Peavey quality - unreal!

[RomanS]

I'm currently starting a second band project - just found a bass player, unfortunately, he doesn't own a good bass-amp (used to play throught the PA all the time); so, I remembered that I still had my old Peavey Combo 300 from my punk-rock bass playing days...

I haven't really been playing bass in a band situation since the late 1990s, so I didn't have any use for that amp; so, when I moved into a new apartment with my girlfriend a couple of years ago, I stored it in the basement of our apartment building. This combo amp weights at least 80 to 90 pounds (definitely more than a Fender Twin!), and only has a single small handle on top, and I didn't really feel like lugging it up three flights of stairs after moving tons of other stuff; besides, it would have been taking up too much room, anyway, so down to the basement it went.
Unfortunatley, over the next months we found out that this basement is really humid... Well, since it was too late, anyway, we had all kinds of junk stored there, and I was too lazy, I still left that amp in there...

...until today. Decided to give it a try, lugged it up to our apartment (my back still hurts). Plenty of mould growing on the back and top, dust & spider-webs everywhere, Tolex coming off along the seams, jacks and screws rusty, blooming corrosion on the edges of the aluminium chassis - frankly, I didn't expect too much when I saw the sorry state it was in.
But I took it apart, cleaned it, vacuumed out the dust & spider-webs, tried to rub off most of the rust and corrosion with bike cleaning fluid, and let it air out & dry for a couple of hours.
Finally plugged in my old MIJ P Bass and turned it on...


...and it worked like I had just got it new from the store! No noise, no dirtortion, not even a single scratchy pot! Everything perfect! Loud as ever. Unbelievable! Still has the same not-too-refined, yet cutting-through rock bass sound it always had.

There's nothing like Peavey quality!

OK, still need to glue on the Tolex where it has come off, and I'm defintely putting some extra handles on there so that it can be carried by two people, maybe some casters, too; but that thing is gigable as it is right now, already!

[Tim Armstrong]

Surely you've heard of Hartley's Law of Inverse Tonality, which states that the worse the tone, the more indestructable the amp.



Cheers, Tim

ps- yeah, I know, there are some quite nice-sounding Peavey amps!

[Dennis_UK]

Yes, there are some. But, good grief, Peavey, why does everything you build have to be soooooooo heavy?

[Dave W]

Originally Posted by Tim Armstrong

Surely you've heard of Hartley's Law of Inverse Tonality, which states that the worse the tone, the more indestructable the amp.

Some of the amps are actually capable of sounding pretty good, but only when used with non-Peavey speakers. IMHO the Peavey cabs are built like tanks and sound like tanks.

[strummin67]

I had a Peavey TNT 115 combo for a few years. Those things are pretty indestructible but heavy as hell. (But you know that. ) It did not like my Rickenbacker bass so I ended up selling it. What's bike cleaner?

[4mal]

After the nuclear send off, only roaches will walk the earth - doesn't mean I'll invite them in now though ... yeah the Peavey stuff is pretty much bullet proof but it really doesn't sound all that good - at least not the ones I've heard. Merely OK isn't good enough IMO.

I would like to hear the new tube heds from Peavey though ... I was way disappointed in the Traynor YBA-200. My thunk is that the YBA transformers and the associated circuits may be the culprit there - 200 watts ? maybe at 25% distortion ... now if Peavey is delivering 2/3's of an SVT - that could be interesting ...

[RomanS]

Well, as I said - it's not the most refined sound this combo has (meaning, I wouldn't use it for playing jazz or funk), but for your basic rock/country bass sounds, or for grindy hard rock, punk, metal stuff it is great, definitely on the same level as other solid state amps from the late '80s/early '90s (well, maybe with the exception of the G-K 800RB, but that one is in a league of its own).

BTW, you naysayers should try one of those old Peavey Alphabass tube amps - had that stack in a shared rehearsal room, and that was one of the best bass amps I ever played (again: for rock).

strumming67,
don't know what it's actually called or made of, but by bike cleaner I mean that stuff that is sold for getting gunk, oil, rust, etc. of your bicycle; from the smell it's something based on mineral spirits, naphta, or something like that.

[Beatbx]

Originally Posted by Tim Armstrong

Surely you've heard of Hartley's Law of Inverse Tonality, which states that the worse the tone, the more indestructable the amp.



Cheers, Tim

ps- yeah, I know, there are some quite nice-sounding Peavey amps!

All too true. My first band's bass player in the early nineties had a Mark IV head and cab that was LOUD as hayell, but sounded like dookey. I thought I was rid of that beast until a month ago when my new bass player showed up with the same damn amp! I hope he doesn't take my continual denigration of that toneless hunk o' crap personally. Oy!

[4mal]

Originally Posted by RomanS

BTW, you naysayers should try one of those old Peavey Alphabass tube amps - had that stack in a shared rehearsal room, and that was one of the best bass amps I ever played (again: for rock).

I'd actually like to hear one of those Alpha Bass amps. The Classic 400 has a cult following and I've actually head a very nice preamp driving a Peavey Classic tube power amp that was very nice sounding indeep. The pre was astounding - not a Peavey and it was the cost of unobtanium but still - the amp did better than OK.

The one I really couldn't fathom was the Fireball ? Firebass ? That just conjoured up bad images...

[RomanS]

Well, those AlphaBass amps are kinda hard to find, supposedly they weren't built very long; I've heard them being called the "poor man's Mesa Boogie 400+" - but since I've never had a chance to try one of those, I can't compare... All I can say is that it had a great, warm tube sound, but one that was cleaner, less "brutal" than an Ampeg SVT.

That shared rehearsal place was really cool because there were 4 bass stacks in there: some Trace Elliot with an EQ with a gazillion bands, with 1x15 + 4x10 cabs, an SWR (sorry forgot the model - that one was my least favorite of those 4), and some cheapo Laney - and the Peavy Alphabass (also eith 1x15 and 4x10 cabs) was by far the best-sounding of the lot.

(As an aside: another cool/weird amp, but for guitar, at that place was a SOLID STATE Vox AC30 - which actually sounded quite good, too...)

[garytelecastor]

Originally Posted by Dave W

......IMHO the Peavey cabs are built like tanks and sound like tanks.

Exception to the rule: Classic 30; Classic 50

[RomanS]

...and don't forget the Delta Blues - but those are all guitar amps, and nobody in their right mind would seriously criticize those, anyway.

[garytelecastor]

Originally Posted by RomanS

...and don't forget the Delta Blues - but those are all guitar amps, and nobody in their right mind would seriously criticize those, anyway.

Amen, Roman, Amen!

[Dave W]

I was talking about their bass cabs, not their tube guitar combos.

[aunchaki]

Originally Posted by strummin67

I had a Peavey TNT 115 combo for a few years. Those things are pretty indestructible but heavy as hell.

Amen. My last band had inherited a TNT 115. It was a tank and as heavy as one. Still, we liked it. We also found a used NitroBass head (the same head as in the TNT combo) and it rocked, as well. No complaints.

[Gunny]

I used to have one of those Mark IV heads. Pretty hard to kill them. Not my fave tone. The combos and cabs have come a long way but man they make them heavy. In fact way too heavy for my liking.
I worked on a couple of KB300 combos and a DataBass (450 Watts). Both of those things were as heavy as a boat anchor on a cruise ship.

[tom grossheider]

Know a guy whose bass player had his Mark III bass head fall out of the pickup truck on the road. Been in the rain with rusty screws, plugged it in an worked fine. They are loud and cheap when you can find them.

[hockey_head]

played a mark IV for at least 15 years, it ended up in so many cab and biamp, triamp configurations...........it took a drink of scocth one night, didn't finish the gig, but the next day it fierd right up. one of the better features was all the extra 1/4 input jacks.... when you wore out the main input jack, you could just relocate it on the cb and replace it with one you never used
i think there was 14 to choose from.

[RomanS]

Just came back from band rehearsal (after screwing some extra handles from the hardware store onto the combo cab, and carrying that thing all across town on the subway with my bass player) - we managed to get a great almost-real acoustic-like sound from his cheapo Chinese-made electric upright...