Peavey MAX115

Made in 2005, or 2006 maybee. I play hard rock and classic rock mostly and this amp fits them all, if you like Ampeg tone, dont think the tube vintage sound is gonna work for you because it wont, it is ok for playing things like Cream or things of that Genre. never used the effects loop, i dont like running effects, if i want growl, i turn up the gain, it seems to work, except the gain pot cuts out near the top, the MAX tone is the best for me, i love it, its warm and punchy at the same time. i use this amp for gigs and for practice, it is a little quiet for most venues, at 60 watts though, what do you expect? Peavey is my favorite amp for bass sound, i plan on buying a Peavey Tour 700 head with the matching cabinents soon.

I use a Squier Standard Series Jazz bass (very nice cheap bass) with stock passive pickups and it sounds great. The Max setting is the best for playing songs buy artists like Velvet Revolver, or Ozzy Ozbourne, the Modern has a Foo Fighters like tone, it is ok but it wasn't the reason i bought the amp, and the Vintage tone is ok for things like Cream like i said earlier.

I use it for gigs with no backup, it has only one problem and that is the gain pot cuts out, and it isn't a full cut out but it makes the volume about half as loud as it should be, I know what spot makes it cut out now so i just avoid that spot and it works fine.

1 year manufacturers warrany, never dealt with Peavey.

I have been playing for about 4 years now, i gig every weekend playing covers and this amp is just a little quiet, if it was stolen, i would be very very angry, and if i didn't find the poor son of a bitch that stole it, i would upgrade to a Peavey Tour 700 head and a 4-10 and 1-15 tour. i love the sound of it.

Well I saw this bassist play on an outdoor stage recently and he apparently borrowed the keyboard players amp-which was this model more or less.
It growled and fuzzed from being over driven and sounded just like the over the top 'bass distortion" that I have dreamed about. Remember guys=-Clapton on his Blues tour in '95 would play thru little Fender Champ amps that overloaded into a great blues tone (which was mic'd into the PA) and Jack Bruce found the same thing quite by accident on his Filmore gigs using cheap equipment-which later became his signature sound. Check out his playing on Frank Zappa's Apostrophe! Frank made Jack go back and bring his 'cheap gear' to the session to get that great fuzz tone and sustain. This little 60watt baby with the speaker protection will do the same thing in limited situations. ALSO it helps if you know how to play professionally vs just garage band bass with bad time.

With what I am going to do to it-I will have to let you know after road testing.

The speaker might jump out and call a lawyer for assault and battery.

Pressing onward...

Caution note-jacks soldered onto pc board are always cracking so--any amp you like needs to have the jacks reinforced. Remember the best amps were always point to point wiring not PC Board solder connections.

I think I have said more than enough. You get the idea. Also putting a small amp like this on a 'fold-up waiter stand' is a real good idea for a small club because it gets the bass off the floor.

I have seen guitarists put their heavy Fender Twin Reverb amps (the old type) on waiter stands. You get the idea. Why put out a bass sound that will be blocked on stage by everyone's ankles if it is not going thru the PA?

Think!

Made 2007 in Korea. 26 kg. Controls and jacks from left to right:

Input: will accept levels up to +7.0volts which means you won't have problems with very very loud active basses.

Voicing switch: now there's a feature...
"Modern" voicing: clean sound. brute mids, skanky highs, tight, focused, rocking bass. reminds me of gallien-krueger or a marshall. passive tone controls on bass work great here. EQ frequencies: bass 60-80 Hz, high around 3 kHz (this is not measured, this is perceived info)
"MAX" voicing: superclean broadrange voicing from Peavey. very clear highs up to 5-6 kHz, subwoofer has to do a lot here (below 40 Hz). Mids are scooped, but still fundamental. this is THE voicing for extended range, active 5- or 6 strings with onboard controls.
"Vintage" voicing: this is where the transtube circuit is activated. you get a seriously compressed, tube-y sound with much less highs than the other channels/voicings. I love this channel with passive PU's that have a bright sound. By turning down the tone pot gradually, this amp starts to kick your chest. very usable sound for P or J style basses. bass is vintage centered around 90 hz.

Equalizer: low / mid / mid freq / high. mid frequency goes from 200 Hz to 2.0 kHz. with +/-15 dB boost the world is waiting for you. there is so much variety between 200 and 800 Hz that I won't go into details here. After all I mostly use the 200 Hz setting to add a bit more body or 1 kHz to pull the sqeak out.

Effect Send / Return: the send jack can be used as Line-In when using a stereo cable. Connect your mp3 player or your computer for training with backing tracks. When you use a mono guitar cable, this is a regular -10dB / -10dB (send/return level) post-eq effect loop which can be used as line-out or tuner send.

Master volume: the smaller Peavey MAX series dont have this, I'm glad to own the big one, because the preamp gain structures are very interesting and detailed.

Headphone jack: good speaker simulation. and goes LOUD. no, I mean REALLY LOUD. I didn't turn past 9-o'clock setting at the master volume because I'm scared of the volume. :) But nevertheless, very clean, good sound.

So, what are we missing? a DI or line-out would have been nice. A mute switch would have been nice. The effect send does a good lineout-job though.

The low down: this is a KILLER amp. unbelievably versatile channels which are fun to play with. you can get a good bass sound out of every bass you plug in, no matter how bad the pickups are.

I give this amp a 9.5 out of 10 for features. For 260 euros this is THE amp. I am very pissed about my Gallien-Krueger BL115, which is more professional concerning connectivity, but lacks sound forming options and cost nearly the double amount of cash.

I use following basses:
Spector NS4-Europe 4-string (3pc maple neckthrough/maple body, EMG HZ P/J set, tonePump circuit, 2band eq, passive pu/active eq)
Ibanez BTB205 5-string (3pc maple bolt-on/agathis body, stock DX5 soapbars, Ibanez "P.H.A.T" bass-pot, active)
Peavey Zodiac Dave Ellefson (maple bolt-on/alder body, Seymour Duncan Quarterpounder P/J set, completely passive)
Peavey Cirrus 4 BXP 4-string (5pc maple/walnut neckthrough, string-thru agathis body, stock Peavey VFL active soapbars, 3band eq)

I think I am allowed to say I play every style possible.

Talking about electronics, the amp is very clean. No noise at all. Every bass you plug in sounds great. The voicings and parametric mids make this a super-flexible amp.

I wished they had added a horn.. speaker is really good, don't get this wrong, but the "knack" is missing when not playing with the "MAX" voicing. But what do you expect for 260 euros...

Rating: 9/10 because this amp is perfect for practice or in the rehearsal room. This beast goes reeeaaally loud for its price.

You get a 5-year-warranty. I've never seen something like that in this price range. Peavey plays a role model here. I think this amp will not leave me so soon... my first guitar amp, 11 years ago, was a Peavey with 8" speaker (Rage series). I played guitars and later my 5-string basses over it when my big amp was in the rehearsal room. I still have it at home and it WORKS. I'm very confident that this amp will last even longer, because it has the DDT speaker protection circuit.

Never had to deal with them.

I play music for 10 years now... I got this amp by attending the finals of a national band-contest. Means, I haven't paid for it and had no idea what was coming up. And now I am so overwhelmed by the versatility and the suitability for daily use. A very very very good amp. MUCH better than modeling amps like the Line6 or Vox, because the Peavey has really TRUE tones to work with. I am very happy.