Peavey Pacer

This amp is pretty decent i guess i got it for christmas from my parents, it requires a different type of footswitch and the distortion on it isnt great, the rage 158 has better distortion although its much smaller... i just stick to using distorion pedals, this amp has the reverb feature and can be pretty loud, so thats why i like it

i use my washburn nuno bettencourt and AXL fire axe on this amp and the amp itsslef has a nice quality it doesnt miss some random note when you play to fast or loud, in all places this can be pretty loud, as i have said before the distorion on this really is low quality, and when messing with the volume nobs at a high level, it makes some popping noise, so just keep the master volume up and the rgular down and you will be fine, just stick to a distortion pedal and keep the amp on clean distorion and you should get a nice distortion no matter what you like

Well like alot of peavey amps, they have the exposed back (which is great for carrying guitar cords, ditsortion pedals and foot switches)but it can cuase problems, the wires that connect to the speakers can rip off, and then you have to suaterize it, as long as you keep it in the same place for the most part you shouldnt have to worry about it

i never dealt with the peavey company i just had my step-dad fix it but you could take it to a guitar shop(except guitar center unless you have a warranty, they don't fix amps) the can fix it

I have only been playing for two years now but i am getting really big into guitar and i would buy this amp again if not better, their are many better amps out there but this is a good intermidiate level amp

Hey there my name is Phil Wallace and I am a 20 year old singer/songwriter. I bought an old Pacer when I was 14 from an old lady for $25.00 and it worked pretty good other than the dry rotted speeaker that was in it. I dropped an 8 ohm Black Widow in it and it did ok then it started shorting out and having issues so I put it in a buddies automotive shop collecting dust for a while. So about two days ago and 6 years later I found it in my buddies shop caked with dirt and webs. I took it home to reallize that when I bought it there was a spliced power chord on it with no GROUND!! so I changed the chord and dropped a new Scorpion Speaker in it straight out of the box. I opened up the amp and blew it out with a can of air and hooked it all back up and it worked perfect. Then yeasterday I took it back apart completly and painted the cabinet white and all the trim black (handles, corner caps, and screws) and took the traditional Peavey machined finished silver trim off the face and ripped the grill off and replaced it with black silk fabric. I have never been so happy to own a Peavey Pacer as I am today.

You will be able to see pics on my myspace page at www.myspace.com/philwallace
www.philwallacemusic.com

Thanks Phil Wallace
Texas Singer and Songwriter

Interior of chassis has a handwritten date of October 3rd,1977. Pretty much a 1-channel amp with(I think)foot-switchable overdrive, I'm not sure, I haven't tried using a foot switch with it. 45 watts into 8 ohms, or 25 watts into 4 ohms output. All solid state circuitry, with spring reverb. Pretty light, maybe 34 lbs.(nice). Kind of versatile, really a clean and low-gain(as in blues & roots-rock)amp. With the right dirt pedal, it could work for hard rock and maybe metal. My Pacer has preamp volume and overdrive knobs for dialing in dirty timbres(earlier Pacers have just a preamp volume I think).

For clean and low-gain tones, this amp sounds surprisingly good. Hartley Peavey really knew his way around solid-state circuits. It's my grab-n-go blues jam amp, and it makes my Telecaster sound fat and twangy, with an amazingly tube-like bit of hair on the notes. My Les Paul sounds good through it too. Again, this is mainly a clean/blues machine. For hard rock, you'd have to resort to dirt pedals. The overdrive knob adds a layer of fuzz to the clean signal as it's turned up, resulting in a total fuzz tone when maxed out. The Fender-y spring reverb sounds really good, better than the onboard reverb found in many of today's low- and mid-priced solid state guitar amps.

Well, I bought my Pacer for 30 bucks from a consignment shop, where it had sat for many years gathering dust. The amp was thought to be seriously trashed, but all it had was just a blown speaker and an extremely scratchy preamp volume pot. One pot-cleaning and a new speaker later, and it's back to life, kickin' butt. I've played out with it at a bunch of club jams for the last 2 months with no problems. Peavey amps are famously tough and reliable.

Peavey has top-notch customer service, better than some other, more highly regarded musical equipment makers.

I've been playing guitar for 21 years. Overall, I give the Pacer an 8 rating. I like its tones, light weight, and funky only-from-the-'70s cosmetics. I own 2 other old Peavey amps; both of them are also sturdy, good sounding and reliable. Vintage Peaveys are killer bang-for-the-buck amps, especially if you're into clean/blues/rootsy rock tones. New speakers do wonders for these amps, by the way. Even today's budget replacement speakers, like the Celestion Rocket 50, sound better than the cruddy transducers Peavey shipped many of their amps with back in the day.

Well I got the Pacer from my friend who also submitted an review about this amp. I (try) to play mostly rock music and it works fine with my V-Amp2. With the V-amp it really rocks and you will not think that the amps is already "old"!

Wel as my buddy has already written earlier the overdrive sucks but through my V-amp it works fine. I use a Squier strat ( hey I'm just starting out!)with single coils. The bridge pick up is very noisy ( as it should be cause it's a single coil!) but it seems more than on any other amp I've tried.

Theamp will simply not brake down unless thrown of a cliff or something and after that it will probably still work. It really is a "rock". Everything on the amp is solid, even the logo is metal! wich is plastic on the newer amps. I do enter some trouble in the mastervolume and volume knobs, it seems ( according to my buddy who previously owned the amp)to be a broken podmeter.

Well about warranty we can be short, it will last longer than a lifetime!

I play for a few years and still haven't learned anything! No, I didn't take any lessons except the ones from my friend and I like to fool around and see where it takes me!
I simply love the amp no hates or butts

I picked up the pacer and was so surprized at the sound, $75.00 the guy says it yours. I play country (classic) not the crap its called today. This pacer sounds good w/ my Nashville 400 & or, LA 400. Depending on the job. As A multi-Intrusmentlist I really need to be able to get the sound right for the right song. It has a stock speaker which i really like.I play a 56 tele- , a fat boy, mim strat
Ibanze Studio, gibson Acoustic, mandolin-Fiddle w/ baggs p/ups.
Effects are optional, Boss ME-33, korg G3, the pacer w/ the 400 is so country great for fiddles and acoustic,mandolin. pacer/ LA 400
Rock City- Add Fender Hot Rod and you really blow the front three rows away.

Sometimes I wish I was as Durable LOL

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They don't makem like these anymore!!!!;(

Mid 70 made, volume, overdrive, bass, treble, mid, reverb(made by beautifull girls..) my apm is great and i bought it from a friend in 1995. I still use this amp whit my Fender guitars. i play different styles and i use a tube pre-amp with it

I still play whith this amp as a practice amp at home. I play it with my original Fender Stratocasters with the original pick ups (single coils) For an old solid amp sound it greats. Sounds warm and smooth, only the intern overdrive sucks. Anyway its a super practice amp! i love it!

Its very great, in dont dies! Its very strong and solid! I used it for years whitout problems!

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I,m playing 23 year guitar, and i playing bass guitar for 12 years. I always plays Fender Stratocaster guitars, uses boss pedal effects and a tube pre amp. For my bass i play with an Trace Elliot top ans ampeg cabinets, a Cort 5 sting aktive bass, Fender Jazzbass 4 string!

I bought it in 1982 when I was in the Navy. A buddy of mine was short on cash with a long way to payday. Happens all the time in the Military! :)

It was OK for a guitar amplifier but I REALLY loved playing my bass through it!

The overdrive feature was worthless IMO!

I held onto this amplifier for several years before donating it to a Church I was attending in San Diego. When I first got it, it was sounding really "Ratty." I thought it was due to a blown speaker so I replaced it with a Black Widow. When this did not fix the problem, I took it to "Strings and Things" in Memphis, TN and it sounded incredibly AWESOME by the time they were done with it. Unless you had some external effects, you couldn't get any real "Crunch" out of it but it had quite a bit of clarity when I played my bass through it. Heck, I thought it was really a "Bass Amp!" LOL!

Sounded really great when I played my acoustic guitar through it also!

If you are a "Metal Head," you would probably be disappointed in this amp but it is probably perfect for some clean "Country!" I can imagine a steel guitar sounding really nice through one of these!

After Strings and Things in Memphis got done with it, it was ABSOLUTELY BULLETPROOF! Never had a problem since. If I gigged with it, I wouldn't even worry about a backup!

They got a really great website and you can get whatever you need from them!

Been playing for over 30 years. I now own a Peavey Heritage VTX (Which is a FRIGGIN' MONSTER!!!) a Crate MXB50, and a Behringer BX 4500 with 2 Gallean Krueger 4X10 cabinets. I no longer own the Pacer and wouldn't have any need for it anyway (Unless I was looking for a good acoustic amp or something). I kind of miss having it at times but then again, I get sentimental about my gear also!! My Crate MXB50 reminds me of the Pacer in regards to sound but is much lighter and easier to carry around.

If you can find one for a great deal, it is definitely worth acquiring! :)

Made in the late 70 s, solid state combo,made of rock and for rock, reverb, overdrive, footswitch out of function. These two effects are not very bright point of this old stack but very good if you want to be old Neil Young.I use this amp at my home but for giggs too-it is too damn loud for room playing!

I use Fender Standard Stratocaster mede in 1983 with pickups unchanged and it suits for my playing very good- mainly I play rock, blues and jazz music. It is too noisy, put on volume 5 it creates home wrecking sounds.Very good on clean sound distorted od higher volumes, 7 or higher. If you need good distortion, this is not your piece of stack. Usually I use MT-2 distortion and good overdrive pedal is what everybody needs with this combo.
Very good and loud clean tone!

It is made of stone-completely undestructable and never lets you down!

I have this old Peavey amp for 10 years, I ve bought it from well known guitar player and i never needed customer support. I hope I will not need them in the future!

I have been playing for 18 years, and I own few good guitar effects wich suite me very good- Boss MT-2 distortion pedal, Jim Dunlop Wah pedal, Dallas Arbiter Fuzz face pedal, DD-5. With these babies you may be Hendrix ( if your first name is Jimi and....)

I bought this amp used in about 1977 just wanting a small combo after getting tired after selling a Peavy Roadmaster 200watt 6-12" stack and decided I didn't want to lug that heavy stuff around anymore. The features are pretty well covered on other entrys. This is just a 45 watt solid state amp with an overdrive stage that can be switched off/on with a footswitch and reverb. I still have this amp and is the only piece of original equipment left from the early days. I now use it mostly as a speaker extention cab to test tube amps that I am now building. I now have a 100 watt Carvin British series speaker. I so switch the Pacer amp on from time to time for old time sake. It still works!!

With vintage Fender tube amps setting the standard for my favorite clean tone, this amp don't come close to that standard in sound and response but can be adjusted to get a decent usable sound. You can
adjust the levels of pre-gain and master gain for the size room where by using your guitar volume get a clean at lower volumes and a break up full up and hit the overdrive for more boost. I've always been amazed at the overall volume of this amp. In my opinion, it is a loud 45 watts and would alway blow and go on total output. The sound drasticly improved when the original speaker blew and I installed a Black Widow is 1979. I loaned it out for about a year to a student player and he abused it drasticly and blew the black widow and I then intalled the Carvin which is an excellent speaker. The only way I would still use this amp for other than a speaker cabinet is if I was stranded on a desert Island and that was the only one I had to use. Har! I've been tempted to take the chassis and convert it to a Fender
5E3 deluxe tube amp but havn't yet.

I used this amp for my main amp for a couple of years in clubs back in
the late 70's and it never missed a lick. Over the years it has gone out several time and I had it repaired.

I called Peavey and they sent me a schematic free. I'm sure a authorized Peavey Dealer would repair it if you took it to them. Since
the warrenty has been long gone for years, and I now work on amps myself, I'll work on it from now own myself.

i'll give this amp a 5 middle of the road rating. It's features were
pretty modern for it's day and being a budget model amp. I'll always
keep it because it the only original piece of equipment I have left
from 40 year of playing. I've seen a lot of these amps around over the years and I guess they have done their duty and provided a good service. This was my first fully solid state amp and was what I would consider a good experiance. After building tube amps for the last five years I'm not sure if a solid state amp will ever be made to match the tone and response of a good tube amp. Maybe someday??

I got a good deal on this amp; it's not easy to find similar features at the price I paid. Based on other reviews, I'm assuming this is a late 70's model. It has a 1x12 Peavey Scorpion speaker (stock, recently blew and replaced with a Celestion), 45 Watts/8 Ohms of transistor power. Has channel gain pot with master volume; a spring reverb unit (the OC Folded Line Reverb, "Made by beautiful girls under a controlled climate in Wisconsin") with level pot; overdrive channel gain; footswitch port (I have a 1-button hooked up to it and it engages the overdrive, haven't found a 2-button to try it it, but my guess is that if it had one plugged in it might switch reverb in and out, I don't know); three-band EQ; power supply switch that conditions for 50 or 60 cycle power, in case you ever practice in a very old house (are we Americans on an across-the-board 60 Hz standard, or are there still some places that run at 50 Hz?).

This is pretty much a middle-of-the-road amp that comes pretty cheap. I got mine from an old lady at a yard sale for a hundred bucks, and an old microphone and a Fishman acoustic preamp came with it; I don't see many reviewers paying much more. The clean channel stays clean, even at high volumes (this is dependent on having a good speaker in it), and using the input/output gain controls combined with the reverb, you can dial in a pretty wide variety of sounds. I have a late 90s Squier Strat with the standard-issue single coils and a brand-new Epiphone G-400 (SG clone) with a set neck and alnico humbuckers. This is my second amp, an upgrade from the 15/8 Squier Champ that came with my first guitar (which was not a bad amp, but pretty limited). The overdrive channel sounds overdriven, but flaccidly so. Like an old tube amp, it's built so that the overdrive circuit increases the gain above the electronics' dynamic range. Unlike an old tube amp, however, there are no tubes to add character to the overdrive sound; switching in the circuit doesn't affect the tone much at all, though it does make it fuzzy. I have a Boss OD2R, an overdrive pedal that has a tone control on it, which sounds much better through the amp. I've never had another reverb unit besides the one in the amp, which recently passed away; some reviewers say it's tinny, but it definitely sounded better than no reverb at all. The level mix control pot for the reverb was reasonably sensitive, so I could liven up the sound nicely by applying just a tiny bit, say around 1.5 on the dial. The amp is subject to electromagnetic interference; if my cellphone goes off in my pocket while playing, I can tell immediately, because the amp goes nuts! It is plenty loud for jamming with live drums and amplified bass, and can hold its own with one other guitar amp of similar wattage (playing rhythm on the Pacer behind lead on a 65-watter is ok). One time, though, I had it in with drums, a 65-watt Crate solid state, a giant, clunky old tube amp, and a 400-watt or better SWR bass head with a 15 and 4 10s, and I could barely hear it with my ear next to it.

This amp is not indestructable, but it has exceeded my expectations. When I got it a year ago, it came in original condition, probably not having been used regularly since the 80s. Structurally, it has remained perfect, nary a pull in the Tolex. The electronics are a different story. Since then, the speaker blew out during a "this one goes to 11" jam session, after which I replaced the stock Scorpion with a brand-new Celestion GW series 12, which does it fine; for $150, I got the speaker replaced and the chassis cleaned, which cleared up buzzing issues related to a cracked solder joint, something to be expected in long periods of nonuse. About two weeks ago, the amp made a horrible shreik when I turned it on, and then fell silent. I tried turning down all of the volume controls, and it continued its unsociable behavior, which it did not relent until I turned the reverb control all the way down. This says to me that the Folded Line has a short in it somewhere, and so has passed on to the great gig in the sky; rather than spend another hundred bucks on the amp trying to fix it, I'm going to buy a Holy Grail. But hey, it sat in an old lady's basement for between 10 and 20 years, so I still consider it a bargain.

Seeing as I have the original registration card, and it's been a little more than thirty days since 1977, I have not attempted to contact Peavey.

Since I've spent less than $200 on this amp, repairs included (I figure the preamp that came with it is worth at least $50), I'd say it's not a bad bargain amp for the beginner. I've played guitar for about six years as a hobby, for four of which I've played electric. This is my first "real" amp, meaning that it is loud enough to jam with, and it has been a positive experience. Not many $200 amps can provide the flexibility of in/out gain control AND get as loud as this one does, without breaking up. With the OD2R for distortion, and a $100 reverb pedal, this amp will still look like a bargain in its class. I currently use a Morley PWV wah and volume pedal that I want to replace with a Dunlop 535Q or a Vox 847, and an Ibanez CF7 Chorus/Flanger combo that I hope to upgrade to a Polychorus or (big grin) a Univibe. Even with the cheap pickups/woods etc in the Squier, this setup yields a decent sound with it, and the G-400 sounds phenomenal through it, too. The nicest thing about this amp is that it allows me to tweak a lot of stuff to make the sound my own, without having a lot of extra crap to wade through. Worst case scenario, if nothing else on it worked, it provides a nice clean amp sound that functions as a blank tonal canvas to be used with other effects.