Sleeper Amps On The Cheap!

  • Thread starter Thread starter napalmdeath
  • Start date Start date
The last cheap sleeper amp I scored was a Peavey Delta Blues 1x15 combo for like $200. I bought it for a couple of dive bar gigs we had lined up, and ended up digging it a lot more than I'd expected.

I also found an original 5150 2x12 combo, one owner, for $500 last year. But he lived in the middle of nowhere and had it priced that way for whoever could be bothered to make the drive.
 
Mesa Mark III's, Mesa .50 caliber +, Peavey VTM's and Randall rg100es' heads were all sleeper amps back 10 to 15 years ago. I bought many Randall's and a VTM 60 for $200, and back 15 years ago you could get a Mark III in the $600 - $700 range, which is a great deal. Now all of those amps go for insane prices, especially the Mark III's.

Wish I had kept all of those amps. I could have made a great profit selling them now.
 
anomaly said:
Mesa Mark III's, Mesa .50 caliber +, Peavey VTM's and Randall rg100es' heads were all sleeper amps back 10 to 15 years ago. I bought many Randall's and a VTM 60 for $200, and back 15 years ago you could get a Mark III in the $600 - $700 range, which is a great deal. Now all of those amps go for insane prices, especially the Mark III's.

Wish I had kept all of those amps. I could have made a great profit selling them now.
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Everyone knows those amps, a sleeper to me is something like the metalhead that guys barely know exist that still rip.
 
RaceU4her said:
Everyone knows those amps, a sleeper to me is something like the metalhead that guys barely know exist that still rip.
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Ya, i'm talking 15 years ago though, as they weren't talked about as often back then, especially the VTM's. If we're talking sleeper's now, i'll say the Randall Cyclone and the V-max, Those amps can get brutal as fuck, and have so much low end punch. Good luck finding them though.
 
Egnater vengeance/armageddon heads are killer high gain amps with great clean channels and I see them used in the $600 range.
 
I look for broken vintage amps. Found a 1973 Ampeg V4 for cheap, got it fixed up and its become one of my favorites.
 
Bought my rackmount Mark III red stripe off Reverb 3 years for $600. Just needed tubes. Still can’t believe it.
 
retrorack said:
Bought my rackmount Mark III red stripe off Reverb 3 years for $600. Just needed tubes. Still can’t believe it.
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mark III's WERE sleeper amps, sort of... in the mid 2000's when everyone was playing rectos.
They were 700-900 for years, up until the last 2 years. Now i can't believe what they pull. Its crazy. jumped 3x in value in a few short years after like 2 decades of holding steady in value.
 
JimAnsell said:
mark III's WERE sleeper amps, sort of... in the mid 2000's when everyone was playing rectos.
They were 700-900 for years, up until the last 2 years. Now i can't believe what they pull. Its crazy. jumped 3x in value in a few short years after like 2 decades of holding steady in value.
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Yeah, I think that's really what kind of floored me about the values over the past couple of years. Some of these amps were holding steady, then all of a sudden they just exploded.

Hell, even a decent 2203 or 2204 could be easily had for sub $2K... often sub $1500 in great condition, unmodded/unmolested, etc just a couple of years ago. Now the same amp is twice the value.

I sold a 1977 2203 in 2017 for $1700 and that was after sitting on sale for months. Ended up selling it on consignment with Rock And Roll Vintage in Chicago.

I am still kicking myself for selling it even though I didn't have a good cab for it at the time.
 
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