Peavey Bandit 65

i have no idea what year..probably in the 80's. i got it for free beccuz my dad did a job for some guy and the guty gave him the amp in return then my dad gave it to me.it is versitle enough for n e thing from hard rock to blues.2 channels.clean and distortion.the distortian sounds like shit so i usuall leave it on the clean channel and use my boss metal zone distortion box.

sounds really clear but it has a slight humm when using high gain/.

never had a problem in over 5 years..except in the selector footswitch thin a wire cam loose and i had to solder it back on.

very great first amp or practice amp.

This has been covered below. This amp is either a joke, or a useful tool, depending on how you run it. If you use it as is, by itself, it's QUITE a joke. If you establish your main tone with something else, and line into the Bandit to bring the volume up, then it can be very good sounding and useful. In regards to features, it has more than I'll ever use. I'm especially fond of the spring reverb. That's the best sounding thing about the amp

I'll decline to give a numbers rating. By itself, the clean channel is very flat, which can be a good thing if your trying to get your main tone from an outside source. All the tone controls work well for fine tuning. The distortion channel is totally unusable IMHO. I forget that it's there. The way that I'll be using it is as follows: Either my Morley JD-10 amp emulator, or one of my small (5 or 15 watts) tube amps with a homemade line out, into the Bandit's clean channel. So far, I've only tried it at the house, or while giving a guitar lesson. I'll put it on the bandstand this Friday and put it through the paces. It was suggested to me that I put the JD-10 into the loop, bypassing the preamp section, but this caused me to lose my reverb, and also lose a lot of volume, so I'll continue to put it into the front end. As I mentioned before, the reverb is really beautiful. Not as good as, but closer than anything else to an old blackface Fender's verb.

Now here's the good part. You see these amps in pawn shops all over America. As a matter of fact you see ALL kinds of real old Peavey solid state stuff all over for dirt cheap. That's because that stuff just WON'T DIE. Any trouble with any of this stuff would just be minor surgery - nothing serious. I've got a couple of scratchy pots and that's all. I think that you could push it out of a fast moving vehicle and it would still fire right up and work fine. These amps were actually used by some well known players who didn't want to tote their good tube amps out on the road. Roy Buchanan, Son Seals, and Eddie Clearwater are a few who used them onstage.

I can't say for sure, but I know that Peavey has a good site, and an excellent question/answer forum.

I've been playing for 30+ years. I'm a tube amp man, but not so much of a snob about it to blow off an amp like this. You just have to know how to get the best out of it. The secret is using outside help. I've been lining small tube amps into larger amps (both tube and transistor) for many years. This amp previously belonged to my keyboard player, who used it for his electric mandolin. He let me have it for $10 because he needed gas money! He told me that it was given to him, so he made $10 off of it. I'll use it for small gigs where I don't want to drag out a lot of gear, or burn up the tubes in my good amps.

I'm not sure what year the amp was made, I'm assuming sometime in the mid 80's... however, I bought it on consignment for $150, pretty good deal if you ask me. It's the second amp I've ever owned. If you are just starting out on guitar, and want an amp tht will be useful for you for a long time, go with this amp. It's got a clean and dirty channel, an effects loop, but no headphone jack (my roomate wishes it did...) It's PLENTY powerful for me... this amp can get LOUD. I used it to play in front of like, 400 people (it was pretty quiet, but a BIG room) and didn't set the volume any higher then 4.5, and that was more then enough. I can see this amp easily having enough power for me for a long time (till I can save up the $$ for a Marshall stack :-)

Because left-handed guitars are so freakin rare and expensive, I have a terrible strat copy with three single coil pickups. I've been playing for about 5 years now, and I'll play anything from Punk to classic rock. The amp has pretty good sound when played clean, but I'm not a big fan of the distortion. It sounds really really muddy, and it hums a LOT too. One interesting thing about it... it might have been the area I lived in or whatever, but I managed to pick up short-wave radio through the amp...?? Anyway, the amp does have decent sound overall, and I fell in love w/ it when I first played it.

This amp is SOLID. Trust me, I've dropped it (accidently), and have gone back and forth to college with this amp, you would never know. When I bought it, the footswitch was a little unreliable (it, unlike the amp, looked pretty old when purchased), and stopped working shortly after I got the amp. This sucks if you don't have any other pedals to go from clean to dirty. But the amp itself is solid.

For the last 3 years, this has been my amp, and I've been relatively happy with it. It hums pretty loud, picks up religious radio, and is about the heaviest thing I've ever picked up (someone said something about the Bandit 65 being a pound per watt... same applies here). However, for the price, this is one amazing amp. It is NICE and loud, has a great clean channel, and is a great amp to get you through those first couple of years when you want to sound good and play loud, yet don't want to drop $1000 on an amp. If it was stolen, I would probably by something else, not because I don't like this amp, but because I like to play around with guitar equipment.

I'm not positive when it was made, but I bought it brand new in late 1986. It was, for all intents & purposes, my first amp. It has separate dirty & clean channels with channel switching only on the footswitch, an effects loop and a spring reverb that sounds like a loud crash when you accidentally hit the amp. Each channel has its own master volume and a brightness boost. The dirty channel has a midrange boost. She's solid state and 65 watts.

I was playing every guitar I owned through it... Strats, an old Ibanes RoadstarII and my Wolfgangs. It was my main amp until a few months ago when I got rid of it. I had outgrown it a long time ago, but I couldn't part with it. Basically, I only used the amp as a power source for my ADA preamp and my Quadraverb. I don't use those anymore, either... just a few pedals in the effects loop of my 5150 head. The amp itself was never great sounding. The distortion was plain awful and very fuzzy. The clean tone was clean, but had no real body. She's loud, that's for sure. I did have some really neat sounds through it over the years. It started with some pedals (A Boss OD1 was my drive), then a Rockman, then a Boss ME5, then the ADA/Quadraverb combination. It just got to be that I had neat sounds, but had to work really hard at them and knew there were better sounds to be had. It made me good at tweaking... that was for sure. The bare amp was nothing to brag about.

I had this for a little over 13 years without *one* problem. The treble boost on the clean channel started to flake out a little, but I never used it anyway. It never broke. I went through High School parties, various shows, bands, etcetera and there was not one problem.

I never used it for this amp, but they've been great with my for my 5150. They've been instructed to smooch you on EVH stuff, though. Since I never used it on for the Bandit, I'll give no opinion.

I've been playing for a little over 13 years. This was really my first amp. It makes a great first amp with a lot of power at a low price since you can now pretty much find them only used. I wouldn't buy another one at this point in time, but it was a great first amp. I bought this instead of a Champ12 at the time simply because of the price and the power.

Bought new in 1987. 2 channel solid state, requires footswitch for clean channel and reverb switching. High and low gain input, pre-amp out and power amp in. 4 Band equalization. Reverb. "Bright" and "Thick" sounds via pull knobs. Not a studio grade amp, but decent for practice and small gigs.

I've used it with several guitars. A Gibson Les Paul Studio Lite, a Charvel Model 4, and a Larrivee Solidbody Electric. It was a great amp for all of them. Not as much low end as I wish, but enough power for my garage band days. After about 5 years, the distortion seemed to sound like crap to me. To this day, I don't know if something is wrong with the amp or if my ears just improved to the level where I realized it was crappy sounding distortion. Anyway, I've been using it with the clean channel and stomp box distortion ever since. The clean channel is very strong and clear.

At 12 years old, this amp is still great. Other than having lousy distortion, I have no complaints. It still has great tone as a power amp.

This is the 2nd amp I ever bought (the first was a horrible Ross amp which sounded like %$&# and had constant deesback) and it is the only guitar amp I own today. I love it. It's the best money I ever spent. I won't be the least bit surprised when this amp is still kicking at age 20.

around early 80's - This is a great practice amp. I just add a "Real Tube" overdrive with a 12AX& and I get all the warm blues needed for a practice session - 65 watts..reverb, two inputs, some push pull knobs, overdrive saturation, all solid state circuitry, 1 12" speaker, great tonal combinations.

I put my Les Paul Custom, Strat, and Tele through it. I play bluesrock. This amp, for practice, has excellent tonal capabilities. Not loud or versatile enough for playing out, but as an in home amplifier, it is great. Nice clean sounds. Its fuzz saturation sound is OK, but just add a device of your choice. Mine is the "Real Tube"; and it sounds great.

It has been very dependable. I have played out with it too but; if you have a sort of loud band with other guitar players and a loud drummer, then you will have to crank it and can't really cut it. It should be catagorized as just a practice amp.

Don't know...never needed them.

If it were lost or stolen, I would replace it. Need an amp to stay at home while one is the road amp. It has suited it's purpose as a practice amp.

I don't know what year it was made but I think this amp is not that old. I think the bandit has too much bass and not enough treble to it. Like it doesn't sound very clean. I have a Digitech pedal board that I use with it. It sounds Pretty good with the pedalboard but without it, it sounds like shit. The amp fits my style because I like to play loud and the bandit is loud. The bandit has 1 channel. so It doesn't ahve any channel switches or nothing like that. I wish it had more channels, a cleaner sound, and thats about it. I use the amp in my room where I like to just kick back and play for hours. I used to have a band but I don't play with them anymore. The amp has a lot of power. the amp has MIDI inlets in the back.

I use an ibanez guitar with like I said a digitech pedalboard the pick-ups: I have two hummbuckers and a single coil pick-up ,theyy sound great with the amp. The amp is a little scratchy time to time but otherwise it is wonderful. The amp has a bassy clean sound which is what I don't like. the clean channel sounds like s**t . The distortion sounds like shit too. Thats why I have the pedalboard.

I can really depend on it . but I would never use it for a gig. I have had the amp for 9 months and it has never broke down on me

N/A

I have been playing for almost 3 years. If it was stolen I would be pissed cuz that ampp means alot to mean

I think this amp is great. I have been tickled pink with the distortion and reverb of this amp. It has "Pull clear" on two of the pre's and a "Pull thick" on another which sounds much better for some parts of the music that I play with my band, and we play mostly punk. I would recommend this amp for any young band who play lots-o-punk music. The power of this amp is good compared to some of my others, and there are no features that I do not use. It has effect loops in the back but no head phone jack.

I have a squire series strat and this amp sounds great with my guitar. The distortion is great for my style of music (PUNK). It has a slight hum, but if you're really going at it with drums and bass you can't hear it much. In my band I like to use alot of false harmonics which are like chimes but higher in pitch and in different places on the freat board, and the amp goes from false harmonics to power chords very nicely. The clean channel I use only during my practice and most tuning. The distortion is killer!!!

Well, my band and I have only practiced with it but soon we will do a gig with it. This amp has never broken in the two days that I have had it...I know thats not very long to be writing about, but I love it already!!!

I dunno, I got it at a pawn shop...

over all this amp is wonderful for beginners like my self(I have only been playing for a year" If this amp were lost or stolen I would get the same thing probably the only draw back is the weight, its very heavy. Soon I will get a new distortion pedle (more distortion!!!)cool!

UHM IT HAS A LEAD GAIN AND A NORMAL GAIN.A TREBLE,BASS,MID,REVERB BUTTON UHMMMM WHATEVER JUST LOOK AT THE OTHER SUBMISSIONS

THE SOUND IS PRETTY GOOD.IT'S VERY GOOD FOR DEFTONES KIND OF MUSIC. IT SUITS MY NEEDS.THE NORMAL GAIN IS PRETTY CLEAN.THE DIST. OF THE AMP IS REALLY WEAK.

YEAH IT'S PRETTY TOUGH.

I'VE BEEN PLAYING FOR AROUND A YEAR.I USE A STANDARD STRAT WITH BOSS OS-2,SD-2 A DOD PHASER,DUNLOP CRYBABY 535.IT'S PRETTY BEAT UP BUT IT STILL WORKS GOOD.GOOD SOUND.ENOUGH POWER FOR A GIG.

I LOVE IT!

I LOVE IT!!!!! GREAT SOUND!

PERFECT!

HUH?

O.K HERTE IS A IMPORTANT TIP! this amp was my first and i'm glad i bought it! when you're starting to play the guitar,this amp is perfect! DO NOT BUY A WEAK LITTLE AMP!this is a perfect amp! it sounds very hard!you will probably start a band anyway! perfect for little gig!