Peavey Patriot

Tone: The tone, to me, is kinda lacking on the Patriot. It has more of a mild tone with less versatility that other Peavey basses. I would recommend this bass to players who prefer a scooped EQ, I feel like it would do this style extremely well (I prefer boosted 'attacking' high mids, I don't feel it is the best option for this style).

Build Quality: Best aspect of this bass, as per USA Peavey standards it is built like a tank (as in it has a very solid build that would be hard to damage or destroy), it is lighter than Peavey T-Series basses (probably around 9lbs), and has no neck dive.

Feel: The overall feel is in no means bad, especially for the price point. Action is pretty low and is easy to adjust with the Peavey system. It's hard to describe, but the feel just isn't on par with other Peavey basses.


Value: Those these can be hard to find, when they do pop up they are some of the best value basses. They can go anywhere from $40 to $200 in the US (mine was so cheap because someone tried to sand the back of the body....) and are on par with most higher end basses.

This bass is pretty rare so I will write one nice review to help people so they can find some usefull informations.

Body is mahogany with fine grains, it's nicely contoured, small and fairly light. You have slightly pointed horns, lower horn is scaloped enough to play easely on the last frets. Finish is oil based, something like on Warwick basses. You have 3-ply black/white/black pickguard with one volume control, tone control and output jack, there is weak spot near the jack output so you can see a lot of cracking there on these basses. Bridge is chrome vintage fender style, nothing special but no problems with it either.


Neck is 2 piece bolt on (4 screws) maple with gloss finish (I LIKE!!!) nad 21 frets, for me it's the highlight of the bass and best neck I ever played. Dimensions are something between P and J bass, fat enough to call it manly and fast enough for nice playability. Tuners are elephant ears like and I didn't had any problems with not keeping the pitch.


This model have one Super Ferrite passive single coil pickup somewhere between MM humbucker and P split coil spot, very nice position with nice blend of frequencies. Pickup is very hot with high output for passive bass, similar to G&L MFD pickups but it can be noisy because of the one single coil nature.


Sound of this bass is very special and unique in the bass world, there are no many one single coil basses with pickup in this position. Bass is very agressive but you can easy tame it and it's very responsive to tone controle movements. For me base sound is similar to Rickenbacker bridge pickup and P split coil blend. It's strong in high mids which give him that serious growl, there are some low mids which give him little bit of P bass bark but it's not so full because of single coil and position. You can hear that agressive punchyness in tone, very close to StingRay sound but it's not mid scooped. It's little shy in the lows because there is no neck pickup, but you can somehow compesate with right strings, especialy with flats to round that tone. When you open the tone pot all the way you can hear that sparkly and wild high end with lots of high mids, it's very agressive and grindy similar to Musicman. With half closed tone pot you can hear Jazz bass in it with tamed and rounded high mids, nice position to play with pick. With tone pot closed all the way down there you can hear P bass bark, very warm, round, smooth, vintage, mid oriented tone with very little highs, this is very nice position to play with pick and flatwounds. This bass is very sensitive to dynamic changes and playing positions so it's definitely not one trick pony.


At the end I must say that these era Peaveys are built like a tank and you can see that famous USA craftmanship and there is definitely difference with all the Indonesian, Chinese, Korean basses I owned, here you can see very nice details and effort they put in the assembling the bass with quality hardware. Some people say that these are better built than some Fender basses, I still can't belive that this bass was selling like an entry model for Peavey at the time, but that's Peavey curse I guess. No matter what this bass will stay with and I love it very much.