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King Loudness « Interesting amp! »
Published on 10/24/11 at 10:22The Peavey Windsor Studio is a recent offering from the company that takes their high powered British voiced 100 watt single channel head and puts it into a more portable package for the player who wants things smaller, more portable, lower wattage, etc without sacrificing good tone. This amp is a 20 watt combo that puts the Windsor head into a smaller 1x12 combo package. It is single channel and also contains a gain/midrange boost onboard. One particularly cool feature is the power soak on the back which allows you to attenuate the volume in order to get that classic natural breakup at whisper volumes. It also accepts a variety of power tubes and is self biasing as well. Very cool!
UTILIZATION
Getting a good tone out of this amp is pretty simple overall. It has a very simple single channel layout that doesn't take much to figure out at all. The tones are pretty good even without a whole lot of tweaking which is quite nice to deal with. It really only does one sound at a time, but it can be dialed in for a whole host of sounds from clean to mean and everything in between. About the only things it doesn't do well are high volume cleans or tight modern gain based tones.
SOUNDS
The Windsor Studio sounds truly fantastic given it's price point. Even considering the cheap stock speaker and tubes, it still sounds very organic and is laced with rich harmonics and overtones galore. Everything from classic pushed clean tones to the gnarliest sludgy distorted tone are available here, and with use of the attenuator this amp can really go to extremes. Picture an old tweed Fender that sounds as though it's about to blow up and you've got the Windsor Studio's highest gain sounds. It definitely has a classic vibe and works well with a variety of different guitars.
OVERALL OPINION
All in all I think the Peavey Windsor Studio is a real winner. At $450 new it's a sheer bargain considering the quality of features and tone. It's the type of amp that if it said Matchless or Badcat it would cost four times the price. I am quite impressed with this amp and it comes highly recommended for anyone looking for a boutique minded amp at working class prices.
UTILIZATION
Getting a good tone out of this amp is pretty simple overall. It has a very simple single channel layout that doesn't take much to figure out at all. The tones are pretty good even without a whole lot of tweaking which is quite nice to deal with. It really only does one sound at a time, but it can be dialed in for a whole host of sounds from clean to mean and everything in between. About the only things it doesn't do well are high volume cleans or tight modern gain based tones.
SOUNDS
The Windsor Studio sounds truly fantastic given it's price point. Even considering the cheap stock speaker and tubes, it still sounds very organic and is laced with rich harmonics and overtones galore. Everything from classic pushed clean tones to the gnarliest sludgy distorted tone are available here, and with use of the attenuator this amp can really go to extremes. Picture an old tweed Fender that sounds as though it's about to blow up and you've got the Windsor Studio's highest gain sounds. It definitely has a classic vibe and works well with a variety of different guitars.
OVERALL OPINION
All in all I think the Peavey Windsor Studio is a real winner. At $450 new it's a sheer bargain considering the quality of features and tone. It's the type of amp that if it said Matchless or Badcat it would cost four times the price. I am quite impressed with this amp and it comes highly recommended for anyone looking for a boutique minded amp at working class prices.