Rawcabs!

[olddawg]

I certainly remember many times when guys removed the Peavey logos from amps to make them sound better.

I did that with my Bugera V22. I put a band bumper sticker where it was. People think it's a boutique amp. Bone stock, original speaker, original Chinese tubes. Tone is in the hands.

[Enzo]

Maybe I'd have to make them listen to the amp behind a curtain

They used to do exactly that at SEARS of all places. For a while there Sears was selling Bose and they had a little demo listening room. The guy played music through "ordinary stereo speakers", a pair of typical bookshelf speakers. Then he played through the new Bose XYZ model speakers, and next to the ordinary speakers were these large speaker grilles. And then the guy picked up the large grilles to reveal the wonderful sound we were hearing was coming from tiny little mini bookshelf speaker from Bose. No bigger than a 6-pack of beer.

[1ampman]

I used to get combo cabs cheap and use them for extension cabs. Worked great! Now they want crazy money for them. The chassis wasn't worth shit. I don't know why people think they're worth so much? Now Vox makes their cabs out of pressed cardboard. Even carpenter ants won't eat it.

[J M Fahey]

Oh, I HAVE done it ... and had it done to my stuff

Everything from having band logos glued over my own, to MXR or Gallien Krueger stickers, the kind they conveniently handle out a Music shops to put on guitar cases to handpainted "Marshall" labels on cabinets .... you name it they´ve done it.

On *important* bands (think solid packing 2 nights at a 48000 people World Cup Stadium to 7 solid nights at a smaller 30000 people one) actually using Faheys live instead of their sponsoring Ampegs, having to "casually hide" mine behind a guitar case because sponsor complained and menaced to pull out of the contract (they pay part of show publicity budget).

Some examples:

Silver Fahey tube preamp driving an AB1500 into 2 Ampeg 8x10" plus light blue one driving a QSC900 and 2 other "fridges" sharing rack space with an Ampeg. Yes, they play LOUD.

What does people say? : "La Renga uses Ampegs" .... which is what paid advertisements say by the way.
Notice mine are plugged, Ampeg is not.

That eventually led to:


Notice the "casually propped" cardboard guitar case ... only argument against "chance" is that it was put there, and was *afterwards* wrapped in the red and white stage decoration cloth strip

1000 other similar ones, like having my logos covered in black tape on TV shows "or they would *have* to charge me publicity fees" .... while keyboard players clearly showed their HUGE Yamaha or Roland white on black back panel ones.

Oh well .

[nickb]

Peavey did exactly that with one of the Transtube Bandit series. People couldn't tell the difference between it and a tube amp behind a curtain. Yet still the Transtubes are deeply unloved. The horrible name didn't help. Perception is everything.

[J M Fahey]

There´s this crazy Swedish guy, who somehow gets to play with *all* of (guitar) Man´s toys.
Top ones, from original Bassman 5F6 to early serial number Plexis to ... you name it.

Yet now and then he uploads a video such as:

[J M Fahey]

but ... but .... IS he qualified to state that?
Does he know what real Plexi sounds like?

be my guest (and browse his full channel, there´s TONS of similar ones):

[J M Fahey]

that said, he recognizes that it all started with Leo, so:

[J M Fahey]

Sorry, I digress a lot (like always ) ... we were talking Transtube Peavey Bandit?

here it is (yes, it includes a buzzy as hell pushbutton ... on purpose, it´s designed for Thrashers and such)
Still capable of killer "normal" sounds though:

[bob p]

There´s this crazy Swedish guy, who somehow gets to play with *all* of (guitar) Man´s toys.
Top ones, from original Bassman 5F6 to early serial number Plexis to ... you name it.

Yet now and then he uploads a video such as:

I'm familiar with his videos. He definitely gets access to a lot of cool amps. I wonder who owns them.


I think there are two take-home messages in the Electar 10 video:

1. A large part of what we think of as the classic "plexi" sound comes from the tone coloration of Celestion speakers; it's not all in the tube head.

2. Everything sounds the same when you record it on an iphone.

[Steve A.]

I certainly remember many times when guys removed the Peavey logos from amps to make them sound better.

I did that with my Bugera V22. I put a band bumper sticker where it was. People think it's a boutique amp. Bone stock, original speaker, original Chinese tubes. Tone is in the hands.

I agree with your closing statement about tone and hands but must say that the Bugera V22 is amazing — IMO the best mass-produced amp I've ever seen with a killer overdrive channel*** and it is priced very reasonably.
I have a friend who had gigged extensively for many decades playing blues, jazz and classic rock using a silverface Super or a DRRI but now leaves them at home and just brings his V22 Infinium.

Steve A.

*** There are a lot of mass-produced amps with great clean channels that take pedals well but do not have what I consider to be a world class overdrive channel. But that is just me — the sounds I seek run towards blues and 60's & 70's rock... none of that heavy metal and overly-compressed hard rock for me!

[bob p]

Continuting the hijacking...

Steve, do you really think the OD channel on the V22-Infinium is THAT great?!?

I own two of them. (Long story about how I ended up with a pair.) They disappoint me.

While I think the normal channel gets a thumbs-up for great chimey cleans, I can't say that I've ever found much pleasure in the gain channel. Like you, I'm a classic rock, blues, jazz sort of guy. I like Fenders, I don't use OD pedals and it's a rare occurrence that I pull out my Mesas for high gain. I like to get my tone from the amp, preferably from barking power tubes rather than preamp / PI overdrive. I'm thinking that I must be doing something totally wrong when it comes to getting good results from the V22 gain channel.

I have to amend that by saying that I've always thought that the OD on the V22 was full of a lot of HF hash. Looking at the schematic they do a lot of bandwidth filtering in the early common stage to pass the midband and to throw away most of the LF fundamental content. While this is great for preventing fender fart type of sound when driving hard, when you use a preamp to clip and re-clip a midband-only signal what the V22 is left with is a bunch of HF and Mid "hash" that sounds like somebody pushed up one band in the middle of a graphic EQ and pulled the rest down. My other problem is that there seems to be way too much gain coming out of my amp. With the "gain" control (second knob on the amp) at 1 there is no sound, at 2 it's already clipping hard enough to be OK on single notes but not on chords, and over 3-4 it's just a distorted mess. Way too hard to control.

Maybe I'm just not loving this amp because I bought a new guitar and a new amp at the same time and they're not playing well together. In the other threads I'm trying to fix an overtly bright problem with a G&L Tribute Legacy whose Alnico V pickups and PTB (passive treble and bass) circuit is just way way way too icepicky bright. I'm having the same problem with the gain channel being too bright and hashy with my Tele. Maybe it's that my guitars' output is too high and I just need to dial back farther on the volume. Maybe the V22 is just too bright with single coils and I need to pull out the old Les Pauls and see if they like the amp better.

Either way, it seems that the amount of signal coming from the guitar to get good tone in the Clean channel isn't well matched to the amount of signal that produces a good sound in the Gain channel. IME the Clean channel is tolerant of pretty strong signals while sounding great, but the Gain channel sounds like a mess unless the guitar volume gets scaled way back.

This sensitivity difference isn't a problem in the home where I can stop to tweak, but it makes it hard to switch back and forth between two channels in the same amp in a live setting because the volumes end up being way different if I try to dial back the input to the gain channel to clean it up. The only way for me to make things work in a volume matched sort of way is to set up one amp for clean and the other for grit. I can't get both at similar volumes out of one amp.

What kind of guitars are you guys using with the V22 who love it so much? What kind of signals are you feeding it? Considering how much everyone else loves this amp, I feel like I definitely must be doing something wrong.

[Steve A.]

Peavey did exactly that with one of the Transtube Bandit series. People couldn't tell the difference between it and a tube amp behind a curtain. Yet still the Transtubes are deeply unloved. The horrible name didn't help. Perception is everything.

By "people" do you mean an audience or the guitarist plugged into the amp? Playing an amp is quite different from just listening to someone else playing it...

I used a 20 watt Peavey Studio Pro amp with the transtube technology in the late 70's/early 80's when I was very active in the music ministry (before getting kicked out for blatant sinfulness and rank heresy. My bad!) My other amp at that time was a 1965 Pro Reverb, very loud and heavy, and not that dependable.

Here is a post from AMPAGE that I made in 1998 announcing my plans to turn my Studio Pro amp into a stealth tweed deluxe or Matchless Spitfire — something I never did get around to doing although I still have the chassis floating around somewhere. (I put a Mojo speaker in the cabinet and filled the blank space with a Styrofoam block that came as packing material for something...)

Benjamin:

*** Peavy did make some nice tube amps in the 80's- certainly not as good as the Marshalls or Mesas, but better than many of the Fender tube amps of the time. So what the heck happened to them??? (I *REALLY* doubt that EC used a StudioPro110, although I plan to rebuild my old 20watt SP into a "stealth" machine- either a tweed deluxe or a spitfire clone. Perhaps EC used a SP110 that was rebuilt into a real tube amp...)

Steve Ahola

AMPAGE Archive: Re: Peavey...............???????

[olddawg]

Continuting the hijacking...

Steve, do you really think the OD channel on the V22-Infinium is THAT great?!?

I own two of them. (Long story about how I ended up with a pair.) They disappoint me.

While I think the normal channel gets a thumbs-up for great chimey cleans, I can't say that I've ever found much pleasure in the gain channel. Like you, I'm a classic rock, blues, jazz sort of guy. I like Fenders, I don't use OD pedals and it's a rare occurrence that I pull out my Mesas for high gain. I like to get my tone from the amp, preferably from barking power tubes rather than preamp / PI overdrive. I'm thinking that I must be doing something totally wrong when it comes to getting good results from the V22 gain channel.

I have to amend that by saying that I've always thought that the OD on the V22 was full of a lot of HF hash. Looking at the schematic they do a lot of bandwidth filtering in the early common stage to pass the midband and to throw away most of the LF fundamental content. While this is great for preventing fender fart type of sound when driving hard, when you use a preamp to clip and re-clip a midband-only signal what the V22 is left with is a bunch of HF and Mid "hash" that sounds like somebody pushed up one band in the middle of a graphic EQ and pulled the rest down. My other problem is that there seems to be way too much gain coming out of my amp. With the "gain" control (second knob on the amp) at 1 there is no sound, at 2 it's already clipping hard enough to be OK on single notes but not on chords, and over 3-4 it's just a distorted mess. Way too hard to control.

Maybe I'm just not loving this amp because I bought a new guitar and a new amp at the same time and they're not playing well together. In the other threads I'm trying to fix an overtly bright problem with a G&L Tribute Legacy whose Alnico V pickups and PTB (passive treble and bass) circuit is just way way way too icepicky bright. I'm having the same problem with the gain channel being too bright and hashy with my Tele. Maybe it's that my guitars' output is too high and I just need to dial back farther on the volume. Maybe the V22 is just too bright with single coils and I need to pull out the old Les Pauls and see if they like the amp better.

Either way, it seems that the amount of signal coming from the guitar to get good tone in the Clean channel isn't well matched to the amount of signal that produces a good sound in the Gain channel. IME the Clean channel is tolerant of pretty strong signals while sounding great, but the Gain channel sounds like a mess unless the guitar volume gets scaled way back.

This sensitivity difference isn't a problem in the home where I can stop to tweak, but it makes it hard to switch back and forth between two channels in the same amp in a live setting because the volumes end up being way different if I try to dial back the input to the gain channel to clean it up. The only way for me to make things work in a volume matched sort of way is to set up one amp for clean and the other for grit. I can't get both at similar volumes out of one amp.

What kind of guitars are you guys using with the V22 who love it so much? What kind of signals are you feeding it? Considering how much everyone else loves this amp, I feel like I definitely must be doing something wrong.

The one that I have been using almost every Saturday night for 3 years is the older V22 version, not the Infinitum. I love the OD channel. Originally I paid $249 no tax, free shipping for it from Sweetwater. The only problem I have had is most of the screws came loose over time. Especially the speaker mounts. I use it with a 50 watt Weber Minimass Atenuator that has the foot switch option for a lead volume boost.

[nickb]

By "people" do you mean an audience or the guitarist plugged into the amp?

There used to be, and there probably still is, something about it on the PV site so I don't recall the test conditions. But no matter, you can be the judge in a blind test:

Test
https://youtu.be/EX9su1L-JAE

Results
https://youtu.be/JnEP4-iIr68