Peavey Backstage 50

This is a solid-state amp from the 80's, I think. My dad's friend gave it to me along with an old guitar and some pedals about 2 years ago. It has an OD and a clean channel, with a bright switch on the OD channel that doesn't do much. It's got an effects loop, but since I don't have that many pedals (not to mention cables) I can't use it. It's got reverb, which i only put on at like 3. I use it at either my house or jamming at my friends house. I wish it had chorus, because i'm not a big fan of any of the other features.

I use an Ibanez GSA60 with two single coils and a humbucker. I play metal, classic rock, and a little hardcore punk, and it doesn't suit it well. The distortion is just muddy and plain. The clean is pretty bad, too. It's a really noisy amp, especially when the mids are turned up. I've used it in my friends garage where it absolutley sucked, but it sounded slightly better in my other friend's jam room (the carpeting might have something to do with it). I can get fairly good distortion on it using my Ibanez SD-9 with the gain turned all the way up (on both the amp and pedal), but it makes a sh*tload of noise, even when i'm playing. The clean channel distorts at high volumes, too. The amp isn't that loud, either. You can barely hear it over a drummer. I just really don't like this amp.

I would not gig with this amp EVER. It's way too quiet. The amp has worked fine for the time i've had it, though, even though sometimes it overheats and this wierd cheese smell comes out of the front. Last time it happened, I looked at the back of the amp, and smoke was coming out of the speaker. The amp also cut out. I think I blew it out or something. The amp is at my friend's house and I haven't tried it out since this happened. I hope it's ok though, not because I like it but because I want to sell it (even though only an idiot would buy it).

Never talked to Peavey.

I've been playing 2 years, and I know that this amp does not sound good. If it got lost or stolen or something, i'd be mad because, well, it's my amp, but I sure as hell wouldn't buy it again. I'd probably get a Peavey XXL or XXX or something. Just don't buy this amp. I think i'm being pretty nice giving this amp a 2.

bought it around 10 years ago for #120 and was a tad supprised when i foud that the peavey amp had been fitted into the cab of an early '60s vox ac-10 twin and so was nicknamed 'frankenstein'!
looks great and sounds amasing!

using it as a bass amp at the mo, sticking an olp 5-string and a hoyer 5045 through it, still it copes bravely for the stuff i play (metal) though the distortion s shite! too muddy for my taste. bags of volume, keeps up with the guitarists 120 watt crate without breaking a sweat!

its built like a fucking tank! never had any problems with it. i am gonna get over hauled befor the next gig just to be safe.

never needed it.

been playing since was 18, also have and epi sg, a danelectro u2 and a vox cambridge 30 reverb twin.
wish the peavey has a better distorion channel, apart from that it rocks like a bitch!
if any one has a schematic for it could they email it to me please!

50 watts. Hi-lo Input, two channels (clean and overdrive/destortion) effects loop, High mid and low gain, Reverb, headphone jack, brigh switch etc.
Very impressive.

I currently run a Epi Les Paul, Yamaha metal guitar thing and a cheap squire strat. I use for bedroom practice / hall practice with rest of band and even been used in a gig. The clean sound is very crisp when set properly. The destortion is very versatile as you can adjust the different gains to create either a light destortion for oasis like stuff or throw it all up for a kick ass grungy sound. Not very good for metal sound but heh, I'm also running through a zoom gfx4 which takes care of that. Woulda been ten if there was more meat behind the destortion.

I've had this amp 3 years, never ever had any problems, guy before me had it 5 and said he had no problems, still going strong. As I say I have gigged this amp and it's been fine, I trust the amp because I think it trusts me, I look after it and dont smash it about :)

never dealt with them.

An extremely good value for money purchase which has huge sound for such a small amp. Very dependable, Ideal for bedroom practice and band practice, superb first amp, I anticipate I'll be keeping it for a while. If it ever got stolen I'd fight to my wits end to get it back. For #60 / $100 this is a brillient buy.

Solid state, 50 watts, 2 non footswitchable channels. Decent sounding reverb. Bright switch, etc., etc.

I use this amp mostly as a practice amp, and also with the worship band at my church. The amp has a great clean sound and is really useful for country music. The distortion is horrible, but for a solid state Peavey amplifier from the 1980's what would you expect anyway?!? Using a Digitech Rp-100 and a ProCo Rat makes even this little junker sound incredible!!

I've owned this amp for 16 years and the only problem I ever had was one of the speaker wire clamps came loose. Took me 10 seconds to fix. Otherwise, this amplifier has been extremely reliable.

Haven't had to deal with them.

I've been playing over 30 years. I own a Peavey Impact, Epi Les Paul, Daion Heritage 78,and a Sigma DR-4H guitar. My main amp is an Acoustic 160. As I already said, I use an RP100, Rat Pedal, and several other effects. As a clean amp I think it works great; home, church, or studio. As for the distortion...it stinks. So get yourself a decent modeling pedal and this little amp will serve you well.

u know whut they are, if not look above.

for a solid state 0 valve amp, this is the mutts nuts. the general sounds at gigs need to be miced up, but if you use it as a practise amp, i suggest putting a y cable into ur guitar, leading this against the wall and plugged in one end, and on the other a tiny amp hooked up with fx that u have, this makes evil distortion with great tone.

its been in the family for around 15 years i think (im only 14)and as far as i know has never broke down.

ive been playing for 4 years, and seeing as its not mine i wudnt get another if it was nicked. the only problem i can see is that on my version you cannot seem to use a footswitch, but as its a practice amp, i dont care.

Features are laid out in below posts. Offers two channels, no footswitch, Reverb. Good bedroom/practice amp.

I'm using this amp with either a Peavy Wolfgang Special or a Gibson Les Paul Standard. The clean sound with this amp is very nice, clean and crisp. The distortion is terrible. Just plain terrible. I prefer to use a stompbox or my Johnson J-station with it to make it sound better. I use this only for private practice in my home so nobody else hears the horrible distortion other than my wife.

I've had this amp for over two years now. I purchased it used and I've never had the first problem out of it. But then it's only been out of my house twice.

Never had to deal with them

The Peavy is for practice at home. I have a Marshall 1966A powered by a Yamaha power amp and a Digitech Legends II pre-amp that I keep at my bands rehersal space. If this amp were stolen, I'd buy another used small practice amp like this. I dont know that I could find this same model. This is a wonderful amp for someone who may just be starting out and it looking for a decent, affordable, small practice amp.

50 watt transistor amp. 2 Channels. Shared 3-band EQ. Clean channel volume and bright switch. OD channel, pre and post gain controls. Also reverb. Hi and lo gain inputs. Headphone jack and effects loop. Channel and reverb both switchable with Peavey 2 button footswitch.

Played with a variety of twin humbucker guitars. Good for blues/rock/metal. Mainly used for home use and rehearsal. Used at a couple of small gigs. All the sounds you could need.

Peavey's magazine is always full of readers letters about how their gear survived car crashes, earthquakes etc. I thought it was a load of rubbish til I had this amp. I've had it ten years, kicked it around, thrown it in and out of vans and no complaints. It is biult like the proverbial brick !*#@house!

The only contact I had with Peavey was to source a footswitch. They were friendly, helpful and the switch arrived promptly.

This was my second amp. I had a Squier 15 for a couple of months when I started playing and replaced it with this. I also have a Laney Mighty Fifty, but that only has one channel and no reverb. At the rehearsal studio I used a variety of other Peavey amps and I love the tones available. If my amp died, I'd get another Peavey.

This is a solid state amp which has hi and lo gain inputs, a bright switch, channel switch, effects loop, eq and reverb.
Basically it is a great practise amp and I also use mic'd up for gigs.
The reverb is foot switchable but a major disadvantage is that you cannot foot switch the channels.

I use a Strat through this amp and play mostly blues. however the amp is very versatile and has a fair amount of clean headroom. the clean channel starts to break up just past 12o'clock. The eq is quite sensitive. i dont really use the distortion channel as I prefer to use pedals through the clean channel. The ditotion is not very good at low levels but becomes better when you turn up. the reverb is good but not as lush as on some of the Fender amps.

Never had a problem with it. I don't use a backup.

I have never had to deal with them.

I have been playing for about twenty years. This is a very good amp for the money. I have used it for gigs, recording and practice, for larger gigs it has to be mic'd up but it has a very big sound for a small amp. The best thing about it in my view is that it is very portable and overall has a good variety of tones and uses. As previously mentioned I wish you could foot switch the drive channel but I use an Ibanez Tubescreamer and Session Jerry Donahue Pedal for drives and leads which I prefer the sound of anyway. I would recommend it as a very good amp for beginners and it is very versatile.

It's got nice reverb. For the rest: see below

Clean channel: Pretty versatile and sounds OK. You can get decent sounds at most eq settings, ranging from twangy country to more jazzy tones. Sounded best with single coils, allthough at the low-treble settings I'd prefer humbuckers. Don't expect sonic nirvana though. This amp did it's job as a practice amp OK, and that's about it. The clean channel has good headroom as well, it starts to sort of 'break up' around one o'clock , when using humbuckers. Turning the volume knob further gives an overdriven sound that's not bad at all. No saturated valve sound but still...

Overdrive channel: This channel sports Peaveys classic lineup with 'supersat' and 'post' knobs, basically being preamp- and 'master' volume for the overdrive channel. Wether this channel sounds good or not is ,of course, a matter of taste. In my opinion, it does not sound very impressive at low volumes. That goes for many other amps as well. This is, however, a solid state amp, and I've tried other tranny-amps that sounds way better at bedroom volumes. When you wind up the volume though, the sound quality 'winds up' as well.(again - using humbuckers) I got my best sounds from this amp by setting the post knob to around 6 - 7 and varying the supersat knob from 3 to around 8. With max preamp volume, the sound tended to become harsh and noisy, without really adding that much gain to the sound.

In general, this amp sounds good when played loud but the overdrive channels sucks at low volumes. That is sort of normal on tube amps. From a solid state amp like this however, I would have expected better sounds at low levels. The clean channel is really good though, the reverb as well. The way I see it, this amp makes for an excellent beginners amp.

It was very reliable and caused no problems until a few months ago. For a while I used it as a rehearsal amp with my band and played with the vol.knobs at around 7-8. After a few weeks with this mistreatment the amp developed sort of a weird distorted nasal sound at both channels and at all volume levels. Sounded kinda like a cross between an early 70's tranny distortion unit and a blown up speaker...and worse! (I guess some of you 'modern band guys' probably would call THAT an excellent sound but it does not suit my tastes.) I have opened it and tried to figure out what's wrong, gone through the circuits and replaced some components + + +. But no way... this amp is now officialy dead, useless and discarded. Too bad, it was a good practice amp. I'd have to say that any amp should stand being played at say 70 % even over a longer period of time. Therefore I'll give it only a 6 on this one. Afterall, it was very reliable until it started to develop sound effects from the latest star wars movie...

Never dealt with them

I've been playing for 8 years now, and owned this amp right from the beginning. It was my first one and I have kept it ever since. Generally speaking it's a good little amp, cheap and with decent tones. I probably wont be looking for another one, but I can certainly recommend it to beginners or experienced players that want a low budget practice amp. What I used to love about it was that super cool classic Peavey 80's look with the now 'vintage' Peavey logo. What I hated was the fact that the low volume higain tones sounded like ..well.. crap. Better get yourself a pedal! It's got a nice reverb though.

A Christmas gift. This was my first amp that I ever owned. It has two channels (clean and distortion). Solid State. Headphone jack. No external speaker out. 50 Watts. I used this amp for 5 years and never had a problem with it. I used it for bedroom use, recording, small gigs. It never had enough balls or power. Good EQ though because it was versatile.

I used many guitars with this little amp. Humbuckers sounded the best through it on distortion and single coils sounded best on the clean channel, go figure! It sounded decent for a beginner amp. I always used boss pedals so it always sounded meaty enough.

Never had a problem with it. It was dropped and moved across the country of Canada and back several times. Never needed or used a backup with this little wonder!

n/a

Not a bad little amp. Keep in mind that it is a beginner amp. I wish that it had been a tube amp. I was always looking for that sound and didn't achieve it with solid state of course!

This amp has all the basics pluse even more. I would say this amp kicks much ass!!!! If you could find, one buy it!!

The best sound in an amp i have ever bought! lol

This amp works with any effect you could put into it!

never had to have it fixed,and I bought it used!!!

This amp Rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This amp is very versatile, you can get excellent rock and blues tones. However this isn't really a good amp for heavy metal or grunge or anything like that, but hey, thats what pedals were made for.
As for the actual features, here they are:
-2 Input jacks, high gain and low gain
-2 channels, one is called bright and the other is a channel with gain
-Its got an effects loop and an headphone jack
-Equalizer with "Low", "Mid", and "High" settings
-And its got reverb
If they would have thrown in a place to plug in extra speakers, that would have made it a ten

I use a cheap ass squier with 10 cent p/u's and it still sounds great.
The clean channel is clean no matter what and the distorted channel is versatile in that you can dial up almost anything.

I just got it so it's too early to judge, but its a solid-state so it should last.

never dealt with

Just a great amp, I love it. I tried it up against a brand spankin new Fender Princeton 112 delux and this peavey pissed all over it. It was a great value at 85 bucks too.