| Well, it was fantastically powerful but, I found it didnt have much a tube sound to it even when it was playing pretty loud. After I had used for about 6 years or so it sounded a little better but certainly not great. Also the frequency response seemed to be all over the place in the bass region even when playing it through known cabs or taking other amps and using them through the 8x10 I bought it with. It almost seemd like there was like compression going on in some places but not in others leading to a very "messy" disjointed sound. I found it very pre-programed sounding like, it had tone circuits that couldnt be bypassed. I also found the tone controls to be almost useless....I've used amps with just a bass and treble knob that were more useful. I did buy mine shortly after they came out so maybe there were revisions or something. One day just for a goof, I used my dads peavey classic 120 tube power amp and ran my bassist pre into it and it was pure heaven, totally clean and warm....straight tone without all the wobbleyness of the 400. The two sounds couldnt be more different IMO so its not like I dont like the tube sound. I also find it hard to believe that it's just the fault of the 400 having 6550 output tubes but maybe...
To back up my original statement however, I will cite that I tried to sell this on consignment at a local music store for over a year(with the 8x10) for $500; it didn't sell until the price was lowered to 240. That and the fact that peavey didn't make these for very long seems to indicate that they weren't very popular.
Like I said before, maybe I got a bad one or maybe a bad batch of tubes...but I wasn't going to pay half the price of the amp(or more) to swap them out.
In fact, the only amp that I ever thought sounded worse than that was a Basic 60 but I never held anything against it because it was so inexpensive and it did produce a decent amount of volume.
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What is the sound of one coil bucking?
Last edited by "Q" : 04-01-2010 at 02:39 PM.
Reason: addition
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