NAD 80's style!

timmysoft

Came up on gumtree last night, so I low balled an offer and for £20 I came away with this heavy little bastard. Gave it a quick once over, cleaned and pat tested it and it's pretty decent. The intention is to get it put into a head shell and run it through two 4x12s for maximum 80's tones.

robinbowes

I had a Bandit 65 for most of my early playing days. Great little amp.

timmysoft

robinbowes

Yes, I know it's not a Bandit 65, but it looks very similar!

timmysoft

I think it's the same amp just with more power! This one is capable of unholy volumes. Surprisingly it sounds awesome at whisper volumes too. Been running my m5 rat model in front of it all morning and it sounds great. It has a huge peavey USA black widow speaker in it, I guess that must be why it weighs so much!

richardhomer

What a bargain!

They were a perfect illustration that it is possible for a manufacturer to produce something to a price point that was genuinely good.

Those amps were everywhere in the '80s.

A friend of mine who owned a music shop kept a used one as hire stock for people whose valve amps had blown up. He reckoned it was the most reliable amp ever to pass through the shop.

timmysoft

richardhomer said:

What a bargain!

They were a perfect illustration that it is possible for a manufacturer to produce something to a price point that was genuinely good.

Those amps were everywhere in the '80s.

A friend of mine who owned a music shop kept a used one as hire stock for people whose valve amps had blown up. He reckoned it was the most reliable amp ever to pass through the shop.

It certainly is well screwed together, I reckon this one is 30 years old and after I cleaned all the pots and sockets it's pretty much perfect. I used to gig with the renown 400 from the same era, so I feel at home on these old peaveys. It's so heavy though!

57Deluxe

Oh from the days of the all-conquering Peavey Bandit when it was forever topping the Making Music Readers poll.... sigh....

ICBM

£20?!! You lucky, lucky, lucky, b******!

Absolutely killer amp. Yes, it's a Bandit with double the power and a much heavier (and better-sounding) speaker.

As already said they are almost completely indestructible, louder than bombs and sound excellent.

Personally I'd keep it as a combo, it's so cool to have an amp that small which will level a building if you want it to. If you do want to convert it, definitely get a new shell made and don't hack the original cabinet as was sadly done to quite a few of them.

ThePrettyDamned

Gah, I made an offer of 60 quid on one of these and was rejected! Lucky git

timmysoft

ICBM;286176" said:

£20?!! You lucky, lucky, lucky, b******!

Absolutely killer amp. Yes, it's a Bandit with double the power and a much heavier (and better-sounding) speaker.

As already said they are almost completely indestructible, louder than bombs and sound excellent.

Personally I'd keep it as a combo, it's so cool to have an amp that small which will level a building if you want it to. If you do want to convert it, definitely get a new shell made and don't hack the original cabinet as was sadly done to quite a few of them.

£20 for sure! It's so extremely loud and so very heavy. Not so bothered by the weight, I'm pretty fit! I am tempted to leave it as a combo, maybe get a matching 112 extension cab made for it. I don't know what peavey were using for tolex at this time, it's like the amp is armoured!

ICBM

I know - just mind your knuckles on it!

They even managed to make that much tougher than other amp companies. Contrast to the woeful easily-tearable, peel-off crap used by most other makers (Laney and recent Marshall being a couple of the worst offenders) and wonder at how Peavey make such great amps at such great prices and are almost never given any credit for it.

timmysoft

I've no idea how they managed to make workable tolex with the properties of abrasive sheet! It's already taken a chunk out of one of my door frames ( I was trying to carry the shopping and the combo)

ChrisMusic

Just conjecture, but it could be sprayed on.  Great adhesion, resilience depending on composition and solid* additives would give you that abrasive edge, which is hard wearing and protects the rest of the finish.  (* not quite the right phrase which eludes me, but I am sure you get the gist)

I have no idea if they did that though, but the technique has been very successfully used in high wear pro audio kit.

ICBM

No, it is definitely a form of cloth-backed tolex-type material - but it's thicker, tougher and better glued to the cabinet, as well as rougher, than any other I know of.

Dave_Mc

Nice

Never tried one, but £20? ) Awesome.

FelineGuitars

Similar to my old Peavey Backstage Plus - these models were changed aroung 1987 to feature "Supersaturation"

These older ones were better as you had more control over the nature of the gain, dialing in as much saturation as you want, which the later ones lacked. 

BTW what is the speaker that is in there?

Is it a Black Widow or a Scorpion 12"?

ICBM

Black Widow in the Special, Scorpion in the Bandit - the BW has the big aluminium dust cap. The BW is just a much better speaker - it sounds better and is much more able to take the power of the amp than the Scorpion in the Bandit is - one of the only common faults in the Bandit, including the one I have in my workshop just now, is a blown speaker. (The other is the FX loop/Preamp Out/Power Amp In jacks getting corroded contacts.)

The older ones have the Saturation control - it's the following series with the smaller, non-coloured knobs (like my Studio Pro 110) which just have Pre and Post Gain - but the gain on the later ones covers at least the same range, I can get a clean sound out of mine on the dirty channel, which is actually better in some ways than the clean channel.

ThePrettyDamned

It's amazing. I have a newer (90s silverstripe) bandit and it's bloody loud, great quiet, decent cleans, takes pedals well and I can get a nice crunch from the od channel. All in all, very usable!

Not inspiring perhaps, but not just functional either - I really like the sound.

The tolex is amazing - not sure if it's the same, but while mine has a couple of little tears, it's obviously been bashed around loads (a couple of pots have snapped but still work perfectly, the thing is a tank!).

Even the spring reverb is okay - bit hissy (known fix is to use different... Drivers or something) but it's a massive tank and it sounds okay.

I really want a 2x12 stereo chorus one, now, which is a similar age to yours. Must be huge sounding...

ICBM

ThePrettyDamned said:

I really want a 2x12 stereo chorus one, now, which is a similar age to yours. Must be huge sounding…

There's a 2x12" Stereo Chorus in one of the rehearsal studios I do repair work for. It blew the original Scorpion speakers at some point, but that's the only thing that's ever gone wrong with it. A minor disadvantage is that without the footswitch, you can't turn the chorus off - and the footswitch is often missing - but there's a trick, which is to jumper the non-chorus preamp out jack to the chorus channel power amp in.

I want either a Special of the same series as my Studio Pro (blue stripe)... or a Renown. 210 watts of ultimate solid-state power .

richardhomer

John Martyn in the late 80s/early 90s used two Renowns on stage. It must have pretty loud up there!