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I have a Peavey Delta Blues 1-15. Mine has a Weber Blue Dog Ceramic 15" speaker. The 15" speaker really moves a lot of air, and the 4-El84's will provide sufficient clean headroom for any small/medium sized club. It has send/return jacks as well. It is basically the same amp as a Classic 30, but with a 15" speaker (or 2-10" speakers if you wish). It's a pretty decent budget jazz tube amp, made in the good old USA!
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05-25-2016 12:24 AM
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Solid state 210watts, from about 1985.
https://assets.peavey.com/literature...s/80300216.pdf
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Basically my take on the Peavey amplifiers of this era is they loud and good sounding, but technology has gotten better, and we can get loud and good in a much smaller, useful package.
So basically, if you have one--enjoy it, take decent care of it, it'll probably outlive you. But I wouldn't be out seeking one.
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Alhough this doesn't apply directly to the amp in question, I bought a Peavey Artist in '79. It was an all tube amp and was the first I had seen with the colored knobs. I was very proud of it, being only 21 at the time, since it was Peavey's version of the Mesa Boogie that had been popularized by Larry Carlton and Santana (or so I was told by the salesman that sold it to me). Shortly after that I accepted a road gig---6 nights a week in hotel lounges. For two years that amp travelled around the country with me, proving to be absolutely indestructible with all the banging around, beer spilled on it, etc. Never even had to have it serviced---not even once. I highly recommend Peavey amps, from that period especially.
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Originally Posted by jbucklin
That fits my understanding of Peavey's gear, especially their early stuff ...
It may not be the best sounding gear out there, but they were built to last and can take a beating
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The trick with the 70s/80s Peavey gear is to stay away from the "Lead Gain" channel. (Similarly, stay away from the lead channel on the Delta Blues Amp, which runs the signal through a tube screamer-like clipping diode.) It is noisy and, to my ear, basically a crappy sounding replica of an amp circuit that is better done with tubes. The humble "Normal Gain" channel, however, is capable of good sounds. It isn't massively overdriven. (Remember, at that time nearly every amp sold was trying to mimic Mesa Engineering and offering cascading gain channels--including Marshall and Fender.) With most amps of that vintage, finding a clean sound is tough because the amps weren't designed to operate that way. The Jazz, Special, and Nashville amps from Peavey, however, had normal gain channels that were comparatively low-gain affairs. Combined with decent tone stacks and good speakers (BW), the amps got good tone for steel guitar, country guitar, and--if you thought about it--jazz guitar.
Some folks think that older, class-AB transistor amps are junk. Today, it's class-D. Hmm? Class-D is a great way to produce light-weight amps that produce lots of power--think Acoustic Image. Do class-D amps sound inherently better than class-AB amps? Nope. Hardly anyone uses such amps in critical listening applications--the THD, and compression tend to militate against that. For musical instrument amps and PA applications, however, class-D has found widespread acceptance.
I like them all. The AI amps and Henriksen sound great, to me. Still, I would not consider any of the older tube or transistor amps to be obsolete. They sounded and still sound quite compelling.
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Originally Posted by Greentone
Reminds me of "the knob we shall not mention" on some Polytones
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...the red knob...
Yeah. The Peavey multi-stage preamps--on the amps I owned--were marginally better than the distortion knobs on my Polytones, or the distortion knob on the Roland JC120, but they still insulted my ears compared to good old tube distortion on Fender, Vox, and Marshall amps. A small Champ cranked still sounds darned good for that sort of thing. If you aren't in the same room, a 60s Marshall half-stack sounds incredible.
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I am just looking for clean simplicity. The only overdrive I use is a BB preamp, set to a light breakup. I just need lots of headroom, good EQ (I also have a Giggity, which can help), and a full, warm tone. I also don't need much volume. I'm a home player, and I'd like to live on with my hearing intact. I've had three different modeling amps (Line 6, Fender, and Vox), and never 'loved' a sound on any of them. Just looking for a great clean, worthy of recording. Peavey is definitely an option. Polytone, DV mark, Gallien Krueger, Quilter, old Gibson G-30s, maybe a ZT Club, or something I haven't heard of yet, are also options. I'm looking at everybody. Everybody solid-state, that is, and under $500 (alas, poverty). I'm not a fan of tubes. Nice sounds, but to generally run them like they are designed, you need quite a bit of volume. No thanks. I want it to sound good, and be consistent, at high or low volume. I'm just trying to get some info on this amp because I've never heard anyone talk about it. Right now, Polytone still looks like the best option. I just wish all of the used ones didn't look like they've been run through a wood chipper.
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Keep an eye open...I see polytones often for around 300-350.
And don't worry about how they look--basically with Polytones, there were those that never worked and those that'll work forever. Sans reverb, that is.
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Oh yeah, I failed to mention that I could never get my old Peavey Artist to sound like a Boogie. And the red knob on Polytones? Ooh. That's why I have an early 80's MB III---no red knob---just volume, treble, and bass. No reverb either.
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The MBIII is a heck of an amp. I've had one forever. For that matter, the MBI is also a heck of an amp, and just about indestructible. With these amps you just add a reverb pedal and you are set.
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I bought a used Henricksen Jazzamp with plans to sell the MBIII, but just can't bring myself to do it. I respect it too much.
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I've been fooling around with a new Randall RG80 it's solid state cleans are very clean tremendous headroom reverb is horrid the drive side is 80's cheese but the clean side is real nice. It's heavy but inexpensive around 300, I keep it in the car as my backup. It's a good amp I recommend it. I also have ZT lunchbox it's loud enough clean enough and very portable. I recommend that too. I had a nice blue vinyl Polytone that was awesome but got destroyed by Katrina. I'd recommend those too but like Mr Beaumont said you either get one that will work forever or one that never works. If your bottom line is price the Randall is tough to beat
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Blues clip from Saturday
Yesterday, 11:54 PM in From The Bandstand