Peavey Generation EX Tele thoughts?

[scottwatermusic]

Originally Posted by RetroDaddy

To each his own. I think the shape of the Peavey Gen Ex body looks as good or better than a Tele body. I've not seen a Fender tobacco burst finish as good as the burst finish on the Peavey. For those with similar tastes this is one hell of a Tele for the money.

I am partial to the shape of the headstock of a Tele but the vintage tint on the Peavey neck and the vintage tuners and the shape of the neck and the quality of the piece of wood on my guitar is so good there's no reason to replace it.

But for those of you that have to have a Tele headstock you could easily buy a licensed headstock from Warmoth or get a used tele headstock and put it on the Peavey body and use the Peavey tuners and the rest of the Peavey rig.

That's one thing that is so cool about buying inexpensive guitars. You have so much money left over you can have fun making all kinds of mods if you want to. The set up on my Peavey was way to high so today I spent 45 minuts adjusting the truss rod and string height and intonation. I can't find any flaws with this thing now that it's set up right.

Incredible bargain for under $200 brand new.

I'm pretty sure that a Fender neck will not fit on a Peavey. The Peavey neck is wider.

[RetroDaddy]

BluesCube...you're right. The Yam Pacific and Gen Ex Tele standard look very similar. That Yam has a humbucker (double coil) front pickup whereas the Gen Ex tele standard has a single coil. I'm pretty sure the single coil neck pickup is reverse wound Keith Richards style. You gotta hear the tone from that thing!

If its' true that a Fender neck is too wide for a Peavey Gen Ex body then depending on how far off it is it would be easy to make it fit by routing or otherwise removing some of the material from the Peavey body cavity making the body cavity wider to accomodate the Fender neck or one could by shave some material off the base of the Fender neck to fit it into the existing Peavey Body cavity or you could do some combination of both.

Hard to know for sure what would work best since I haven't done it yet myself and haven't measured a Peavey Body Cav or the base of a Fender neck to see if they are sized differently and if so by how much.

There's a 95% chance that if it's not a natural fit a mod like this can be done by somebody with a bit of skill with woodworking. About all that would be needed is a router, a couple of chisels, hammer and a dremel or roto zip or other such high speed grider/sander.

Be interesting to know if anybody on the site has tried this mod yet? How about it fellas?

[RomanS]

According to "scottwatermusic", the Peavey neck is wider, so a Fender neck would be too narrow, leaving a gap, no routing or shaving is going to help here; also you'd have to make sure that the Peavey uses a 21-fret-neck, with the 22nd fret as an overhang, and not a full-length 22-fret-neck, otherwise the scale will be off with a Fender-spec'd neck.

But anyway, as much as I like the Generation as a very good entry-level model that works right out of the box, it doesn't make much sense to get one as a platform for modding with another neck - even if it would fit (which apparently won't be the case), once you add the price for a Warmoth neck, you start hitting price regions where you can also get nice MIM Teles or Lite Ash Teles, which are the Generation's direct competition, quality- (not price- !) wise, from Fender.

[RetroDaddy]

Scottwater said he's "pretty sure" a Peavey neck is wider not certain. I haven't measured it to know for sure. So if anyone out there is thinking about putting a Fender neck on a Peavey I'd measure it up beforehand to see if it will work.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the scale will be off? Do you mean the Fender neck would simply be a different length because if it were to fit I don't see why that would be a problem???? Can you explain further???

The reason I would consider doing a mod like this is because it would be a cool project, I like the Peavey Tobacco burst finish and body better than Fender's version and I think the Peavey sounds better than the comparable priced Fender. So I'd do a project like this for fun and to end up with a custom guitar that's exactly the way I want it!!!!!

[scottwatermusic]

Just to make a few things more clear:


According to the Reactor literature I downloaded from the Peavey website, the Reactor has a "Maple fingerboard with 12" radius, " and "25.5" scale length with 22 frets."

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this means that the Peavey neck pocket would be to large to accommodate a Fender neck properly.

But I would argue that the neck that comes on the new Peavey Gen. Tele. would not need replacing.

[RetroDaddy]

Played my Gen Ex Tele this afternoon for four hours with the band after I did custom set up. OUTSTANDING guitar. The band mates loved the looks and couldn't believe it was a sub $200 guitar. Then I plugged it in and the tone blew them away! Our lead guitar player plays a Carvin with humbuckers so everybody loved the contrast of my single coil sound with his double coil sound.

There really isn't anything I feel I have to mod on this guitar. It just needed a set up to lower the action and otherwise it's great. It might be fun to put another neck on this axe but it's certainly not necessary. The Peavey neck is one of the finest Fender style necks I've played.

This guitar is the steal of the century for $165.

[frogger]

I have an early 90's version that sounds real good but lacks twang and has a wide-thin shredders neck. Very light guitar. Great for big chunky rythums

[blueshawk1]

Originally Posted by bluescube

Seems similar to the old Yamaha Pacifica tele styles, eg. the 311MS for example

Now those are the Yamaha tele-ish guitars I like.
The Gen. X ones always look stunted to me because the control plate sits so low.

[RomanS]

Originally Posted by RetroDaddy

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the scale will be off? Do you mean the Fender neck would simply be a different length because if it were to fit I don't see why that would be a problem???? Can you explain further???

Fender necks traditionally have 21 frets, and Fender-spec'd bodies have the neck pocket cut to accomodate those; there are some Fender models that do come with 22 frets, but on those, the 22nd fret isn't really on the neck - it is on a fretboard overhang, over the top of the guitar body (so the mounting length of the neck is still 21 frets).

Most Far Eastern, non-Fender-spec'd Tele- and Strat-copies come with 22 frets, and with "real" 22-fret-necks (meaning, the 22nd one does not sit on a fretboard overhang, but on the neck proper - so these necks have a larger overall length than Fender-spec 21-fret necks); to accomodate such a neck, the neck pocket needs to be cut longer, further towards the neck pickup.

Now, if you tried to mount a Fender-spec'd neck on such a body, the scale would be off: since this neck is only 21 frets long, it will sit too close to the bridge (because of the longer neck pocket) - i.e., the distance from the 12th fret to the bridge is less than that from the nut to the 12th fret (and those should be exactly the same). You won't be able to intonate such a guitar correctly!

[RetroDaddy]

Roman,

Thanks for the additional technical info on why the scale of the neck matters on that Fender/Peavey mod we've been discussing. All good stuff to know.

I'm going to check the specs on the Gen Ex tele and see if it has 22 frets. Scottwater says he checked the specs on a Reactor which is 22 frets but unless I'm mistaken the Gen Ex and reactor are not the same guitar so the Gen Ex neck could be a different scale. I'll post my findings in this thread.

[RetroDaddy]

Peavey Generation Ex neck is 25 1/2" scale and 21 vintage frets.

Doesn't mention anything about the width of the base of the neck.

[Telenator]

I had to play one today and you guys are right. It smokes the Squier Affinity on all counts.

[odiemann]

IMHO they are a notch higher than MIM Standards with no modifications.

[RetroDaddy]

To me three things stand out about the Gen Ex standard and make it a great guitar at any price:

1. Reverse wound Kieth Richards single coil neck pick up - incredibly hot with amazing single coil tone. This pick up alone is nearly worth the price of the whole guitar.

2. Tobacco burst finish - The burst finish on this guitar is as nice as any I've ever seen and it's on a high grade piece of wood with nice grain. All that wonderful color is protected by layers and layers of clear coat but somehow the guitar is still nice and light like a Tele should be. The basswood body (I think) is a perfect match for the neck pickup and resonates a very appealing tone.

3. High quality neck - the maple on maple neck with vintage tint and vintage tuners gives this guitar a perfect vintage look. It looks like an old tele except for the Peavey headstock shape. The maple neck on my guitar has lots of grain and figure. It's a much higher quality piece of maple than I generally see on MIM Fender teles or other similarly priced tele copies. The maple fretboard also has some nice figure so the neck looks great and plays great.

My bandmates couldn't believe the tone I was getting out of this thing at our last 4 hour jam. No way you can go wrong with this tele copy.

In an earlier report I mentioned I wasn't sure if the bridge pick up was going to be hot enough for me. Well I was able to adjust the pick up height and raise the bridge pickup by quite a lot so that pick up is much hotter now and when I toggle back and forth between the neck and bridge pickups the bridge pickup is as hot now as the neck pickup but with a totally different twangy telecaster bridge pickup sound.

[bluescube]

I want one! Too bad there are none locally here and I can't find hardly anyplace online that has them

[randysmojo]

I tried one out, but didn't like the feel of the neck. It felt to wide feeling, and wasn't comfortable to me at all.

[Sarge]

I'd take an old Peavey Reactor or any 80's Peavey tele over that, or a Yamaha 1511 MS... neither would need modded. The Omniac just looks like a pregnant tele reguardless of tone.

[Duffy]

Tonight I played three Peavey gen ex tele's: both bursts and the natural finish. All three sounded different at the exact same guitar and Peavey Classic thirty amp settings.

The one I picked is a sunburst, not the tobacco burst and is beautiful, feels great, plays great, and most of all, sounds unreal. It has a round, full, thick tone out of the neck and other pickup settings. The neck is especially nice and round and full and kind of bassy. I played my new Squire '07 standard telecaster walnut satin finish and it sounded very much twangyer and more high pitched although both tuned the same. I love my Squire tele and its twangy sound but I am also quite taken in by the Peavey's full, round, almost humbucker like neck pickup and the other settings are equally more mellow and full sounding.

I had to buy it. I talked them down to 149, brand new beautiful guitar with a full warranty whatever that is. What a sweet sounding guitar. The looks of the guitar are fabulous with the maple fretboard and the headstock is really nice looking, even cool looking, not gawdy. The playability is like it was meant for me. The tones are awesome in the clean channel and on the distortion. Blues are really great on this guitar, really sweet and full of tone and the guitar picks up the nuances of my blues bending styles and other techniques unique to my method of playing blues that I make up myself, sometimes just playing the blues out of my heart and soul; often never the same way twice. It reacts to my soul and fingers with precision and does it in a very complimentary way. You don't have to work hard to play this guitar and get your soul out there.

I put it on lay away and will be anxious until I get it paid off, which shouldn't take too long.

Duffy
Winfield, Pa.
"Time goes by like hurricanes and much faster things" (+/-) Allman Bro's

[pengipete]

Peavey are releasing a new chambered EX - shown in Europe as "coming soon" - making seven guitars in the Generation range.

[hugo]

I saw a Peavey just like the one above in the guitar shop the other day. It was 699.00, here in good 'ole Canada.