Peavey 5150 II

The way you get sizzle out of a 5150 (either a 5150 or 5150II) is to set the mid to zero, turn the presence all the way up and turn the treble somewhere between 0-3.
Guy

this is an update to my previous review. I had been complaining about the fact that the crunch option was not footswitchable, preventing the head from having a three channel type of set up .I spoke to someone from Peavey today and apparently the production models will have this feature incorporated in the footswitch. cool, now and very psyched to get my hands on one. I dont know why they said otherwise at the Namm show but whatever...

This is an updated version of the famous EVH 5150 head that so many of us have come to know and love. It has essentially the same two channels, but with separate presence, resonance, low, high, and mid controls for each channel. No reverb, and the clean channel has a crunch option like the original head. One of the most annoying things about the head is that the crunch option wasnt footswitchable. If it was then it would be like a three channel amp, which would be cool. I have read several reviews of the original head where this was a complaint, so you would think they would have incorporated a footswichable crunch in the new head...but they didnt, and that really sucks.

The sounds that come out of this head are ferocious! The lead channel is very similar to the original 5150, and I was told the circuit design was the same but I heard more of a nice sizzling high end response in the new head, it probably didnt hurt that the person playing through the head was Edward himself( This was at the Namm show in LA) and he is obviously capable of coaxing most any sound out of any amp and guitar, but this new head seemed to have more punch than the original. The 5150 I have seems to get a bit muddy or muffled sounding if you dont have the prescence knob pretty high up, but this new head had it set on like 5 or 6 and it was scorching. The rhythm channel was supposed to have this amazing shimmering clean sound but it sounds pretty much the same as the original, and the crunch option was predictably crunchy when engaged...but no damn footswitch option !!!! why the hell not Eddie?????

didnt buy it, just got to hear and check it out

I give this a 7 and im being VERY generous with that. the rating is more for the basic high gain sound this amp produces, which in my opinion shatters anything availible on the market today, but this new version left out two important features that would had made this head way more versitile; reverb and footswitchable crunch. I mean lets face it, the majority of people who are going to use a 5150, Ed included, are going to be using the lead channel 98% of the time, so the cares if there is a whole separate eq section for the rhythm channel, the amp would have been much cooler with the above mentioned options. Eddie said "this amp can sound like whatever you want" which is true if all you want is Van Halen, im not saying that as a negative, but I think Ed is looking to cash in on this latest marketing scam to make up for the money lost on thier last tour. The most hypocritical part of this whole review is that in spite of all this, I have already put a deposit on one.