Just a quick note that if you’re in the market for a boutique-style amp without the boutique-style price tag, you might want to take a closer look at Peavey’s ValveKing 212 Combo.
The amp has apparently taken Guitar World Magazine’s Gold Award For Overall Value, and for a full-featured Class A-A/B guitar amp, the ValveKing 212 is actually fetching a surprisingly affordable street price of right around $600.
The Specs Stand-out features include a patented variable Class A-A/B controller that allows you to actually sweep between Class A and Class A/B power (plus any combination of the two,) 100 watts of power switchable into 16,8, or 4 ohms, dual independent and footswitchable channels, and a lead channel with footswitchable gain and volume boost.
The ValveKing also boasts three 12AX7 tubes in the pre-amp, four 6L6GCs in the power section, dual 12“ ValveKing speakers, independent three-band EQ, global Resonance, Presence and Reverb controls, and a buffered effects loop.
If the ValveKing 212 piques your interest you can check out a few of Peavey’s audio samples here–unfortunately, while there’s a like to a video demo over on their website, the video itself seems to have gone AWOL.
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September 11th, 2007 at 11:31 am
I’m pretty sure Dan Agosto over at Gearwire.com uses one of these… I know they did a video review of it.
Guitar teacher at my local shop loves this amp.
I ended up going with the Peavey Classic 30, great amp, love it!
September 11th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
i used to have the one speaker version of of the ValveKing. I didn’t particularly love it, especially since it didn’t respond well to Strats. It did like humbuckers a lot, and sounded good with those. It had a darkish tone and didn’t want to be flexible enough for me, even with the class a/a-b controller. I ended up trading it in, but probably would’ve kept it if I had a humbucker guitar at the time. It didn’t have the resonance control that the 212 has, so, maybe the 212 is better. But, it’s certainly a good tube starter amp I think, both the 1 and 2 speaker version.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I’m a huge fan of the US made Delta Blues Peavey.
Maybe because I have one.. :)
Different than this guy, though. Pretty basic and also EL84 tubes.
The natural overdrive on my DB 210 on the clean channel with humbuckers is awesome.