Peavy VK 100 Valveking opinions?

[Nostalgic Distortion]

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So I'm thinking about buying one of these, anyone have any experience with them? Maybe tell me if it's a huge mistake and I should run away or vice versa? It's been my experience that Peavy amps either sound great or awful? There's literally no middle ground....

 

[Wormhelmet]

Re: Peavy VK 100 Valveking opinions?

What kind of music do you play? What are you looking for in sounds?

 

[alteredbeast]

Re: Peavy VK 100 Valveking opinions?

idk. The one I played sounded rough. The distortion channel was all jacked up sounding

 

[Nostalgic Distortion]

Re: Peavy VK 100 Valveking opinions?

I actually got the chance to play one last night, it belonged to a friend of a friend and it was awful! I play a little bit of everything, I like my cleans to be either very clean or just @ the point where the amp is starting to breakup, depending on what I'm playing, but when I use distortion I tend to use a lot of gain & typicality it's coming from 1-3 different dirt pedals? I use Soul Food, in front of a Swell G Drive, in front of a E.H. Metal Muff so the sloppy gain channel wasn't necessarily a deal breaker for me but the cleans were dull & lifeless, the reverb was garbage, & I just couldn't dial in a good tone? I even ran home to grab my E.Q. to see if that would help, it didn't!!!! The amp has to be very loud for it to gain any kind of texture which is pretty typical for Peavy tube amps of that size but even cranked up it was pretty bland???

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I ended up buying a Egnater 40W Tweaker,. The one I bought was listed as New/Other, apparently this one has already been sent back to Egnater to have the P.T. replaced, apparently the original P.T.'s could become problematic & overheat? They also added a small cooling fan while they had it? So for $400 I guess it was a good deal? Suppose we'll see once it arrives.......

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: Peavy VK 100 Valveking opinions?

My experience with VK is the same

Want to like it
But it just seems off
Tube swaps and bias change may bring one to life

But that seems like a lot.of effort

Those heads are $200 Used for a reason

*(Sent from my durned phone!)*

 

[75lespaul]

Re: Peavy VK 100 Valveking opinions?

I've got the same Valveking in the photo, and I love the amp. The clean channel is supposed to be a direct ripoff of the Fender twin. You have to use the bright switch to get it into that territory though. The distortion channel, while nothing groundbreaking, gives a great classic rock/metal sound, and gets pretty heavy for lower tunings. This amp seems to be biased cold from the factory, and it is very picky about the speakers it likes. The tech I go to changed the bias (to what, I don't know) and I used it with either a Splawn small block loaded 2X12 or a V30/G12H30 X pattern 4X12. It did not like all Greenbacks, nor did it like the new Marshall cabs loaded with the V30 sounding speakers (forget the model, but it is a Celestion). Like a high maintenance woman, you have to make life right for this amp. They're cheap I believe because we seem to want amps to sound great right out of the box, and who the heck has the money to go buying all different speakers to try it with? However, it IS a good sounding amp with a really good clean channel when you have it set up right with a better bias and speakers.

Also, you can't go wrong with the Egnater either. My buddy has that amp and it sounds killer.