Did Hartley Peavey have a tin ear?

It’s an interesting question. Peavey came up with some rather weird amp designs over the years. Some sound terrible, some turned out to be amazing. The Classic 30 is an oddball that’s become revered. His collaboration with Eddie Van Halen obviously relied on Eddie’s ear but it turned out an amp that became one of the cornerstones of modern metal. Lots of metal guys swear by the Bandit, a janky solid state amp. Shitty Rage practice amps are awful but lots of people love them anyway. And of course there’s the Decade, which everybody always thought sounded awful until it turned out that Josh Homme had been doing amazing things with one for, humorously, decades. So, yeah, Hartley doesn’t have a great ear in the way the Leo Fender and Randall Smith did. But his weird ear gave him an edge that nobody has had.
 
Despite the annoying logo, Peavey amps earned their places in amp history. We’d be lucky to have such a tin ear.

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I had a Peavey Bandit and it was a workhorse. I still have a Peavey XR600B PA/Mixer that will probably have to be dropped from the fifth floor to kill it.
 
I remember Ed King (I think...) saying that the Mace amps that Peavey built for them were not really Mace amps. They were closer to a Marshall circuit.

I had a Peavey Deuce amp back in the early 80s and it sucked. Not great tone, and it had a bunch of cold solder joints that I was forever tracking down and fixing. Funny story about that amp: when I replaced it with a Marshall combo amp, the drummer in the band started hounding me to sell it to him. I refused because he was a friend and I thought the amp was a turd. He kept begging me telling me how much he loved it, so I sold it to him cheap (and felt bad about that). He would sell that amp a few years later for about four times what I sold it to him for.
 
It's hard to tell.

I gigged with a Classic 50 for ten years. It was rock solid and sounded great. There was a fantastic player here in the 80's in the top local funk/RnB/fusion horn band who played a double cutaway semi hollow Ibanez Artist through a Peavey Special amp. I don't think he used any pedals. He had one of the best guitar tones I have ever heard.

On the other hand, I have heard or played through many Bandits, etc. that couldn't have sounded worse.
 
I adore the Classic 30. And one of the greatest hair metal tones I ever heard came from a Bandit at a local band rehearsal. And as mentioned, lots of folks love the Rage and the Decade. :shrug:
 
I've posted about this before. Years ago, I bought a used Peavey Windsor 100-Watt head from GC online for about $275. It's fun to play.

Windsor swampy rock tones....
 
jrockbridge said:
Despite the annoying logo, Peavey amps earned their places in amp history. We’d be lucky to have such a tin ear.

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Not my pic but I have a "Delta logo" era 412MS cabinet that I adore.
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US-made Peavey stuff could be tossed off the roof of a building and not only survive but fight you to do it again. When I worked for The Music Den we ended up slowly replacing all the Yorkville stuff in the rental department with Peavey stuff as the Yorkville stuff would die (due to abuse, not being shitty). I'd have to ask, but I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of that gear is still in circulation twenty years later.
 
I worked my ass off in Dallas heat one summer just to buy a Peavey Classic. The reverb crapped out within 2 months. I took it to an "Authorized Service Center" (I didn't know any better) and they held on to the amp for 3 fucking months before they got the tank in. I thought, "So, this is the support Peavey gives you when you buy a brand new amp from them". I kept on saving money and bought a Mesa Mark 2B after that. I never looked back although I did acquire a Wolfgang many years later and thought it was a very nice guitar.
 
My first amp was a Peavey Backstage 30 that I bought from a pawn shop for $100 in 1980ish. It was SS, had a 3 band EQ and a master volume. Tone-wise, it was mediocre, but it was loud, and as a 18 yr old kid that didn't know any better, it was perfect. I sold it years later for $100. Looking online, that still seems to be the going rate for them, with really clean ones getting closer to $200...asking price anyway. :shrug:

As far as the logo goes, the pointy, 70s style logo doesn't jive very well with the Classic series tweed vibe. Making the badge brown didn't solve this. I took it off of my Classic 30. Looks better without it, IMO.

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jelloman said:
Back in the day their PA speakers were really good...we did a side by side comparison with some EV and JBL and they more than held their own...
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That reminds me, I still have two Peavey 1210HS speakers from the late '80s. They still work.
 
The only Peavey amp I've really resonated with was a Delta Blues 115 (never saw one of the 410s in the wild). It was definitely on the noisy side, but with the right setup sounded really good.
 
I had a Classic 30 that was problematic. Bad reverb tank, bad solder joints that caused the amp to crap out. All repaired under warranty and then it was time to move on.
 
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