Another used purchase. I believe highly in used equipment, but you’ve gotta be careful. Turned out this amp had been modded, but I didn’t find out until it crapped out about a year and a half after I bought it. Some poorly placed part shifted and shorted something else out. Luckily Dave from Dave’s Sound in Whippany (awesome guy) was able to restore order and put everything back to stock. Turns out the mod had almost no affect on the sound anyway.
That done, this amp has stayed my main gigging amp for quite a while now. The Blue Angel represents a change from my usual swiss-army approach to musical equipment. It’s a one trick pony. No channel switching here. It does have a unique poweramp switching section that switches it from running 2-6V6 at 18 watts to 4-EL84 tubes at 30 watts, or it will combine them running the complete set at 38 watts. It’s not a footswitchable thing though, not that you’d want to do that.
This is a very un-Mesa sounding amp. A lot of people like to lump brands of amps in a specific box, especially Fender, Marshall and Mesa. There’s good reason for that, but only to a degree. This amp is part of the Rectifier series, but it doesn’t at all sound like what people think of as the Rectifier sound. This is a very (very) Vox AC-30 type of sound. With some variation available.
Strats love this amp. They sound great together. The Les Paul loves this amp too. The Carvin did’t sound as good through this amp. This amp is wonderful at that clean to slightly overdriven sound – it really “sings”. One of the real awakenings for me is that I’ve discovered that passages that I used to play distorted or overdriven often sound so much better with no outboard distortion. Just using the guitar and a heavier attack usually produces the right amount of bite for a crunchy rhythm part, or cutting lead.
I think that’s part of why the Strat works so well with this amp. I find that the Strat’s volume is much more sensitive in the 8-10 range than my other guitars. With the Carvin or Les Paul there is an increase in saturation and crunch, but not a lot of volume difference. With the Strat there’s a definite jump going from 8 to 10, and that is more than enough for a lead boost. You can keep it on 7 or 8 and dig in more to add more bite to chords or notes – very nice.
I still use a Fulltone Fulldrive II additional overdrive, and I add either a second over drive or a Fulltone distortion pedal for more grind.
With this amp I was able to get (for the first time) a lot of the lead sounds of Ritchie Blackmore. I’ve seen him live a number of times and his loud, clean, sustaining sound is one of my favorite live lead tones. He’s always had at least a couple of Marshall stacks (purportedly 200 watt Marshall Majors) behind him, so replicating that with a 1×12 seemed near impossible. I’ve since heard stories of him using a JTM45 and a Vox AC30, so who knows. All I know is that with some settings the Blue Angel and the Strat on the neck pup get really close and sounds real nice.
Two things I don’t like so much about the Blue Angel 1) like many Mesa’s the “Mid” control acts as a gain control in addition to a mid EQ. I’m used to mid being mid. I’ve gotten used to it, but I’d still prefer it to be a more typical mid control. 2) the amp is complicated by the whole multi-power amp section thing. I use it primarily in the combined 38 watt mode because I get the most clean headroom that way for playing out. Sometimes in the basement I use the 6V6 mode because it overdrives at a lower volume and sounds so sweet. I would prefer a simpler arrangement since my theory is the more features and things there are, the more things there are that can (and will) break.
My first shot at getting a replacement for my Peavey Triumph. I found an HRD (40 watt 1×12) for a great price locally and jumped on it. I gigged with it (alternating with the Peavey) for about a year before finally selling it to the singer in my band. I still see and hear the amp regularly.
My take on the Hot Rod Deluxe: It’s a nice amp, with a pretty good clean sound. I liked the clean sound better than the Peavey at low to mid volumes. Reverb sounded good to me, but I’m not a big user. The drive and more drive channels were all but useless to me. It was nearly impossible for me to get a good sound out of them. That was ok. I tried the amp with a number of preamps and overdrives. Fulldrive Fulltone II, Chandler Tube Driver, Tech 21 GT2…Those guys did a fine job of dirtying up the HRD.
The two problems I found were 1) when you need a “little more” clean volume, it’s just not there. At outdoor gigs and louder indoor jobs where things get cranking a little more than they probably should – the clean sound went out the window. The dirtier sound wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t the strong point of the amp either. Not like an old cranked deluxe reverb or anything. The second problem 2) was that overall the amp does not seem very well built. It may just be me, but my peavey (only about 10 more watts) outweights the Fender by a *lot*. Part of it is the big honking speaker magnet, but it’s also a much more solid cabinet, and what appears to be more solid components. I can’t tell you how many times the tubes in the HRD loosened up on the way to the job. I never had that happen with any other amp. To this day the singer will fire the HRD up at a gig and every so often it wacks out. It’s almost always a loose tube. Quick shut it down re-seat them all and fire it back up. There hasn’t been anthing seriously wrong, just my feeling that something could go wrong at any moment. I’m way too paranoid for that!
Update! – While loading out from a gig, this amp took a hellacious tumble down a flight of concrete stairs. It was a terrible sight. The remarkable thing is that other than some minor bumps and bruises, the amp performed perfectly. No problems whatsoever. Unbelievable. I was sure a fall like that would destroy this amp, but it did no serious damage at all. High marks for that. To this day the tubes still seem to loosen up on their own though.
Another “didn’t expect to use it as much as I did” story. I bought this in a down-sizing spree when I sold the 100 watt Carvin and looked for something smaller. I was hesitant to buy Peavey, even though I hadn’t had a bad experience with them. I can’t say how many dozens of amps I tried. The nice thing was that I wasn’t in a hurry. I took months. I first heard about this model from a local gigging musician who said he liked it in contrast to his Marshall and that he liked the high gain sound. I was hoping for the usual – a one-size-fits-all-swiss-army-knife type of do it all amp. Funny how that approach almost never works. Still, it’s what I wanted. I wasn’t planning on using it to play out, I just wanted something with a pretty good clean and a nice drive that I could record at home with.
The PAG 60 is a three channel amp with 2 6L6 tubes and a number of 12AX7s in the preamp. The reverb sounds good for my purposes – which is to say I keep it on all the time, but quite low. No Dick Dale sounds here. While it is set up as a three channel amp (normal, crunch, and lead), the crunch and lead channels share EQ, which can be problematic at times.
I’ve heard complaints about the sound quality of the Triumph series of amps, but for me this one worked out well. Maybe I was lucky with the tubes? When I got it serviced at one point, the tech said the two power tubes were probably about half the value of the amp! Either way, the amp was flexible and very usable. This amp and the Carvin guitar can do Santana all day long, as well as get close to bunches of other sounds. I liked the Carvin best with this amp. My Strat didn’tdrive this amp as hard as it likes to be driven. My Les Paul sounded good with it too. The PAG 60 is very much in the Mesa-Boogie Mark vein.
The biggest down side of the amp is that it can be awfully hard balancing the volume levels of the three channels when playing out. The normal channel has a gain control which increases volume, but also increase “dirt” somewhat, although it never gets’ really dirty. It works quite well I think. Both crunch and lead channels have a “pre” and “post” control. In both channels setting the “pre” high and the “post” lower results in increased noise and distortion. I assume this is all 12AX7 preamp distortion, and it can get quite irritating at certain levels. The amp has one master volume and that’s where the trouble lies. In theory you should be able to set your three channels the way you like and then use the master to set the overall volume – perfect to go from bedroom, to practice, to gig, right? Nope. Adjusting the master completely changes everything else. All the other levels need to be reset when the master is changed. I assume this has to do with the interaction of the preamp and poweramp sections, and how the tubes react at different volumes.
Still, with a little effort the sound can be quite good I think. While it is a fairly loud amp, it’s actual volume seems to stop increasing with the master at about 12 o’clock (half way). After that the sound becomes more saturated, which can sound really good on the clean channel, but can get quite hissy and noisy, especially on the lead channel.
Overall, this amp is a solid choice for a gigging cover band or other situation where you need multiple sounds in a compact (but heavy!) package. For my purposes it proved very reliable, and the great thing is that they go for absolute bargain prices. They have none of the pseudo-vintage cache of the Peavey Classic 30 or 50 (which are both also great bang-for-the-buck amps), and they were never used by anyone famous as far as I know.
Peavey stopped making these a while back, and they came out with the Peavey “Ultra” series, which seemed to be nearly identical in operation to the Triumph PAG 60. The sound of the newer amps was definitely darker – perhaps bowing to the folks that want more of a “rectifier” sound, or maybe just newer amps with different tubes? The “Ultra” series was dropped fairly quickly, so I guess they never sold that well.
I sold the Peavey and replaced it with a used Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, which I only used for a short time, replacing that with a Mesa Blue Angel.
I was so happy with my DC150 that I considered, and eventually bought, a Carvin X100B 100 watt head to replace my poor old Peavey. For me this was a monster. 4 – 6L6 power tubes, and a host of 12AX7 preamp tubes. The clean sound was outstanding, and a huge jump up from the Peavey. The sound leaped out of the speakers. The Carvin had a footswitch for getting crunchy sounds, and it always did well for me. The one drawback with this amp was that it was too damn big! Too powerful, that is. In all the time I owned it I don’t recall ever turning the volume up past “3″ other than to just blow it out once in a while. That just doesn’t get to where the meaty good tube amp sounds are usually. The amp had a switch that cut the power to half and quarter, but that made the clean sound suffer significantly. In retrospect I probably should have bought the 50 watt version of the amp, but, well, you know, how would I have been able to play Madison Square Garden?!?
I used the amp through a variety of speaker cabs over the years, including a 2×12, a 4×12 and a pair of 4×12′s. I sold it when I thought my band days were pretty much over, and replaced it with a small Peavey Triumph 1×12 combo.
Although I owned this amp, I used it very little. It was a nice solid little amp with a good clean sound that had a little “crunch” to it. It was all solid state. Most of the time I owned it, it was on loan to the other guitar player in my band, so I heard it plenty. I also used it for a short while as the second amp in a stereo setup. It always performed well. Eventually the other guitar player bought the amp from me.
The Stage brand of amps was sold by Westbury/St. Louis Music, which also had an association with Univox from what I understand. The model I had was an all solid state 2×10. The clean sound was very nice, reverb was somewhat weak, but also good sounding. It had a knob labelled “clipping” that was unique. Unique in that it has to be the single worst sounding control I have ever heard. Ever. Anything above zero resulted in the most grating, annoying sound I have heard an amplified make. And somebody purposely put that control there! Does that mean they liked that sound?? And they made the knob go up to 10 so you could get more of that sound! I don’t know what they were thinking.
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.