Peavey Bravo 112

Two channel amp with seperate EQ and great reverb and effects loop. Amp uses a pair of EL-84s for about 25 watts. Has bright in and gain boost features.

Let me just say that this amp is the ultimate metal practice amp. Its a practice amp, lets be real. Your not going to be able to gig with a pair of EL84s worth of power. Not even Mesa Boogie can get enough gigging power out of that setup.
On the other hand, the amp sounds cranked up at very low volumes. It really gets the ultimate Marshall style crunch at a very low setting.
The voice is not Marshall-like. Its sort of this heavy metal almost the Randy Rhode's Crazy Train sound. (I know, But Randy used Marshalls dude).
Well here is a secret. You see, a Marshall is such a great amp, that you can turn the midrange knob up all the way, and it still sounds musical. You can't with the Bravo. The mid past 4 sounds like cardboard. But, I placed a REAL 5150 speaker (Shefield 1200) in this combo and now there are no settings of mid that sound like cardboard anymore. A great speaker was the fix. It still sounds like no Marshall though, but it does sound great with a lot of sizzle style harmonics ringing off the power chords when the gain and boost are maxed. And the reverb is great. It really works well with high gain solo settings.
Anyway..Its a great practice amp. It has the tight crunch and fast response of a high gain Marshall. Its a shame they stopped making these amps because they are probably the best sounding at low volume amps that I have ever played. BEDROOM VOLUME METAL, which we all with we could do with our Marshalls.
So if you have one. Get rid of that speaker. I know the 5150 speaker is 16 ohms and ther output transformer is set to 8 ohms, but it doesn't hurt the amp when you make the load BIGGER. Incidentally, I tried a Greenback Celestion, and the bass got sloppy wide.
Guy M

Update to previous submission Well, it has a 85W power consumption, but the speaker-output is only 25W. The clean channel eq is not adjustable enough to my demands, only low,mid,high.

With my semi-acoustic I get a distortion on the clean channel when I put the volume higher then 3. On lower settings, you know there's an amp, because of the volume, but you don;t really notice it. It sounds too natural, i love it. On higher gain, you get too much feedback anyhow.

Still hasn't broken down, driven it around in a car behind my Zundapp cycle, had to tow it of stage when it was still hot, etc. etc. Another tube amp would be gone by now, but this little baby not.

This thing is too beautifull to be true. I would buy a second one for stereo effects if I had the money.

It has a great clean channel, and a nice gain channel. The effect loop is just a pre-amp out, power amp in one. There are two speaker connections on the back, a 4 and an 8ohm
I use it at home and at gigs, on both it does well enough, though it's hard to regulate the lower volumes. Just one little movement of the gain-control can multiply the whole volume. The gain-boost however is increadible, I found out about it when I thought one of the buttons was loose, but when pulling it, my guitar sounded like, well, like a very nice distorted guitar.
It's greatest drawback is the delay between switching channels

I'm using a Gibson Epiphone. I don't know the type, but it's one of the cheaper ones. The amp can do anything. From atmospheric plays to quite heavy sounds. But for the real heavy sounds, I have a Boss ROD-10 overdrive on a low setting. It is quite noiseless for a tube amp. It's just that fan that makes an irritating humming noise. The reverb also has some extra noise in it, but when you start to play, you won't hear it anymore.
The distortion can go from real easy, for playing a nice blues, to very aggressive. You have to turn up the volume for this though, but why are you playing anyway. It's just all about making a hell of a lot of noise. It has also a nice punk-sound in it. When playing death-metal, you have to choose from playing rythem or solo guitar. When trying to do both on one channel, they'll both suck. It can't produce an agressive growl and a clear high sound in one. Just put a distortion pedal between you and your amp, and you will have a hell of a sound. One of the worser things is that is will be making that high peeeep when you have the gain to high, especially when the countour(middle)- control is turned up.
The clean channel will be going a bit distorted when the volume is set to 2'o clock. But on any other volume it's really great. (I wouldn't want to put it on the higher volumes anyway, cause my guitar has a high output level and I might blow the speaker)

I only have this amp, and it never let me down.

Well, it's a great amp. It has a perfect clean sound and a nice distorted one, though you might want to use some other pedal to get your solo's out right. It has only one problem, the channel switching takes too much time. When you press the switch, you have to wait half a second before you'll get any sound again. And if it broke or was stolen, I would buy another one right away, if i had the money.
With my band, it's ocasionally used as a bass amplifier and guitar amp. in one. The bass goes in the high input, and I do the low. Only during solo's the bass drops away, further its great.

25W 12" tube combo, two channels, reverb, effects loop 2 EL-84 3 12AX7
I wish it had a master volume that controlled the output of both channels so you could balance the channels against each other, then bring the volume up or down as you liked. But apart from that, it's pretty much got it covered.

It's a psycho tube amp. It has screeds of gain, more gain than most people would know what to do with. Then you pull the "ultra" switch and suddenly there's a whole lot more gain on top of that. Which is great for me. I never run full gain but I like all that gain in reserve. A lot of amps only have a saturated distortion when wide open, and that kind of irks me.
The tone is very tube, warm, full-bodied. The distortion is killer, the clean is passable, it's OK but it's never going to equal a normal Fender. The clean channel breaks up a little at full volume, which is how a tube amp should be for me. Another great thing about it is that the distortion channel has active bass and treble, making it pretty versatile. The distortion can be as brutal as you want. But it also excels at lower gain settings for those half clean half dirty almost SRV sounds. It doesn't sound like SRV, but that kind of thing. I run the gain at about 5, then I can clean up by backing off my guitar volume, yeah it's really good, touch sensitive, dynamic.
My main guitar has a mixture of active and passive pickups, they're wildly different in output, so it's like channel switching, active is mega distortion, passive is bluesy break-up.
It has incredibly little extraneous amp noise. But it does have a fan to cool the tubes which are buried inside it. The fan make a lot of noise which only matters if you're playing quietly in your bedroom. The effects loop is not really an effects loop, it's just a pre-amp out, power-amp in. So if you're putting effects in the loop (I don't) they might clip a bit when you're playing loud, because they'll be getting a full-strength pre-amp signal. I actually like this, because then I can plug it into my Marshall power amp and make it much louder than 25W.
There are two minuses in my experience, a major one is that the speaker in mine sucks. It's a really dull flavourless speaker. I bought it in spite of this (don't ask why). I have used it with a variety of other speakers (there are speaker jacks for 8ohm or 4ohm combinations) and I think changing the speaker makes a tremendous improvement. Playing into a 412 is good too. Another minor point is that the reverb control also affects extreme treble sounds. Even with the reverb turned off, the reverb control position affects the sound significantly. It's not too bad, there's a sweet spot in the middle which is about right for the tone and a good reverb setting.

When I bought the amp, the reverb was wired with the shield and signal reversed so it was mega noisy. Also a reverb spring was broken. But this was fixed for me straight away and I've had no further problems in the four years that I've had it. I'd gig without backup, but one day it might turn on me.
I have to say Peavey is extremely unreliable in New Zealand. I cannot reconcile all the stuff I read in Monitor with my real life experience. I got off lightly with my reverb experience. The only Peavey I know that hasn't broken is a Rage 158. And I know two Bandits, two Supreme 160's, one TNT 150, one Mark II bass head, and my bravo that have all broken. The other failures were mostly intermittent faults, the amp would start, then after 15 minutes decide it only wanted to play at 1/4 volume, stuff like that. It was really an epidemic of Peavey sickness.
So Peavey scares me. I've also found their Black Widow speakers to be fragile. You see dozens of old Black Widow frames in NZ music stores, used to prop up furniture and stuff. I would never use one again.
I suppose either Peavey's propaganda is all shit, or they specially select their dogs and rejects for New Zealand.
Marshall also seems to be a liabilty here, Fender is perhaps better. I'm not sure.

It had a three-year full warranty. The importers (Australis Music) were very good. Repaired it without hassle. The shop I bought it from let me deal directly with them. I was lucky.
My friend bought his bandit from another shop. They were a joke, they did all warranty work themselves, would not send it to the authorised repairer, could not find the fault, then charged him for a false service claim, a complete load of shit, because the amp was still broken when he got it back.

Maybe I will buy another one. They're very cheap second-hand now. I would like a back-up because they're not made anymore.
I paid way too much for it, but there was no way around it, the NZ dollar was very weak then.
I was looking at Marshalls, Fenders, Crates all in the mid-range. This amp suited me best. At that time, I think most amp companies had pretty crap mid-range product.
But now there are a lot more good amps to choose from.

2 channels (clean & distortion)with effects loop, footswitch for channel and reverb. Clean channel has a bright switch.

The clean channel sounds pretty versitile and the second channel can put out a vintage distortion sound. The amp is quite overall except for the annoying internal fan in the unit itself. When in a small room, the sound of the fan is distracting at best.

No complaints on the overall performance of the unit but getting back to the fan, this little design addition seems to indicate that Peavy may have tried to put too much circuitry into too small a space.

E-mail seems to be the best way to get answers. Peavy has answered any question that I have sent them.

The Bravo has pretty well met my expectations for a small tube amp. The sound is far better than most solid state amplifiers in its price range.

good features for the money.

not bad sounds, when it worked.

i bought this in the u.s. from daddy's music in n.h. it worked for about a month. i had it repaired, hoping that peavey would cover the bill under warranty. it was repaired by an authorized peavey dealer. but after numerous phone calls, and letters, i was ignored. i'll never buy peavey equipment again.

i spoke to a customer support person, who promised he'd help me out. but he never did.

don't ever buy peavey. not reliable. low class junk.

shared eq, no master volume on the clean channel.

good distortion tone. nice practice amp, but big enough to go to band practice with.

i never used it for any gigs. 3 months after buying it, it died. it cost $80 to get it fixed. peavey would not honor the warranty since i bought it in the u.s. i'll never buy peavey again. tubes shouldn't be mounted to a circuit board. a month after it was repaired, it was dying again, so i ended up practically giving it away. the speaker also died. i had to replace it with a nice celestion G12-80.

they said they would honour the warranty, but they never did. i wrote them 4 times, called them, etc. they ripped me off.

it was the first and last peavey i'll ever buy!

Very versatile. With switchable channels, can get clean, warm tube sound, or very thick-sustained overdrive. Effects loop very handy for using a rackmount devices. Use this amp weekly in church playing cutting-edge music. Has plenty of power, as I run a direct box out to the PA. Only feature I wish it had were a footswitch for the bright on/off, and on the overdrive channel- a footswitch for regular overdrive and super-overdrive.

Very quiet for a tube amp. Any can achieve a wide range of sounds, which is why I like it. Clean channel is clean, even at higher volume. Distrortion can be anywhere from smooth, with great harmonics, to very edgy, almost metal.

Had to have it serviced once in over 3 years. Wire came loose somewhere inside- covered under warranty. Otherwise, this amp is tough. It gets moved around several times per week, bumped, banged, bounced. Once it even rolled down my basement steps end-over-end, though I don't recommend this.

Repaired once under warranty- no questions asked. Warranty was for one full year.

I'd buy it again in a minute. Only amp I've liked as much has been the Classic 30- which didn't have as great of a distortion as the Bravo.