Peavey Classic VT Series 2×12
In the summer of 1976 I had hoped to save up enough money to buy my dream combination – a Gibson 335 and a Fender Twin. Well…with the usual expenses and lack of significant earnings of Post-High School/Pre-College life, I just wasn’t able to scrape enough together for either one of those, never mind the combination. I spent weeks at Rondo Music (back when they were a real music shop) and other area shops trying out amps and guitars. I eventually decided to go with a Peavey amp, and look elsewhere for a used guitar.
From the start I viewed my Peavey as a “poor man’s” Twin, although it only resembles the Twin in size and speaker configuration. As I recall it cost me less than $250.00 brandy new, as compared to about $500-600 for the Twin, and $325 or so for an equivalent Yamaha. As far as I know mine was a fairly early version of the Classic VT series, with silver knobs and a built in phase shifter. It was a two channel amp that allowed the channels to be combined into, effectively, a third “channel”. The power section used two 6L6 tubes, and the preamp was entirely solid state. There was a problem blowing fuses when I first got the amp and I had to return it for servicing. It took about two weeks because the problem was apparently a defective circuit that was new to this amp. I owned the amp for about 10 years, and never had another problem with it.
Sound-wise the amp could hold it’s own. It had plenty of volume, although not as much as Peavey’s larger Deuce and Ace amps. The clean channel didn’t have the sparkle of the good Fenders, and the distortion was no Marshall, but it did both and that was fine with me. I used the amp extensively for blues jams, frat parties, and later, gigs with an originals band.
The biggest draw back to me was the the sound didn’t “project” as well as better amps. That may not be the correct term, because the amp was plenty loud, but the sound seemed “stuck” inside the amp as opposed to really jumping out the way it does with some amps. Improved speakers might have helped that, but I never tried swapping them out.