Peavey Heritage VTX

Not sure how old this amp is but I accidently ran into this page:-)

I got mine back about 10 years ago. I needed something bigger than my Triumph 60 halfstack and my old guild thunderbird was getting hard to find tubes for.

I was actually looking for the sound of a twin reverb or superreverb.
Found this at a store along with a rack mount 12ax7 preamp

I usually use the tube preamp instead of the built in solid state one.
This amp is a good one. I play blues and slide. with the two preamps I have a VERY wide range of tones.

BTW I put fender speakers in it (bue label) With the all tubes and the seakers I got pre CBS fender sound at a bargain price.

varied I play a tele strat (with actives) 335 les paul and an electrified dobro through this amp.

It can play clean quite well...actually I use one channel completely clean and one dirty. Clean puts out more db cleaner that the other amp I use when playing (always have the twin and a stack rigged) a JCM800
Not rally sure How high it will go clean ...my amps are also miked to a 2000 watt PA for volume when needed.

I can MAKE the distortion brutal when needed increasing the gain on either the internal preamp my rack mount tube preamp or the gain on my active pickup strat.

bout it about 94 put hot rod tubes in it and speakers.

haven't done anything else but use it since.

bought it used

Im a retired engineer (aerospace) If it were to break I'd fix it myself.

hmm music in general 47 years guitar 40 years

don't know if I'd buy one again...they're not in production.

Since then Fender has made repros of the Old pre cbs models...I would probably get one of them as I could order it and not hunt around.

I believe this Heritage was made in the mid 80's (as per Peavey). I dont know about versitile, it seems to like to take the lead and isn't very sweet down below like my two Twins. I had it tuned up by a guy in Benicia CA who did a great job and repaired the foot pedel to it's original shape. Would be nice if it had a trem or vibrato but they made it with so much stuff and so many buttons, I think a Vibe might have gotten lost. Two channels, great Scorpian speakers. I read complaints about it's weight, but it's still about 8-10 lbs less then my early 90's Twin Red Knob and my late 90's Evil Twin. Hey..that's it, they could have put some legs on it to tilt it back.

I have lot's of guitars. Les Paul, two Strats, ES 340 and ES 346, and an Americn Dlx Power Tele. I'm not really up to what this old soldier can do. It feels it's best when you've got it cranked up and nasty. It likes to scream and do it harsh. I'm proud of this Peavey Heritage. I've got it's little brother, the VTX Classic 65 too. Another one that doesn't get much credit.

NO problems. No complaint. Some of the colored dots have fallen off a couple knobs, but that's age. I should be more concerned that Peavey can't produce replacements. Not much service. It's only got 4 tubes so there's nothing to really even Bias according to the tech.

Peavey was ok for answering what they could. But they didn't seem to want to or care to want to address replacement parts such as knobs, foot pedal and din plugs (well, at least they didn't blow me completely off). I was lucky to find the tech I did. He's also a Fender and Marshall warrenty rep.

Been playing 39 years, but I willingly admit I'm a hack. I have learned a lot about equipment and how it should sound and feel the last 8 years. When I see Neil Young using an old Sears Silvertone amp on stage, I realize you don't have to be major or overly expensive to be good. My Peavey Heritage is a rauaus party amp.

Lots of knobs and settings available. 2x12, 130 watts, 2 channel, very heavy. Old.

I use a Les Paul and SG. Play rock. Its quiet, and plays real loud. Distortion is pretty good, but like most Peaveys I have heard, it has a lot of features but sounds like dog. Clean tones are very muddy and indistinct, reverb is lousy sounding and very artificial. Thw whole amp sounds extremely processed and digital. I cannot believe anyone actually could think this amp sounds good. Maybe its just the 80s thing. I got it real cheap, and am going to dump it asap. What a pig. I have never heard a mainstream production Peavey combo amp in the last 25 years that was listenable. The newer models may be better, I dont know. I did hear the new Penta head and cab, and it is pretty nice.

Probably very good. They have a good rep for reliability.

Dont know the year. From the look of it, I would say the mid 80s. So many eq possibilities, there is something for everyone. Phaser built in, Two channels. lots of pull switches, high low inputs, 2-12s . Wish it had tremolo. 130 watts!

I use all the usual, Tele, Strat, SG, es135. Very good clean, very Fender like, decent distortion, which I really dont use. Extremely quiet. NO hiss or hum. Someone took good care of it and must have serviced it regularly. Reverb is not as good as a Fender, but still is fine. I had a Peavey Delta Blues 1x15, 2005 model, and this amp is better in every way. No comparison.

I am easy on my stuff, and dont expect any trouble. Play at home, and anyway its too damn heavey to lug around.

I wanted a Super Reverb, even the reissue, but dont have $1200. I saw this sitting in a corner at the guitar store, and as I was without any amp, figured why not? Very pleasantly surprised. Its a very nice amp. I feel it is a much better made amp than the Fender reissues. Still will hold its own in any comparison, and at the price, it leaves a lot of room in my guitar budget.

Don't know the year, bought in the late 80's for METAL. Not considered a metal amp, but it worked at the time with a ProCo Rat very well.
2 Channels with switching/combining feature. Never used Reverb after hacking the WEIGHTY Black Widow speakers off the bottom and turning the amp into a head only. Amp is loud and actually gets good tone at low volume. I use it at home. Plenty o' power.

Used crappy beginners B.C. Rich Warlock with the RAT pedal to pretty good effect. Wasn't until I got a strat copy with an active EMG pickup that I used the SATURATION on this amp at full force WITHOUT a foot pedal. People thought this was stupid, but I really liked the sound. It was rough and smooth at the same time.
Not a noisy amp at all. The phaser was a really cool feature, with a mid-sweep lock. You could make tones that sounded like they were coming out of a tin can with this.
Clean channel was very clean. Distortion with active EMG at full position sounded exactly like Sepultura's 'Beneath the Remains' album.

Very dependable, it was built like a tank. I had it propped up on a chair for awhile and one of the tube sockets shorted in and out. This plagued me for over a 6 year period. No one could figure out what the problem was--trasitors were blowing at random and the amp would die. Finally, someone caught the shorted socket in action and replaced it. My fault.

Never tried to contact company. Repairs were done by my inexperienced soldering hand, as well as some talented repair people in SF Bay Area.

Playing for 16 years on this amp. It was really my first amp, and I have little cared at all to buy anything else. I was into the Mesa Boogie "rectal-fire" B.S. for a little while, but looking back that is such a boutique amp. Too much leather and diamond plating. Peaveys had no such appeal and little street cred on the METAL scene, which was why I decided to keep it. Everyone could buy their Marshalls, etc....

Bought my Heritage VTX from a guy I was in the service with in 1982 for $300, it was just two months old and he realized he needed the money more then the amp - Lucky Me! I used to play a lot of Skynard, Allmans and the like, this amp had the perfect sound, With an overdrive pedal I could also make a reasonable facsimile of Hendrix, Sabbath and some heavier stuff. I like to tinker with the settings, the variations you can get are almost limitless. I loved the footswitch, which has been lost somewhere over the last 25 years, I am trying to track down a replacement. As far as power, I alway knew it was loud, but recently my 15 year old got a Marshall Half Stack and wanted to jam with me, to his suprise (as well as mine - I guess I had forgotton just how much power this thing really has) when he tried to crank up the Marshall to show off to the old man, I pushed the post gain up to about 7 and watched his eyes pop (any louder and I think they might have started bleeding!)

Back when I played regulary I used a Les Paul, a Tele, an SG, a double neck SG (the twelve string sound with the pase shift was an awesome thing to hear), and an ES-235. THe only one I kept all these years was the Les Paul (1980 XR-2 Model) I loved the way I could play at high volume clean, and the sound stayed that way, and with the footswitch instantly change to the saturated sound. THis was a great option in songs like Boston's Long TIme where the sound switches back and forthe several times, this amp can do it without any volume adjustment.

Talk about a tank this thing has followed me around the country for 25 years and still cranks like it was new. Everything is original except I had to replace one of the speaker baskets, and only that because on of my drunk college roomates put a piece of wood through it. Its been stored in basements, garages, and car trunks for months on end, and is seemingly completely unafected by the abuse - I wish I had held up as well over the past 25 years as this amp.

I've never had the occasion to deal with customer support, but I was amazed to find the Manual for the amp as an on-line pdf file on the Peavey website.

I've been playing for 30+ years, I've had a few Ampegs, a Fender and a Marshall. When I stopped playing regularly, years ago, the only two pieces of equipment I kept were my Les Paul and my Peavey Amp. A few years ago my now 15 year old started playing seriously, and now likes to jam with the "old man", I know I made the right choice on what to keep! If it were lost or stolen - I'd find another one - evidently, the way these things were built, there's still a lot of them oput there still cranking it out.

I bought this a couple years ago used for a hundred dollars. I honestly don't think the guy knew what he was doing selling this amp to some kid, but hey, it works for me! This amp was made in 1984 and still has all the original parts, tubes included. I have found this amp to be very versatile, able to replicate a multitude of sounds from country twang to hard, "Song 2"-esque tones. You just gotta tweak the knobs for awhile. I love that both channels (lead and clean) are active. Lets you play with alot more sounds than what you'd normally be able to acheive. The built in spring Reverb never works anymore (Apparently the only thing in this series that wasn't built like a tank), but when it did it had a beautiful, airy feel to it. Perfect reverb. It did what it was supposed to do, you know? This amp has more than enough power, I've NEVER had to go above 1 on the post-gain knob in order to easily overpower my freind's marshall set-up, cranked max. :D This sucker is LOUD, basically.

I'm only using a squier 20th anniversary strat, but it still sounds damn beautiful coming through this amp. It suits whatever I decide to play, really. It's like the guitar and the amp have some harmonious relationship going on. Point is, with a strat, you'll probably get any tone you want as long as you tweak a bit. Again, this sucker is LOUD. I garuntee that you would not want to be in the room for fear of having your ears bleed if it was cranked to anything above 2 on the post-gain knob if everything else was cranked. And again, this amp can come up with just about any sound you want it to as long as you like to tweak knobs. There's your hard crunch, a crystal clear clean channel, a mix of the two, playing with the EQ etc. etc. And then there's the freeze option on the Phaser that's just a whole OTHER bag of tones to play with. I don't think you can get tired with this amp's sound unless you never play with the knobs. The distortion is absolutely brutal, crossing the line from crunch to pure bone-rattling power if you so want it to.

I have done some pretty irresponsible things with this amp, and that's aside from never giving it maintenance. I've played with it in the rain, it's been in a dank basement for a year, I've left it on for a week, the usual stupid stuff. But it still plays like a dream! I'm actually surprised at how well made this thing is. Maybe because it's built like a tank (hefty-ass thing it is. Weighing in at around 100 pounds. Yeesh!).

Never had to deal with them, but they always have these manuals online and such, helpful things they are. As someone else said, the best customer support is building products that work.

I've been playing for a little over five years now, and this is the only gear I've ever owned. I might want to upgrade the speakers, but apart from that I don't need to upgrade this beast. If it were stolen, I'd be pretty screwed, but I think I'd seek out another one. I've been able to compare it to other products, and I'd still prefer this one. It has raw power behind it, y'know? I wish it had a working reverb, but I'm sure a pedal can replace that. I guess that's it for this review, my only advice is if you're able to find one of these amps, take it!

I don't have a clue when it was made, but it was probably made in the 80's or so. This amp has a lot of gain and will make your ears ring for days if you are not careful. Reverb, phaser, and two switchable channels that can be mixed to create a fairly diversified sound. The Black Widows speakers that was in the amp had to much edge, so I took them out an had a couple of car JBL subwoofers reconed to be voiced to PA and guitar application and now the amp sounds realy good. No efects loops, just preamp in and power amp. If you had a head phone jack on this amp, it would most sertanly kill you. I have Two blackface twins 135 watters and a Mesa Tremoverb, three Music Man HD-130, Fender Tonemaster, Ampeg VT-40, JCM 900 High gain, and a Laney pro 50 head, and also a Peavey Duel 212 and I love the different sound they all have for Blues, Rock, and Surf. Yeah, power it has, 130 watt of ear bleeding power.

I am using most solid bodys on this amp, because the half accoustic that I have will feedback to much. This amp has to much gain and power for those kind of guitars. I play anything from Jazzmaster, Stratocaster, Gretsch Duo Jet series, Gibson Les Paul and SG, Mosrite on this amp. The grinding gain is very smoth and I have to let go of my chords and damping the strings, it is just as good or worse than my Mesa or Marshall 900. Unbeleivable gain. You know why Lynnard Skynnard was using these amps way back then. Lynnard Skynnard southern Rock swamp stomping sound, for sure. The distortion does not have that fuzz sound, it is just smoth high gain cranking ear bleeding sound that will make everything that is not screwed down will rattle and fall down on the floor. This amp is very quiet, even at high levels until you plug a guitar in to it.

Yeah. I can depend on it. It is build very sturdy too, about 100 lbs sturdy. Very reliable amp as well. I would feel confident not to need a back up if I would decide to take this on a gig, but it is all about maintenance. The only thing I have to do, is to stick a fresh set of power tubes in to it. It does not have any preamp tubes to worrie about, since this is a hybrid amp

NA. Never had no reason.

I think have been playing for about 3 years now effectivley,(Dont have much time to play) but have owned and messed with guitars and amps on and off since the sixties. As I stated, I own a lot of amps and different guitars and you just got to collect and buy tons of gear to you are satisfied with your sound. I have weeded out what I don't want and I told my wife that If I die I want her to bary me in my gear, then I will be happy. I am satisfied with the stuff I have now and will never sell this amp.

Made in '87, discontinued for some reason, it got 2 channels, reverb, phase shifting. 130 watts switchable down to half power (65 watts) which is a nice feature. I used it on a thousand gigs and then it broke down. For about 85 dollars it was up and running again. I have about 14 other amps: fenders, hiwatts, a marshall and this is a "seedier" sound that is sometimes called for. The coolest feature, as others have mentioned on this site, is the "Freeze" mode of the phaser: when you step on the footswitch for the phaser in the frozen mode, it sounds like your guitar went into a tunnel. I can't say enough about that, particularly when you turn it back off again- reminscent of Randy Rhoads, and the solo in "In my time of Dying" by Led Zeppelin. The change in sound is in some ways more drastic than channel switching.

I use Les Pauls and Teles, This amp can stay pretty clean, but that's not what I would use it for. It can get pretty noisy, but that goes with the territory. The overdrive is much grainier than any of my other stuff, and that's what makes it worth owning- it's very different from the all-tube Fenders, etc

I've come to love Scorpion speakers- they have a nice warm low-end. Even when it's really loud it doesn't hurt your ears.

Super-reliable, like I said.

Actually, I lost the footswitch, so I'm looking for another one to replace it. I bought it new, and it couldn't have been more than $375. At the time, I owned only one other amp, and I needed something versatile, because I was doing everything from reggae to hard rock, so I ended up using it several times a week for many years. I guess the reliability of it is a big part of why I love it- it only broke down once- and that was after 7 or 8 years of beating the hell out of it, and sometimes leaving in the trunk of my car until the next gig, in the winter, even, in Chicago, even! It brings back great memories, and it makes my collection of amps well-rounded, because at this point. most of my other amps are pretty "high-end" and valuable, but the Heritage has a seedy sound to it that those amps can't get. For the amount of money I paid for it, it's a ridiculously good deal. Worth its weight in gold to me, and I wouldn't sell it for five times what I originally paid for it!

I bought this amp new in 1984 for about $600. It has 2 channels with channel switching via the 4 button footswitch. I have used the preamp out and power amp in as an effects loop for a rackmount ART digital multi-effects unit. The built in spring reverb never did work, but with my digital effects units, this was not an issue. This amp is so heavy that I don't like moving it around anymore, so I leave it set up in a theater where I gig weekly and take a much lighter Dean Markley with me on the road.

One feature that I love on this amp is the phaser. It has a pull switch that allows you to stop the sweep of the phase at any point in the cycle, and after stopping the sweep, you can use the rate control to place it wherever in the sweep cycle you want it. This is a fantastic feature that I have not found on any other amp except the Peavey Classic VTX and on no other brand at all. It makes the tonal possibilities almost limitless!

I play a 71 Gibson SG Deluxe with 2 humbuckers as my main guitar(I played a Les Paul for a while, until my back couldn't take it anymore!). I also sometimes play my 89 Fender Anerican Standard Strat, but my second choice of guitars is my 82 Peavey T-27(it gets better 50's and 60's Strat tones than my 89 Strat). No T-60's for me. They're heavier than Les Pauls.

The Heritage suits my styles of music(country and classic rock). I can get very clean sounds at high volume levels, but I must confess that I prefer outboard distortion devices to the dirty channel of the Heritage for the rock sounds I want.

This amp is very dependable. I have not had to replace any parts in 20 years of use. I don't know what Peavey did to make this amp so reliable, but I've had to have my Markley worked on twice within 3 months this year, and never had the Heritage in the shop at all. I've replaced tubes and the speaker in the Markley, but nothing in the Peavey Heritage!

Never had to deal with Peavey's customer service, but I lost the manual that came with the amp, and Peavey's web site has a downloadable PDF of the manual, so I just downloaded it and printed it out. I did this also for the misplaced manuals for my T-27 guitar and my 1545 monitor cabs. So my opinion of Peavey's customer service is very high.

I've been playing guitar since I was 14 years old(I'm 57 now). I also own a 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb amp that my parents gave me for my 18th birthday. It's a very sweet sounding amp, but I take it on very few gigs because it has too much sentimental value to me since my parents are both now deceased. I also have a late 60's Sunn head that I inherited from a dear friend and former band mate who was killed by his wife in a murder/suicide. Although I have some cabs that work with it really well, I don't take it out on gigs much either for the same reasons of sentimentality.

If my Heritage were stolen or lost, I would try to find another Heritage on eBay. Failing that, I would go for a Peavey Classic VTX, so long as I could get the footswitch with it.

The only thing I don't like about the Heritage is its weight. I'm getting too old to be lugging such a heavy amp around. And I wish it had a temelo like my Deluxe Reverb has.