Thrift Store Score (again)

[KuruPrionz]

Persistence is key. Yesterday I went to Value Village and bought a Peavey Bandit guitar amp - the first iteration with TransTube - black and silver, Sheffield speaker, full sized spring reverb tank, metal jacks, made in Meridian Mississippi. Price tag was $25.99, hard to beat.

It works, needs the jacks cleaned and maybe the pots sprayed. I've been working the pots (rotating them cleans up scratchiness) one at a time. I may pull the head and give them a shot of De-Oxit but I'll try the easy way first.  

 

Higher gain settings in the lead channel are a bit noisy but I don't like those tones anyway. Clean channel is big and sweet, the lead channel with the Post Gain turned up and the Pre Gain down sounds like an old Fender tube amp that is turned up just enough to sing and start breaking up. Would be a great platform for the pedal board that I don't have. The reverb is lush and the long tank provides a short delay as well although that is not adjustable. 

 

BIG and HEAVY so I'll probably tweak it up a bit (it's clean, probably sat at home) and flip it on craigslist to make a few bucks.

The knobs are all original but most of them are missing the metal caps, they have a black face with a white arrow underneath so I think I'll remove the other metal caps and then all the knobs will match. 

[Ivan May]

Good Peavey amp! I think Eddie Van Halen played one of those during the Balance era of Van Halen.

[KuruPrionz]

Could be, EVH played all sorts of things! 

In my opinion, TransTube is Hartley Peavey's greatest contribution to the sound of modern music. Bearing in mind that being the first to manufacture guitars using CNC equipment is no small change, we can now get very well made guitars at low prices thanks to that breakthrough. 

 

I have a Peavey Vypyr VIP 1, which is 2 or 3 generations of TransTube later and it really sounds great with a 10 Scorpion speaker in it. That amp is much smaller and lighter and has all the effects built in so it's a keeper. At 67, I'm pretty well done lugging heavy gear to gigs. Mic it and let the PA do the heavy lifting, keep stage volume reasonable. The Vypyr makes a great studio rig as well. 

The key to TransTube is to understand that Post Gain does not mean "after gain", it means "simulated tube amp output section gain", which is where the sweet tones of tube amps actually come from, pushing the output tubes, the transformer, etc. Once I figured that out I realized what a great circuit it is, true analog solid state emulation of a tube circuit. The only real competition they have in that realm is Tech 21, another great company. 

[spokenward]

That's a pretty sharp price! Items like that are frequently shunted to the internet sales outlets and never hit the floor at the thrift stores around here. 

 

The weight of the item was in your favor.

[KuruPrionz]

16 minutes ago, spokenward said:

That's a pretty sharp price! Items like that are frequently shunted to the internet sales outlets and never hit the floor at the thrift stores around here. 

 

The weight of the item was in your favor.

Yes, that and the size. Expensive goodie to ship, no doubt.

 

That and probably the scratchy pots, which are usually due to lack of use and an easy fix. 

The thrift store experience is pretty random, that's been my experience time and again. 

The employees who price things are not experts at much if anything and they are not given the time to do research. 

 

A couple of years ago I bought a vintage ukulele that was in the furniture section at Goodwill. It had a poorly "repaired" crack on the back (putty) and was missing a couple of the frets.

All flamed koa with rope binding and very repairable, I paid $5 for it and sold it on eBay for $500. 

 

It's possible that somebody just drove off with a bargain right before you got to the store. It's also possible that they just set something out as you walk in or after you leave. We can't know what was or could be there, just what is there when we drop by. So, I drop by a couple times a week and hope I get lucky. 

 

For certain, if you are looking for clothing every Monday at Goodwill one color tag will be $1.99 everywhere in the store and you can find some quality clothing for almost nothing if you are persistent. 

[KuruPrionz]

I've been turning the pots up and down quite a bit today. The scratchy pot sounds have been greatly reduced and in some cases they vanished. Just a couple of pots still "spit" in a place or two. 

Lack of use allows a very thin layer of corrosion to build up over time, the wiper on the pot will eventually wear through that and good contact returns. 

I also took a piece of 220 sandpaper, about 2.5" square and rolled it up into a small "tube" shape. I used this to clean all the jacks.

 

The effects send and return work great, if I had the foot switch I could try that out. I've got a Mesa 2 way switch at home that probably works, maybe I'll dig it out. You can switch from clean to dirty and also switch the effects in and out. The reverb is lush, no switch but I usually just set some reverb and leave it anyway. 

 

I can get more distortion now if I want and it's pretty sweet sounding, not fuzzy or snarly. I like this amp and I could just keep it for what I paid but it hasn't gotten and smaller or lighter so I think I'll make it somebody else's fun. Lots of years left on it and it's well over 20 years old now. Gotta love those Peaveys!!!!

[Winston Psmith]

Peaveys are the unsung workhorse Amps of the last century. I think it was Tom Morello who once said that every garage band he knew had a Peavey Amp, but most of them took the Peavey logo off the front, so people couldn't see right away what it was.

 

Haven't hit the local thrift stores nor pawn shops in a long time. You really have to make a habit of scavenging your local thrift stores, because anything of real value is likely to get grabbed up quickly.

[desertbluesman]

47 minutes ago, Winston Psmith said:

Peaveys are the unsung workhorse Amps of the last century. I think it was Tom Morello who once said that every garage band he knew had a Peavey Amp, but most of them took the Peavey logo off the front, so people couldn't see right away what it was.

I had several Peavey amps back in the day (60's,70's) Mine were hybrid amps, half tube and half solid state. On one of my first performances out, I blew the speakers on that 2-12 combo (whichever model it was) just by turning the amp on which was later known to be a flaw in that model. I sold all the Peavey amps over a few months, mostly because I really liked my Fender amps more for tone anyways, and never bought one of their products again.

[Larryz]

Never been a fan of Peavey amps/pa equipment.  But, I have a buddy that has both from back in the 70's +/- and they have been rode hard and put away wet and are still in use today!  The roadworthy larger Peavey equipment is good stuff. Just not for me. +1 DBM, I had one small Peavey amp and sold it as I much prefer the Fender amp sound!  😎

[KuruPrionz]

5 hours ago, Winston Psmith said:

Peaveys are the unsung workhorse Amps of the last century. I think it was Tom Morello who once said that every garage band he knew had a Peavey Amp, but most of them took the Peavey logo off the front, so people couldn't see right away what it was.

 

Haven't hit the local thrift stores nor pawn shops in a long time. You really have to make a habit of scavenging your local thrift stores, because anything of real value is likely to get grabbed up quickly.

My main gigger for many years was a Peavey LA 400, 210 watts RMS and a 12" Black Widow speaker - essentially a Nashville 400 in a smaller box. 

The loudest 1-12" combo in the world. I took the logo off and put black electrical tape over any text on the faceplate that might give me away. 

And I used a RAT, loud and nasty!!!!! One night a friend of mine who was a pretty good guitarist came up to me after a set, pointed at it and asked "Is that a Boogie?"

I told him the truth, the didn't like to hear that!!!!

 

Larryz, try one of the Vypyr amps and take a little time to tweak it. Make sure it has a 12" speaker, the ones that come with an 8" sound terrible unless you upgrade them. 

Really fine sounding amps if you adjust them correctly, I respect them. 

[Larryz]

Kuru, if I ever get by a GC and they have a Vypyr with a 12 on the floor, I'll be sure to give one a try!  😎👍

[CEB]

In the mid 80s I had a road rig of two Bandit 65s in stereo out the stereo jacks of the Yamaha SPX90.  The Bandits were bulletproof. The two amps gave me backup redundancy. I took advantage of having the pair with me and went stereo. Country music was entering into that super Strats drenched in chorus phase. 

[KuruPrionz]

6 hours ago, Larryz said:

Kuru, if I ever get by a GC and they have a Vypyr with a 12 on the floor, I'll be sure to give one a try!  😎👍

Cool, what I learned is that Post Gain doesn't mean "After the gain stage", it means "Simulated Output Stage Gain."

I've got a small Vypyr VIP 1 currently with a 10" Scorpion speaker but I've tried the following settings on a few different TransTube amps and they work every time. 

Set the master volume way down. Set Post Gain way up, like noon or higher. Choose an amp and push the knob you used to select the amp until the LED turns green (its a switch too). That will be the cleanest tone, that's a good starting point. Now adjust the Pre Gain carefully, keep it fairly low but run it up until you like the amount of distortion. Mess with the tone, depends on the guitar. Then turn the master volume up to the level you want. I think the Post Gain gets overlooked but it can get the amp sounding like a small tube amp turned up loud, that clean but dirty sort of compressed singing tone. I love it!

[Bluesape]

I had one once. Worked fine. Gave it to a buddy who had no amp. Think he still has it.