Best old Peavey grind sound.

[Muziekschuur]

In the Peavey bass amps of yesteryear. There was allways a certain grind to be found. Wich worked well on many projects. What Peavey amp has the best grind. And what speaker cabs do you use with that?

 

[Roland GR 88]

It's my experience that Peavey heads are clean. Solid state clean and clear. The grind you might remember would likely have come from an overworked cabinet as their heads often had more power than a Scorpion or Black widow speaker handle cleanly.
Older Mark III's and IV's have lots of power and the parametric EQ's & channel blending give plenty of options for getting a decent tone.

 

[Muziekschuur]

I have a Peavey VI head. And it does have a certain 'sound'. At stage volumes you can overload the preamp signal. There is a certain grind to it. I have many amps and many large stage cabs.

 

[KeithAlanK]

Peavey used pre-gains and master volumes/post-gains for many years before anyone else, so you could easily crank in some overdrive. And while the tube amps are sexy and sweet the transistor amps can get harsh and icky if you go too far.

The tiny class-D MiniMax and MiniMega bass heads they sell now have the Transtube distortion of their solid state guitar amps, and it's pretty good.
I leave it engaged all the time and nobody says it's distorted, just that my sound has a great growl.

 

[Muziekschuur]

Most Peavey heads had some type of overdrive or fuzz capability. And it's different per head. This thread was started to compare the sounds of those heads. Many of those heads are still in use today. And are part of many bands sound.

 

[Muziekschuur]

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Did this amp overdrive? Or clip ?

 

[Muziekschuur]

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[Muziekschuur]

 

[Muziekschuur]

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[Muziekschuur]

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[Muziekschuur]

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[Muziekschuur]

From this overview of heads you can see that overdrive and 'drive' was a major part of the choices a Peavey head has to offer. I wonder what your experience has been.

 

[StringslamDan]

The old Peavey Standard or Bass series has built in overdrive, the alphabass will do a nice tube overdrive, and the T-Max will do a more subtle preamp tube drive. They all sound great through the old tvx & bx bw cabs!

 

[Muziekschuur]

If users would like to add a photo of a footpedal and explain their working that would add so much to this thread.

 

[Raw N Low]

The really rare birds are the:

Peavey classic 400
Peavey Super Festival 800b
Peavey Alpha Bass

The VB2 and VB3 are great amps too. You can approximate a grind tone shy of overdrive on any of these.

 

[Muziekschuur]

So does anybody have photos of the footpedals of all those heads of yesteryear.

 

[Muziekschuur]

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[Muziekschuur]

A different super festival head.

 

[Muziekschuur]

Above, the Peavey ‘Festival’ stacks of 1973. Tube-powered VTA400 at left, followed by the 4oo watt solid-state guitar and bass versions. I’ve owned and used several Peavey amps, but I have never plugged into a Festival. I will say this, based on my limited experience with Peavey amps: the solid-state circa 1985 Bandit 65 that I briefly used in high school was the the best-sounding solid state guitar amp that I have ever used. The distortion character was incredibly tube-like; really uncanny (my other amp at the time was an all-tube Fender Champ 12, so I did have some limited frame of reference). I later had one of those 2×12 dual-6L6/solid-state preamp combos from the 1970s; it sounded great in the room, probably due to the open-backed cabinet, but always fell short when close-mic’d.

 

[Muziekschuur]