New Old Solid State Amp Day
Yet another one! I seem to be collecting these things… this one with special thanks to Alnico, the most recent of the several Fretboard members who have owned this compact, but remarkably heavy and astonishingly loud little monster:
1981 Peavey Special - basically a Bandit but with almost double the power - 120W
. This one has been fitted with a non-original but contemporary Peavey Black Widow speaker, which is responsible for a lot of the volume and weight - they're extremely efficient, and the magnet alone is more than eight inches in diameter and over an inch thick! It weighs 61lbs, which is maybe not *that* heavy for an amp, but feels it for a little transistor combo. From memory it's a pound heavier than my old Mesa DC-5 - and also probably beats it for sheer volume, even though that was a loud amp.
This one is so loud it made my teeth hurt when I tried to find how much headroom it had on the clean channel
. More than I can ever realistically need, I think. And luckily since volume is not everything, it also sounds excellent - it's quite tricky to dial in for anything other than a bold clean tone, but it can be done, and can sound quite deep and open as well. Most importantly it doesn't fart out at the low-end when it's pushed harder with full-range chords with lots of effects, which was the downfall of my last Peavey (Studio 110).
Overdriven is also surprisingly good - it will never sound like a valve amp really, but I like solid-state distortion too so that isn't a problem. It has surprisingly little gain really by modern standards, but that's not a bad thing - it can get a bit scratchy, but never reaches that fizzy over-gained solid-state sound so beloved of amp designers in the 80s.
Very unusually for a Peavey of this age, it has a minor fault - which puzzled Alnico when he had it - the channel switching doesn't work quite right and the dirty channel 'Post' operates on the clean channel as well (I think the switching transistor which turns it off has probably died, and should be an easy fix) - but that actually has a slight benefit, which is that you can now overdrive the clean channel as well, at less than jet-engine volume! And which has a nice bright edge to it, a bit different from the proper dirty channel - although it's a bit tricky to balance the two. So I may either not fix it, or make it optional… the ground switch on the front panel doesn't do anything on a UK model.
Now to go and frighten some unsuspecting sound engineer...
)
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Comments
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"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
But yes, these are damn cool amps. I've actually heard an old fender twin that I thought sounded relatively like one - a slightly hard, punchy clean rather than the springy deep thing most Fender's have.
It does sound fantastic when it's cranked up - the speaker does seem to need a bit of a 'push'. The Black Widow was really designed as a bass/PA speaker (like the EVM-12 as well) so it's quite dark sounding at low volume.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
It is also unbelievably loud for such a small thing - the only amp I'm sure has a higher volume to volume ratio is a Boogie Mark series 100-watter, and even that's close. The 1980s Fender Showman solid-state combo (200W!) is probably louder, but it's also quite a lot bigger.
One thing that's really interesting - and adds to the weight - is that it has an output transformer. (Auto type.) This is pretty unusual for a solid-state amp and is so it delivers the full power into 8 ohms as well as 4. What's most odd is that it's not necessary at all normally - at least with this speaker which is a 4-ohm, it's possible the original was an 8 - in which case it seems like wilfully adding cost to what was not an expensive amp, and which most users would never appreciate...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Bold cleans with huge headroom, the crunch channel is classic high gain peavey and the ultra channel is very modern and has more gain than any amp I've ever owned! The resonance switch is incredible, really helps to dial in the amp at volume. The stock speaker is ok but I'm so planning on putting a British t75 into it as that's my favourite speaker. Master volume and switchable gain boosts make it very easy to get some superb big amp tones at very low volumes.