Peavey Guitar Power Amplifiers

Basic rock and roll, 70's stuff, old school punk, some blues. As long as it has a good rhythmic backbone. I have several guitars, amps, been playing for about 25 years, guitar and bass. Run a sideline guitar repair business out of my shop at home. Have owned and tinkered with a multitude of different amps, guitars, basses, etc. I look at Musician's Friend catalogues as if they were Guitar Porno magazines! Haw, haw! No, seriously I am 45 years old and it's a big part of my life. I bought it off Ebay for around 400 smackeroonies! I have owned a lot of Peavey stuff over the years and I have been most impressed with their PA gear, I always thought that it was a good bang for the buck. Unfortunately, I have had some bad experiences with their guitar amps and most of the ones I have heard and owned just didn't really seem to measure up soundwise or qualitywise. I always went back to Marshall, Hiwatt, Orange, Mesa, etc. I bought this one with the attitude that I would give them another chance because the class A design, smalltop-retro-tweed-quasi- mini-Marshall type head cabinet design looked promising, especially with the chickenhead knobs. I remember when I first pulled it out of the shipping box and set it on top of a 4x12 cabinet and plugged my Les Paul into it. After allowing it to warm up a couple of minutes and started fooling with it I just fell in love with the thing. Very versatile amp with not only great clean tones but also a great hard rock sounding growl to it as well. Has clean and lead inputs with a toggle switch to choose between the two. The 4-EL84 3- 12AX7 class A design sounds like no other Peavey guitar amp I have ever heard, it is really warm and natural sounding. This is like a boutique amplifier for a fraction of the price. Absolutely the best bargain on a used amp I have ever made. Most of the Peavey amps I have played thru in the past always seemed to have a really artificial, raspy and buzzy sounding distortion, not this one. In my opinion it is/was the best guitar amp that Peavey has ever made, and that includes the 5150, the Ultra Plus, the Windsor, etc. I recently was told that they have discontinues making just the head and now this amp is available in only combo form. Pity. I would buy two more at that price right now if I could find them. The cooling fan is a little loud but, I will put up with it for the benefit of keeping the unit cooled down and operationally sound for that many more years. I honestly can't really say anything else negative about it. Peavey kept it simple and got it right this time! Looks good to me, I have of course seen amps that are built like tanks by comparison but, I don't think I would have a problem taking it to gigs or out on the road at all. I'd probably put it in a roadcase to to be on the safe side. Best bang for the buck of ANY tube guitar head I have ever purchased and that's no lie. You could easily spend 4 or 5 times what I gave for this head and not have an amp that sounds near this good. Trust me! This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com