A good deal/worth buying?

klejst · #1 04-29-2011, 07:46 AM

There is a guy selling a bass rig on my local Craigslist. He is selling a Carvin 2x15 cabinet from the 80's and is powered by a Peavey 210 watt amp from the 70's. It is used and obviously older and has a few rips and tears in the tolex etc. however he states it all works great. Of course I would check it out in person and test play it, however is $300 a reasonable price for this rig? Is it worth checking out or would be a waste of time? Anyone have any experience with this cab or head? My main rig is a Peavey Tour 450 and a Mesa PowerHouse 6x10 cabinet, I am looking at this as a spare rig or a rig I can keep at my house and my main rig to stay at my bands practice space. I know this rig would probably not even compare to my main Mesa rig, however just looking for opinions.

bassteban · #2 04-29-2011, 08:04 AM

W/no 1st hand experience w/either the head or cab, I'd guess $300 is perhaps fair- for me a 2x15 is way too bulky(not a big deal if you will leave it parked most of the time)& 210 watts isn't a lot of power, depending on the cab's requirements, as well as yours. I'd ck it out- if it does what you want, offer $250, let him haggle you back up to $275 & post pics.

klejst · #3 04-29-2011, 08:16 AM

He mentions the cab is a 4ohm with a 450w capacity and the Peavey is a 400 series. Below is some of the pic's he posted.

Calaverasgrande · #4 04-29-2011, 08:43 AM

That kind of rig might be a total dog or a real treat depending on a few things.
What drivers are in the cabinet? Some of the 80's Carvins I played through were very low output. You could pour on 450 watts and it was hardly as loud as Peavey at half that wattage.
Also, some of those older Peavey heads have amazing distortion circuits built in to them. The MK IV had a nice EQ and various iterations had some other neat features.
Compared to your current rig this will probably leave a lot to be desired.

Joe Nerve · #5 04-29-2011, 08:57 AM

Don't know anything about the cabs, but I know some Peaveys, as they get older, develop issues that 2 tech guys in my neighborhood couldn't figure out (or fix). Volume kinda crackles and cuts in and out. Sounds like a what could be just be a need for a new volume pot, but that wasn't the deal. I'd just play it for about 5-10 minutes and mess with the knobs. If the problem is there it will be apparent. Other than that I love peavey stuff. I beat the living crap out of a combo for almost 3 decades with no problems till the above started happening. I've encountered the same issue on other peaveys.

JTE · #6 04-29-2011, 10:32 AM

OK, the link to pictures isn't working so I can't tell anything. The Peavey could be several different models, and they'd all have "400" written on the back in big numerals. So, find out if it's the Mk III or Mk IV for starters. They used the same power amp (hence the "400" on the back, and were rated at 210 WRMS @ 4 ohms (and 300 WRMS @ 2). The Mk. IV had two channels. One had a passive tone bank, the other an active one with semi-parametric EQ. Both had a six-band graphic EQ too. I think they both had a crossover with selectable frequency and had the option to combine channels.

I used a Mk. IV for a LONG time and it sounded good with various cabinets (Music Man 212RH, Fender Bassman (small 212), Fender Showman (215 w/JBL), Yamaha S115, and for the longest time I paired it with either one or two of the original Guild/Hartke 410s). Utterly reliable and even after I moved to an Eden WT-400 after about 12 years, I kept it as a stand-by which we used as a power amp for monitors on occasion as well as "leave it at rehearsal basement" head.

I don't know anything about the Carvin cabinet, especially the drivers.

John

klejst · #7 04-29-2011, 10:51 AM

Here is a pic of the rig, kinda sucks because he took them on cell phone camera. I was cleaning out my ImageShack pictures and I might of deleted the last ones by mistake.

Calaverasgrande · #8 04-29-2011, 11:25 AM

I personally like those heads a lot. If its the one with the distortion/harmonics circuit, thats my favorite solid state head. As the other poster said, those older Peaveys are battlehships until they get a leak in the transmission that you will never be able to fix, no matter how many bottles of stopleak you buy at kragen.
I dont know about that cab.