I recently had a new amps day... I've sorta wanted an 80's Peavey combo to take me back to my youth, as people sometimes do.
As a teenager, I went to the music store ready to buy a fairly serious amp and the salesman there turned me onto a Bandit. I wish I could remember the exact version. He told me that it was plenty big to play a club and when he demo'd it and sounded every bit as good as my guitar heros of the day, that carried a lot of weight, so I bought it and saved some money.
Later, I upgraded from the Bandit to a Classic Chorus 212. This was a stupid move because it was basically the same preamp capability and a stereo chorus mode that really wasn't worth the extra weight. Nevertheless, I played it until I discovered the Digitech RP-1 which I used into the Classic Chorus for a while. (Incidentally, the RP-1 was buggy and I ended up returning it for a Digitech GSP-21 Legend. That was an awesome unit and a serious upgrade.)
Eventually I got into some other gear and I was lucky enough to be able to sell the Classic Chorus 212 and a mic to my employer as a portable PA for events. Hey, it worked great and was loud enough.
Fast forward... I had a transtube bandit about 10 years ago but didn't keep it and it wasn't what I had growing up and didn't seem particularly familiar. I've had my eye out for a bandit or similar in the local market but haven't wanted to spend $200+ for one.
This past weekend, someone responded on FB to about the forth "I'm interested in this- are you alive?" message. He had not one but three Peavey Specials which are like a big brother of the bandit but still 1x12.
He had two Special 130's with the older "saturation" lead mode and one newer Special 112 with the "supersat" lead mode. "Supersat" is what I remember from the Bandit I had growing up. Evidently his dad was a pro picker in nashville and these were his amps.
Long story long, I ended up buying all three of them for $200 including a compressor pedal and a hand cart haha!
The Supersat channel of the Special 112 with bottom/body/edge controls is just voiced totally bizarre. I was getting reasonableish sounds by dialing both the body and edge controls very low. This amp has a bittingly aggressive distortion character that is always on. The clean channel had some really enjoyable sounds in there. Putting a volume pedal (or an FM3 ahem...) in the effects loop lets you crunch the clean channel without shaking the house of the foundation. This amp was gifted to my 19 year old son to use in his band. I told him that this was loud enough to get him fired.
The Special 130 has the older lead channel with pre and post gain as well as "saturation". There are some good lead tones in there to my ears. I think this would love an SD1 perhaps. The saturation control is odd- it dials up a seemingly unrelated fizz mixed into the regular tone. I found a hair of saturation made a great tone. The clean channel again sounded great and the sweepable mid control was a welcome addition.
I ran the old Fractal FM3 into the FX return and got some cool sounds too. These all has Scorpion 12" speakers. I'm somewhat interested in trying some other speakers in them eventually.
All three had spring reverb that I just can't imagine using but maybe a tiny trace of it would be helpful from time to time.
With the right pedal, i could totally gig these things. Part of me says that I should have stopped with the Bandit 75 and saved untold amounts of money.
$200 bucks for three amps... I could equip a whole band with this. Not bad...
As a teenager, I went to the music store ready to buy a fairly serious amp and the salesman there turned me onto a Bandit. I wish I could remember the exact version. He told me that it was plenty big to play a club and when he demo'd it and sounded every bit as good as my guitar heros of the day, that carried a lot of weight, so I bought it and saved some money.
Later, I upgraded from the Bandit to a Classic Chorus 212. This was a stupid move because it was basically the same preamp capability and a stereo chorus mode that really wasn't worth the extra weight. Nevertheless, I played it until I discovered the Digitech RP-1 which I used into the Classic Chorus for a while. (Incidentally, the RP-1 was buggy and I ended up returning it for a Digitech GSP-21 Legend. That was an awesome unit and a serious upgrade.)
Eventually I got into some other gear and I was lucky enough to be able to sell the Classic Chorus 212 and a mic to my employer as a portable PA for events. Hey, it worked great and was loud enough.
Fast forward... I had a transtube bandit about 10 years ago but didn't keep it and it wasn't what I had growing up and didn't seem particularly familiar. I've had my eye out for a bandit or similar in the local market but haven't wanted to spend $200+ for one.
This past weekend, someone responded on FB to about the forth "I'm interested in this- are you alive?" message. He had not one but three Peavey Specials which are like a big brother of the bandit but still 1x12.
He had two Special 130's with the older "saturation" lead mode and one newer Special 112 with the "supersat" lead mode. "Supersat" is what I remember from the Bandit I had growing up. Evidently his dad was a pro picker in nashville and these were his amps.
Long story long, I ended up buying all three of them for $200 including a compressor pedal and a hand cart haha!
The Supersat channel of the Special 112 with bottom/body/edge controls is just voiced totally bizarre. I was getting reasonableish sounds by dialing both the body and edge controls very low. This amp has a bittingly aggressive distortion character that is always on. The clean channel had some really enjoyable sounds in there. Putting a volume pedal (or an FM3 ahem...) in the effects loop lets you crunch the clean channel without shaking the house of the foundation. This amp was gifted to my 19 year old son to use in his band. I told him that this was loud enough to get him fired.
The Special 130 has the older lead channel with pre and post gain as well as "saturation". There are some good lead tones in there to my ears. I think this would love an SD1 perhaps. The saturation control is odd- it dials up a seemingly unrelated fizz mixed into the regular tone. I found a hair of saturation made a great tone. The clean channel again sounded great and the sweepable mid control was a welcome addition.
I ran the old Fractal FM3 into the FX return and got some cool sounds too. These all has Scorpion 12" speakers. I'm somewhat interested in trying some other speakers in them eventually.
All three had spring reverb that I just can't imagine using but maybe a tiny trace of it would be helpful from time to time.
With the right pedal, i could totally gig these things. Part of me says that I should have stopped with the Bandit 75 and saved untold amounts of money.
$200 bucks for three amps... I could equip a whole band with this. Not bad...
