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The Early Peavey Sleaper Amps - Tons of Tone For The Dollar

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The Early Peavey Sleaper Amps - Tons of Tone For The Dollar

Howdy tone friends!  I promised another "sleeper amp" blog, but I'll do ya one better and turn y'all on to an entire line of stupidly inexpensive sleepers ... cool, right? I'm talking about the early Peavey tube amps and tube/ss hybrid amps.  Stick with me gang, these amps have been dissed for decades, so you may have decided they are crap without even HEARING one ... that would be a mistake; these amps have some serious mojo that's all their own.  Let's talk about them.

Throughout this blog, I'll be directing you to quite a few OTHER blogs, as much has already been written on Peavey amps.  The first blog I'd like to call your attention to is the official Peavey history, found HERE.

If ya read that ... I just bet there will be a few times you say "wow, really?".  I know I did!  Like the fact that Hartley Peavey and Co were already making Class-D amps in 1984 ... seriously ... why didn't I know this? Wow!  Or, how about that totally cool blond first ever Peavey amp from 1961:

                         The First Peavery Amp!

I doubt you'll find one of THOSE at a pawn shop for fifty bucks, but I'm getting ready to talk about the early Peavey amps that you just might!

The Peavey "Vintage" was a totally cool tweed-twin type amp, and the earliest all-tube versions actually sound flat-out fantastic.  Here's a good photo of one, check out the discussion on the Les Paul Forum:

Early Peavey Vintage Tube amp

Now the thousand-pound gorilla's of the Peavey amp world, the tube amps of Lynyrd Skynyrd's golden era; these amps, with their aluminum side-trim made their first appearance in 1969, and were omnipresent throughout the 70's.  And yep, Skynyrd really did play through em on tour and in the studio.  These amps also OWNED the Nashville country scene throughout the 70's and 80's, in fact they were the ONLY amp allowed on the stage of the Grand Ol Opry for over two decades.  Yep, all those fantastic Grand Ol Opry live recordings were 100% Peavey! 

Lynyrd Skynyrd Vintage Peavey amp wall backline

Let's dive in to the amps of the Peavey aluminum trim glory years.

The Mace This insane power monster sported six 6L6 tubes for what the manual states is "160 very conservatively rates watts RMS".  By the way, manuals to all the vintage Peavey models are still available on the Peavey site, that's cool!  With the standard spring reverb and tremolo of the day, this big Bertha was available as a head or a 2x12 combo, these amps certainly did not have a fantastic distortion, but if you want a clean pedal platform with headroom FOREVER, this amp will get ya there!  if you buy one of the early models with Eminence speakers, be prepared to replace them, a Mace could easily shred the Emis, later they put the newly developed Peavey "Black Widdow" speakers in them, and they generally took the onslaught okay.

Early Peavey Mace Head

The Duce.  With only four 6L6 output tubes this monster was "conservatively rated at 120 watts RMS", enough for nearly EVERY gig these days!  This amp was pretty much the same amp as the Mace ... but again, with "only" 120watts!  The Duce was available as a head, 2x12 combo, or the real winner of the bunch: the seriously sweet 4x10 combo.

Early Peavey Duce Amp

The Early Peavey Classic. With only a pair of 6L6 output tubes, this is the sweeet spot.  Again, with spring verb and tremolo, the Classic was originally available in a 2x12 or a 4x10 config, and again, the 4x10 is the clear winner in the tone department.  Of all the amps represented on this blog, the Classic is the #1 sleeper amp. 

Vintage Peavey Classic amp

And last ... a couple of honorable mentions!

The aluminum-edge Bandit.  Man oh man were these popular amps in the 1980's!  These 1x12 combo amps came about a little later, introduced in 1980, and do not have tubes in the output stage ... they are all solid-state ... but they deserve a mention because 1) they are a good little 60-wat 1x12 combo that has a good clean tone and makes a fine pedal platform and 2) There were so many made that they can be had VERY cheap; I've seen them for $35 on Craigslist.  Read about the entire Bandit line here.

                    The first vintage Peavey Bandit amp

The Peavey Backstage Plus.  Basically the same amp as the Bandit, but with only 35-watts RMS in a 1x10" combo, this amp is perfectly in-step with what folks want out of a guitar amp in the current era ... it's a small, lightweight grab-n-go combo that has a good amount of clean headroom and makes for a good pedal platform.  It makes me chuckle that when these amps were designed they were not considered loud enough to be used on stage ... but in the dressing room BACK STAGE.  These little critters are easily as loud as a Deluxe Reverb and have a very similar tone, and MORE clean headroom ... in other words, perfect for today's stages.  Backstage my eye!

            Early Vintage Peavey Backstage Plus

And last: The ENTIRE Classic series!

Peavey has had an amp model called the "Classic" non-stop for nearly 40 years, and seriously, they are ALL sleeper amps that sound good on the cheap.  My personal favorite would be the dual 6L6 powered tweed Classic 50 ... the 2x12 version is good, but the 4x10 version is just plain excellent.  I also like the early versions that look like a vintage tweed Fender, of course!

             Tweed Peavey classic 50 4x10 combo amp

Enough!  I'll stop mow.  I know ... it was a lot, but well, that's Peavey, they have made a LOT of amps, and they are so darn dependable that most of them are still around :-)

indgomoonjazz_51248
03/31/2019 9:28pm

Thanks for the illuminating article.

It is really helpful as now I can look for an amp with some idea of what to look for...

pmhoneycutt_51266
04/04/2019 3:15pm

I bought a Backstage Plus (just like the one pictured) for something like $25.00 + shipping from a second hand store on ebay. I got it to be a living room amp. It didn't last there long. Now days, it's the amp I usually use due to the smaller venues I play. I have SF Fenders, Mesa Boogies, a Traynor, a Vox and a Rivera. All wonderful tube amps. But the little Peavey delivers the goods.

One time my band played a benefit and after our set a bunch of local pickers were looking at my rig and talking about why it sounded so good. They couldn't come to grips that a lowly Peavey might be the key. Finally they saw the ZenDrive on my pedalboard and decided amongst themselves that it was the secret tone generator. Little did they know that I never used it at all during our set.

VAUGHN SKOW
04/23/2019 12:02am

I hear ya "pmhoneycutt_51266" ... I've had one since4 about 1990 ... and it's been to a bunch of gigs, especially in today's club world of bring a big amp and they send ya back home!

rwluedeman_54728
10/02/2020 11:49pm

I've got an all tube Vintage that took a year or so to find a complete chassis. It presently lives inside an Earth Sound Research 4x10 faux Bassman cabinet and is stupid loud. Pretty good reverb too. The preamp tubes (6C10) are pricey and hard to find decent ones so be nice to them.