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Who here appreciates old peavey? I enjoy finding it cheap on craigslist or in pawn shops. Sometimes flea markets will have old peavey for dirt cheap. Vintage peavey has gone up a bit on reverb but that’s to be expected. You gotta look hard for this stuff now but it’s out there. Here’s normal used peavey scenario..

Kid- ‘dad i wanna play guitar’

Dad- ‘great, i have an old amp in the basement for you to learn on. I got this in 78’. I was in a Creedence Clearwater revival at one point in my life son’

Kid- ‘ oh wow, “cool dad”, I’m more nu’ metal and need something w/ more gain and bluetooth capabilities to upgrade different amp models’

Dad lists old peavey on craigslist for $100 but will take $80 because both son and wifey want it out of the house. There was mold on it..

Full sounding, bright, clean and super loud makes vintage peavey a winner for me. Also love musicman too

What are the models to look out for?

Yup, starting out in the 80s meant Peavey amps all the way. Can't remember the first bass combo I had from them, but the second was the Combo 300 bass amp. I sought it out because I believed it to be the loudest combo then available. It was super heavy and I don't think the single 15 speaker did it any favors.

Moved on to a disastrous Peavey, the infamous DataBass. Again, my only goal was volume because the guitar player I was with was insanely loud. Peavey billed the DataBass as a "digital" amp and I still don't know what that means. I believe it was one of the first widely available class D amps, so it was small and relatively light and did 400 watts or something. It was loud, but loud enough to regularly blow speakers. It was under warranty so Peavey kept paying to put new ones in up to a point, and then the repair shop said I was the problem. That piece of garbage died in a gig and I think I just threw it away.

Next stop was the Peavey Alpha Bass tube head pared to a 15 inch cab. It wasn't that loud, but I was in a bass, drums and violin band then, so face-ripping volume was less important. I can't recall what I did with that amp but it was my last Peavey, as I moved on to Hartke heads after that, pared with this crazy Sunn 610 cab that was f'ing amazing. Sold all of that when I moved to NYC and had no place to put it. When I play bass now it's through a fairly mediocre Ampeg combo, but I don't play live anymore, so I've never taken it out of the house. If I ever get a new bass amp it would be a Fender Rumble.

After that, I did more guitar playing and ran into Peavey Classic combos in rental spaces. Those were very good amps and compared very favorably with Fender combos like Hot Rod Deluxes. I might even take the Peavey over the Fender because it had more features.

Does Peavey make stuff in the U.S. anymore, or did they go entire offshore? It's only real virtue was affordable, workmanlike gear made in the U.S.A.

How old? The Mace/Deuce/Rockmaster amps have crept back up in price, but I got a KB300 for $50, and after spraying the pots with cleaner and lube, I can play keyboards louder than I will ever need to.

I even replaced the speaker with an Eminence Delta 15A, but the Peavey original was in such good shape it's now in a 15" Univox combo. And the Peavey speaker made that amp a ton louder than the alnico Utah it replaced.

My bandmate has a teal-stripe Bandit, he shredded the speaker by playing bass through it. We replaced the speaker and it's still kicking ass. Peaveys won't ever win any "tone shootouts" but will probably be the "dBl per dollar" leader on Craigslist for years to come.

The Mark IV bass amp is so solid and great. We've been using one (over "nicer") amps for a decade+ now.

Played with two guitar players (in a row) who used the old Classic Chorus combos and swore by them. I'm not sure I'd rush out and buy one myself, but they seemed to fill the Roland JC120 vibe but with more sounds. Also very solid amps.

People also swear by the VTM/butcher heads ("Mississippi Marshalls" -- which would make the Classic Chorus the "redneck Roland"?)

I have a few Peavey's. They are pretty awesome. Classic 30 is sweet. The Renown. Bandit. A Mark III for my bass. They are built like tanks.

I still have nightmares about the number of band situations where I was confronted with a grungy boxy-shaped solid-state Peavey. Those blue-green stripes would instantly make my stomach turn, and still do.



However, I have learned over time about just how many incredible amps and guitars they produced. Someday I dream of finding an unusually light T-60, and a bunch of their tube amps are truly excellent-sounding. But for sure, they put a large amount of rather crap-sounding stuff out there into the world for a while...

It just came to me the last piece of Peavey kit I still have is a digital reverb pedal they put out right around 1990s. White with pink letters I think. I should dig it out and see if it still works.

My main amp right now is a Heritage. I've gone off about it in numerous threads before but its honestly great.

Looking for a tech opinion. Heard old peavey amps are a pain to fix. Do you confirm?
(Known tech from a major amps brand said that).

I've not had mine fixed yet but its not had any problems. Same valves for 30 years still seems to be going well.
Only had it for 6 months though.

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Here is some Peavey background. The Bandit is the classic "Loud, Durable, Inexpensive, and Takes Pedals Well" amp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKWhhRznr54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NNZGjgJL2Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX9su1L-JAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS17p9XOCMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atS0nInv2FY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-5cuUMPWq0

Stay on the Solid State side of amps and you'll have fewer problems. Tube amps need a lot of maintenance, from the fragile tubes, to the 500 volts running around inside them for the tubes that wear out capacitors and power resistors -- and big transformers make for heavy amps. Most players are running an all-solid state pedal board to get their tones and thus only really need a clean amp for loudness.

There are some Crate amps that fall into the position Peavey was in before the Internet uncovered them, selling pretty low used. Hated in their day for the low price ('nothing low price can be any good') and dirt channels that may not have been perceived as good as other options (tubes) but again, because of pedal proliferation, the need for dirt out of the amp is not there like it was since it's all about the pedals now.

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I always thought it was cool that sonic youth just used all these old Peavy amps. Saw gang of four a few years back (RIP Andy) and he was using all Peavy stuff too. I always was like this cork sniffer about it and thought it sucked. I think I was more into a punk scene and it associated it with types of music that I didn't enjoy. I'm sure it's better than I remember.

My first decent bass amp was a TKO. Not really loud enough, but it could hang with guitar, drums and a singer okay. I could get some really good sounds out of it, tho, pretty versatile. I finally blew it right after I moved to Los Angeles, and got an SWR stack, when they first came out. I had always liked the Acoustic bass amps that he used to work for, so I tried it & liked it. Still have it.

I have an old Peavey pa and 2 tower speakers, the pa works but needs some work - it clips out badly, but I think the speakers are good. It’s like 40 years old, and was probably used hundreds or thousands of times over the decades, so not too surprising it has some issues. I’m going to sell it, probably for whatever the speakers may regularly sell for, someone pretty handy may want to replace parts to make it fully functional again.

My friends all had Peavey guitar amps in the ‘80s, mostly Bandits, and they did the job. I’ve heard the old Classic 30 tube amps sound great.

Lou Reed and Robert quine used Bandits all through the 80s and beyond. They sound pretty great on The Blue Mask and Live In Italy.

That's high praise.