Solid State Peavey Love

Creed_Clicks

I picked up a red stripe bandit 112 the other day. Not as heavy as I thought it would be. Pretty loud. Not sure I will keep it or not! Might be good to have around to blast through once in a while.

YellowLedBetterMan

I loved my Silver Stripe Bandit but God was it a loud amp. It's like it could go from inaudibly quiet to rattling the foundations between 1.5 and 1.500001 on the volume dial.

That being said, if I ever needed a cheap, bulletproof, decent sounding loud box for a gig, I'd be all over another one.

punchesjudy

Red stripe bandits are my favourite amps. They sound great, take pedals well and are louddddd. I have two currently and if they both died I'd get two more. Love em! 

DrCornelius

I’ve got a transtube revolution and behind a JC120 it’s my favourite SS amp. The extra gain channel is a bit OTT but the clean and 1st drive channel are great

ICBM

DrCornelius said:

I’ve got a transtube revolution and behind a JC120 it’s my favourite SS amp. The extra gain channel is a bit OTT but the clean and 1st drive channel are great

If that’s a red stripe one and you ever change your mind and want to sell it, let me know .

DrCornelius

ICBM said:

DrCornelius said:

I’ve got a transtube revolution and behind a JC120 it’s my favourite SS amp. The extra gain channel is a bit OTT but the clean and 1st drive channel are great

If that’s a red stripe one and you ever change your mind and want to sell it, let me know .

You know I’ll change my mind and will want to sell it - I am that sort of idiot 

Unfortunately it’s a silver stripe model though - Sheffield speaker job

ICBM

DrCornelius said:

Unfortunately it’s a silver stripe model though - Sheffield speaker job

Ah, that’s ok then... you should keep it .

I honestly prefer the red stripe ones - it may sound daft, but I think they’re much better looking, as well as (I think) very marginally better sounding. They aren’t quite as solidly built, but still easily good enough. I love the angled control panel - Leo Fender got this right way back in 1960 - and the chunky corner protectors that remind me of an Art Deco cinema .

But you won’t get a better-sounding, more capable amp than either of them for the ridiculously low prices they go for - the only reason I don’t have one is because they’re very rare and I haven’t come across one yet. The Studio Pro does me fine for now.

DrCornelius

Cheers @ICBM , interesting info.   What is the 75 Solo like - any experience ? I only ask as there is one for sale near me and wondered if it would be different enough from mine to be worth risking the 99 quid on :-)

ICBM

DrCornelius said:

What is the 75 Solo like - any experience ? I only ask as there is one for sale near me and wondered if it would be different enough from mine to be worth risking the 99 quid on :-)

Different enough, certainly - a more primitive sound, more overtly solid-state and with only one set of EQ. Good as a pedal platform but probably hard to use as a switchable amp, from memory - I had the equivalent Studio Pro 110 at one time, and never used the channel switch. Even more bombproof build quality - these older ones have incredibly tough, rough tolex which will take the skin off your knuckles in you're not careful! - and really well-spec'ed inside, I don't think I've ever seen a faulty one other than for corroded FX loop jack contacts which can make the sound cut out or vary intermittently in volume. If they've been really thrashed it is possible to blow the speaker as well.

DrCornelius

Ah thanks mate; don’t take this the wrong way but your description has put me off . A bit like a JC120 I think the Revolution I have has a warmth that I like . It’s not tube like or solid state - it’s almost something in between 

ICBM

DrCornelius said:

Ah thanks mate; don’t take this the wrong way but your description has put me off . A bit like a JC120 I think the Revolution I have has a warmth that I like . It’s not tube like or solid state - it’s almost something in between 

No offence taken at all - I don't like them as much either. They're good-sounding and loud, but have a noticeable solid-state 'hardness' to them which the Transtubes don't. I liked the Studio Pro *because* of that when I was playing in a punk band - I used it in preference to a Mesa Subway I had - but it's not a valve-like sound.

Creed_Clicks

Any worth in upgrading anything in the Chinese Bandit? There's some no name speaker in it, and I have an Eminence legend 1218 lying around. Perhaps some modern kind of lightweight speaker to reduce the weight a bit?
I didn't realise until moving the amp, that there is an actual spring tank in it? I thought it was digital...!

ICBM

Creed_Clicks said:

Any worth in upgrading anything in the Chinese Bandit? There's some no name speaker in it, and I have an Eminence legend 1218 lying around. Perhaps some modern kind of lightweight speaker to reduce the weight a bit?

Worth a try if you've got it. Changing the speaker is very easy, you shouldn't have to remove either the amp chassis or the reverb tank if you're careful... don't put one of the bolts through the new speaker .

I put a Celestion Line 6 custom speaker in my Studio Pro, which made it much better than I remember any other one sounding. The original speaker was blown when I got it, so couldn't compare directly. I also tried an Eminence Li'l Texas neodymium in it, which I think sounded even better, but it had an unfortunate encounter with a baritone guitar and developed a nasty whine on some notes - which is usually caused by a loose voice coil winding, but shouldn't have happened at the low volume I was playing at even though there were some bass frequencies there. I've played proper bass through the Celestion loads of times without problems.

Jetfire

My first amp was a Peavey Special 130, it refused to go above 3 on the distortion channel (whatever they labelled it as) and it was SUPER heavy. Id love to have another go on one

Anacharsis

I like many solid state amps - the Peaveys, Roland JCs, current edition Orange Crush, and Blues Cubes. Some nice sounds to be had from each.

Jetsam1

I got a Peavey Red Strip Studio Pro with an Eminence speaker addition and it is very good, at volume levels that are realistic for home it is a good solid performer and the cleans are the best in my mind. Takes pedals well and has a real reverb tank.

One day if I organise myself I would like to try the L6 Pod into it just to see how it handles it and it has been years and years since that went into an amp....

They weren't that cheap back in the 90s either I don't think? I had a Silver Stripe Envoy but no memory of what I paid for it. Build quality seems solid and all analogue as I understand it.

Still, hankering after a proper Marshall though. Don't really need one!

Moe_Zambeek

BillDL said:

This will no doubt only mean something to a Scots person who was familiar with guitar shops in Glasgow in the 80s and early 90s.  A work colleague and I were setting up a band and I needed something for large bars and small clubs. I bought the Triumph combo from Sound Control, Jamaica Street, Glasgow (now Kenny's Music).  My car was off the road at the time so I had to carry that amp back up Jamaica Street and down to the Low level of Central Station, which is about 400 metres.  On arrival at my home station I had to carry it up a steady incline of about a quarter of a mile to my house.  I'm sure the amp was well over 75 lbs and I have no idea how many times I had to put it down and sit on it resting for 5 minutes, then carry it for a while with the other arm so that they would be symmetrical when stretched well below my knees.  I was clearly young and stupid and didn't think to take a dolly of some kind to get it home.

I lived in the weej back in the 90s, looking back it was amp heaven, sort of. Bought an original Orange 4x12 with 4 G12H30s (I think) out of sound control for a hundred quid or so. Didn’t even have a car but we used to gig heads and 4x12s all the time  we’d just ambush black cab drivers, some would let you in others would tell you to feck off.

My mate bought a Roost head from Sound Control that had a mix of 6l6 and el34s fitted. I can’t believe it even worked! I bought a 100 watt JMP head off them and when I got it home found out it was actually a 50 watter! I carried that home on the tube in a kit bag...

After the Roost my mate bought some kind of Peavey hybrid 2x12 combo that had onboard effects - phaser for one, I think, that weighed a ton too. I don’t think the effects ever worked. We probably just looked in the back and saw valves and thought ‘great, valve amp, cheap, we’ll have it’.

Interestingly Johan Segeborn just did a vid with an old Peavey bass head, the same model the bass player in my band played back then, and it sounds pretty good for guitar.

ICBM

Moe_Zambeek said:

Interestingly Johan Segeborn just did a vid with an old Peavey bass head, the same model the bass player in my band played back then, and it sounds pretty good for guitar.

I probably shouldn’t have sold my Peavey Century - it was excellent for both. I can easily buy another at some point though.

Even at only 100W it was enough for bass - I’m not convinced my 500W Class D/SMPS amp is actually louder, although the whole 1x10” combo weighs less than the Peavey head!

I had a 600W head and a 4x10” made from reinforced concrete at one point too…

MattP

I was at the recent Absolva / Blaze Bayley gig at the Underworld and the two guitarists (appeared to be) using Bandits, the modern ones with the oval bit on the grille containing the Peavey logo. 

I say 'appeared to be' using Bandits only because they sounded absolutely amazing. Fantastic hard rock tone that had me looking for some disguised Marshall or Mesa off stage... I've never owned a Bandit but if they sound that good then they're really all you need. 

Anyone else at that gig who might've noticed the same?

ICBM

Not at that gig, but in my opinion the Transtube series do really sound that good - they’ve nailed the valve-like sound and dynamics. It’s a shame that it’s taken this long, and that they’re relatively expensive new compared to the cheaper digital amps which have now largely overshadowed them - I think the Bandit and Envoy are the only two models they even still make. For me the actual tone is still better than digital modelling, even though they’re not as flexible - but that doesn’t interest me, I only want one good clean sound and one good crunch sound, everything else I use pedals for. If I didn’t already own a valve amp I probably wouldn’t buy one now - although I’d still like another bigger Transtube.