fender for trumpeting some minor tweak as a galactic innovation. The Bandit, Express, and Backstage were great amps, as was the 5150 they did with EVH. The Vypyr, Wiggy, and Valveking not so much. IMO.
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Old 08-20-2021, 08:49 AM
jricc jricc is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dru Edwards View Post
Joe, I've read great things about the Peavey Classic. Those old ones can be picked up at great prices (at least they could a couple of years ago).
Yes, great full, tube tone, and your right, they can be found for not a lot of money. I always wondered what Classic 30 with one 12 sounded like...
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Old 08-20-2021, 11:06 AM
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About 40 years ago I had a Peavy Artist - bags of power for it’s size and great tone with my LP. But I used to get thro’ valves on a regular basis!

Later on I got a Classic Chorus 212 that did some good service. I still have it but can now hardly move it - hard to believe I used to take it to gigs single handed!
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Old 08-20-2021, 11:24 AM
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They've been hit and miss tone wise for sure, but the stuff was always about as bullet proof as it gets tho.

OTOH, The Peavy Classic 30 with 4 10" speakers was one of their best amps I think.
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Old 08-20-2021, 04:51 PM
Rudy4 Rudy4 is offline
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I had a 6 string electric and also a bass that I played for 4 or 5 years. Quite acceptable as I got them used and cheap.

I bought a 110 Minx bass amp to use as a stage monitor and it was super reliable. I bought a second one to have as a spare but never needed it. I eventually sold them off.

Ironically, I have purchased 3 Peavey items brand new that all had issues. I bought a 12 channel mixing board that quit working. I used to do a lot of electronics repair, so I disassembled and found a circuit board trace that corroded through from a drop of acid left on the board from when it was cleaned for wave soldering. An easy enough fix, but it would have been a costly repair had I not known how to do it.

Later a powered mixer, also purchased new, died as a result of a ribbon connector with a bad solder job. Again, easy enough for me to fix.

My 400 watt bass head went back twice to the dealer for warranty repair of cold solder joints at the input jack. At least somebody else fixed that.

The power amp for our mains and monitors worked fine for the time our band used it, around 6 years.

No more Peavey stuff for me.
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Old 08-21-2021, 04:04 PM
ghostnote ghostnote is offline
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I've had several USA-made Peavey items, and all of them were keepers, even though I did not actually keep every one:
Peavey Patriot guitar, mid-80s. It had a maple neck, 2 bar-magnet pickups, and was so easy to play. Great tone, too. I sold it to a down-on-his luck band mate for $100.
Classic 2x12 amp, mid-70s, with the combiner pedal. A 50 watt tube amp, 4 inputs, tough as nails and ahead of its time with the cascading dual preamps. Using the combiner pedal, you could get any type or degree of OD or distortion without using any external pedals. I gigged this amp for years and it was always solid. We actually had a pair of these in the band at that time. I left it with an ex about 15 years ago and she still has it.
Classic 20 amp, bought new in 1995. Tweed, tubes, 15 watts, 1x10. A nice little amp good for small gigs. When you turn it up it gets some real grind. I don't use it much now, but it's got a certain character to it, unlike any other amp I have, so I keep it.
Fury bass from the mid-80s. Has a narrow maple neck that's perfect for my small hands. Gigged it for many years through a mid-70s Ampeg head and a Sunn cabinet with one 18" and one 12" speaker. Still have it and the Ampeg.
A 410e cabinet. It's a tweed 4x10 extension cab with a mono/stereo switch. It was part of the tweed Classic series and was designed to be used with any of the tweed Classic amps or heads- the Classic 20 I mentioned above sounds killer through it. These days it's connected to a 150-watt solid state power head and serves mostly as my keyboard amp.
Peavey made some good stuff.
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Old 08-22-2021, 05:08 AM
Dru Edwards Dru Edwards is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by guitararmy View Post
I have probably owned at least 8 Peavey guitars over the years.
My favorite was a Generation model-the USA made one with the active pickups and the arched top.

I used to own a pair of their Ultra 112 tube combo amps--had this dream of running them in stereo--currently still have a redline Bandit combo amp with the Transtube circuitry. It sounds great!
My band mate back in the late 80s played a Peavey Electric... I think it was the Tracer? He's a lefty and I was with him when he ordered it from the guitar store (probably in 1989). Not sure if the Tracers were only made in the USA or also in Asia.
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