tech21man":1v86w702 said:
A peavey XXX/JSX will cover almost everything, will give three discreet channels and leave a lot of cash for a great used cab at the same time. It's active eq are its weakness and secret weapon at the same time. It will swap power tubes, will do clean crunch/heavy and modern/thrash at the same time, three gain/volume/tonestacks, good loop...great master (almost makes you think the amp isn't loud:it is, the master is different). Great amp for peanuts.
Agreed on the Peavey XXX. I got one a few months ago. Not a perfect amp, but it's hell of a metal amp for around 300-350 bucks used.
I don't think it does mid-gain tones brilliantly, though. The gain channels have way too much gain. Both gain channels are actually the exact same ridiculous gain levels, it's just the voicing/behavior of the tone stack that is a bit different between both. The clean channel is alright. A bit cold, sterile and kinda generic, but it's also very very sparkly, dinamic, and useable. The gain channels are very Peavey-sounding, so they're kinda sorta familiar if you've played a 6505, they've got the grainy squishy Peavey mids, but they're a bit more "unique" in their voicing. More over-the-top.
They're actually pretty reliable too as long as you don't stick those stupid sgreen-grid-resistor-blower JJ E34L's which don't even sound all that great, IMO. I don't know why everyone feels like they should drop them in their EL34 amp. The XXX sounds better with 6L6's anyways, IMO.
