PEAvEY
History is literally repeating itself as we sit.
There’s hardly a month or two that goes by
that some competitor doesn’t get bought
out, conglomerated or have to do crazy
things for the quarterly reports. You see, we
don’t have to do that. I get to play around
and invent new ways of doing things, like
our Custom Shop.
Okay, considering that you’re the originator and the defender of “good gear at
a fair price,” what should people know
about your M.O. for the Custom Shop?
Keeping prices down with our production
gear is what we’re all about, but when it
comes to our Custom Shop, we don’t take
a second position to anybody. We know
as much about amplifiers as anyone who
breathes air and we have the experience
and patents to prove it. However, that’s
not to say that other brands of amplifiers
aren’t decent. The truth is, we can build
anything, I mean anything people want in
our custom shop.
As I’ve said earlier, the truth is—and my
competitors will cringe when I say this—
there’s no trick to making a decent guitar
amp. It’s just not rocket science. Look at all
the guys making decent amplifiers in their
backyards, “boutique amplifiers.” They
make the same circuit mistakes and packaging mistakes that I made thirty years ago
that can cause endless problems. Making
amps sound good is one thing, but making
an amp that sounds good and stands up,
that’s another thing.
One of our endorsees had several very
expensive boutique amplifiers and took
them out on the road with him, and every
damn one of them failed so he gave them
back to the guy and said “I’m not going to
do it,” and went with us. The amp builder
said “I can’t believe you’re going to Peavey,”
so the player said, “Well, yeah, not only
does it sound as good, if not better than
your amp, it holds up.”
Knowing how to get a good tone is one
thing, but knowing how to get one that is
reliable and sounds good is another thing.
We know how to do both.
Let’s talk about guitars. You did some
pretty innovative things with the T-Series
back in the day, and even had the biggest
name in the industry, Eddie Van Halen,
on the 4/2 headstock of a Peavey guitar
that was very different from the Kramers
he became famous with. You were also
awarded the Summer NAMM 2007 Best in
Show award for your online Custom Shop’s
design-it-yourself approach. When it comes
to guitars, you seem to be more comfortable trying new things than dwelling on
the past.
Guitars are probably the smallest portion
of our business. There’s no particular trick
to making a guitar, either, although a lot of
people will tell you that you need to sprinkle
fairy dust on the body and sand them only
on Thursdays and Saturdays and all that kind
of stuff.
It’s interesting, you never hear anyone say,
“I’m an amplifier player.” They’re always telling you they’re guitar players. With guitars,
you kind of have to be careful because if
you get too far out there people won’t buy
it. Guitars have to look like a guitar—forget
about that time when everyone made them
look like toilet seats, skulls and that kind of
thing. Today, if they look too different, they
won’t sell.
This fondness for old ways is very interesting to me. For example, on the pickup side
of things you have people doing things that
make no sense, but they want to do what is
“traditional.” For instance, on a single coil
guitar pickup, every coil has a beginning
and an end; in the old days they were using
sand cast magnets that were literally cast in
sand and they were very rough. When they
wound the old enamel wire on those pickups
they would always use the start as ground,
figuring that it if it shorted out against the
magnet it wouldn’t be a big deal because it
would be close to ground. But the problem
is that it left the hotwire all the way out at
the end and it wasn’t shielded so it buzzed
like crazy, which is ass backwards from the
way it ought to be. If you ground the outside, you effectively have shield all around
the outside and the hotwire comes off
around the inside, but now that we use magnets that are centerless ground and better
magnet wire, we won’t have that problem.
But they’re still doing it.
Incredibly, there are guitars being made
The 2008 version of the Joe Satriani JSX amp
at final assembly. Photos of the newest version of the still-in-development amp were not
available at press time, but Peavey did give us
working specs and a quote from Satch:
“Traditionally, 50-watt amps always seem to
have the perfect amount of volume and sag
to create a true rock & roll moment,” Satriani
says. “But the golden era of the 50-watt didn’t
see a version that had a variety of sounds or
were actually useful tools for the gigging musician. Peavey and I were finally able to bring
this idea of a really rockin’ 50-watt into the
modern era where real guitar players can use
it. We wound up with a really bold, in-your-face sound.”
• Two independent channels, Clean and Crunch
• 2 - 6550 power amp tubes
• 5 - 12AX7 preamp tubes
• Global Presence and Master Volume controls
• Global Master Volume Boost with switch
and level control
• Six-way attack control on Crunch channel
• Pre-gain Boost switch on Crunch channel
• Built-in MSDI microphone-simulated direct
XLR output
• Line out with level control
• Active effects loop with send and return
level control
• Rear-panel impedance selector
• Tube bias adjustments on back panel
