Peavey ValveKing 112 Combo

2ch tube amp with indy eq, loop, reverb, 50 watts, all in all nice features. no foot pedal came with amp but any stereo jack 2 button wil do.

this amp sounds decent. loud enough for small sessions. OK here's whats wrong with this thing. the drop out on channel switching is real. it happens on the switch ups. comming back down its better but not perfect. i had called peavey and they said at an authorized dealer it would be fixed at no cost. by the way i did have the valve king footswitch and it didnt fix a thing, and it cost $51. thats to much. another problem occurred with the master cranked up to 5 or above with the gain at 5 and gain vol at 7(heading in to high gain/high volume mode)it sounded like something was shorting out when i played my low B on the E string. that did it! i sent it back to MF. also the reverb was no good.

i dont know how it would last over the long haul cause i returned it

they seemed informative and helpful

i been playin over three decades. i own a lone star so i know what this amp could sound like. that said. i think in cutting costs they opted not to put the chip in that gives smooth ch and gain switching. i was looking for a light weight amp that sounds good to tote around to various practices,jams,& gigs.leaving my larger amp parked at the studio. i would not recommend this amp for live play due to the problems i mentioned. the only thing its good for is bedroom practice. i will move up a couple $hundred and try out the traynor YCV40wr. ive read up on it and you guys here say its a good one. also you guys warned me about the valve king problems, but i didnt listen.

I am giving this a 6 because what amp is sold without a footswitch when there are multiple channels. Besides that It has a lot of buttons to play with

I honestly couldn't get a good sounding distortion through mine, and it has recieved a lot of good reviews here. Mine might have been a bad amp. That happens when they are made in China. To me the distortion was all fuzz. Also sounded muddy, unless you turned up the mids and highs, and rolled back on the lows, but then came the sizzle.

I tried onboard and outboard effects to try and clean it up. I got close to getting a good sound but not close enough for my liking. It wasn't horrible, but wasn't great either. It is loud as hell though. There wasn't much play room in the volume knob in it. at about 3-4 it jumped way up in volume. The AB knob in the back of mine didn't really do much. The website says it may reduce output by 60%, maybe on mine it was about 6%. Didn't sound great at bedroom levels, and only alright at loud volumes.

When hooked up to a cab, it sounded 10 times better. Most of the fuzz went away, and so did the high end sizzle. Actually sounded pretty good, through a good cab, but I wanted a good small combo.
I use a gibson Sg and Les paul through it and play mostly classic rock/80's metal.

took it back after three days, but it is Chinese built so who knows.

na

I have been playing for about 10 years. I have owned numerous amps in that time. None of them top dollar, cuz the only band I have been in broke up after a year, and now just a bedroom guitar player. This was the fourth tube amp I bought though, and wasn't thrilled with the sound. For 350 bones though it is a tube amp. I bet you could mod this out to get what you needed for a lot less than buying a good one, I just didn't want to do that.

Well, you probably know the features by now, but if you don't here they are from the Peavey website:

* 100 watts (rms) into 16, 8, or 4 ohms (switchable)
* Four 6L6GC and three 12AX7 tubes
* Two independent footswitchable channels
* Separate EQ for each channel
* Footswitchable gain/volume boost on lead channel
* Dual paralleled speaker jacks
* Two 12 inch ValveKing speakers
* Reverb with level control
* Buffered effects loop
* Resonance and presence controls
* New TEXTURE? variable Class A simulation control

This amp obviously has a lot of nifty features, but I'm gonna have to bump it down a couple points because it doesn't include a necessary footswitch. I e-mailed Peavey about it and I have to buy a special Valveking footswitch for $51.99. $51.99!!! for a freakin' footswitch that the amp shoulda came with in the first place!!!! Oh well, I'm gonna try to use a different (cheaper) footswitch but I'm not all that optimistic- I've heard of a lot of problems with the valveking switching with a cheap footswitch such as popping noises and delays. Everything is pretty much the same as on the Valveking 112 except instead of a tight/loose switch on the back you get a Resonance knob and a Presence knob. These help you fine tune your sound pretty well. Also, just like in reviews for the 112 the volume boost does nothing whatsoever, but that's alright becuase if you need to cut through, the gain boost works just fine.

I used this playing with an American Strat with a Seymour Duncan JB jr mini humbucker in the bridge. The first thing I'm gonna cover is the clean channel which is really good. There's not much I can say about it other than it is sorta dark, but still nice, without the bright switch and well... bright with it on. Otherwise, the clean channel seems well rounded and full, nice and glassy. It also sounds excellent when you add reverb. The reverb on this amp is really nice, not quite in the Fender 60's reverb range, but it seems a lot better than what reviews for the Valveking 112 would indicate. Noone's going to accidentally think your playing through a Fender Deluxe Reverb, but I can't see what you couldn't like about the sound, really. The only problem I could find with the clean channel is that it seems breaks up surprisingly soon considering there's 2 speakers. Now, I haven't really turned it up too loud, and I had just been playing with the distortion full on probably damaging my hearing (they were sorta ringing), but if my ears weren't decieving me it seemed as if it started breaking up with the volume around 5-6. It sounded like a really nice breakup, but I was sorta mad it couldn't get any louder, but it coulda just been my ears ringing. Either way, it still was loud enough at around 4 to play with the band.

Next I'm going to cover the distortion channel which is nice, but is kind of strange because it sounds different with the band than when you are by yourself. At first when I got the amp I thought the distortion sounded way to fuzzy and noisy. When I got with the band it sounded really nice. It didn't seem as noisy and fuzzy and really roared. It has a lot of Marshall like qualities and is great for rhythem. The only problem was that it can get muddy, but you have to be patient and EQ it properly, and I recommend you use an EQ pedal too. I had some problems cutting through at certain times, but I didn't have an EQ pedal or a footswitch to turn on the gain boost, which I'm certain would have fixed the problem. You can get a whole range of distortion sounds out of this thing, if you use the Texture knob you can go from Clean to blues to southern rock to Metallica. It probably can't do really intense stuff like Dimmu Borgir and the like, but then again, you never really need as much distortion as you think you do so this could probably meet all your needs. The Texture knob really helps you get a lot of sounds. It takes power away from 3 of the 4 power tubes until only one is powering the amp. When you have it at full power (A/B) it has the most distortion and volume possible, when you have it at this setting and the distortion on full you basically have an old school metallica sound. When you have it to the lowest power setting with only one tube working (A) there's no as much gain or volume, but it seems like the amp is working harder and you get a grittier sound, better for more low gain stuff like blues or southern rock. So you have a lot of tonal possibilities, more so than probably most amps, especially in this price range. The only problem is that when the amp is idling, there is A LOT of hum, it sounds like when you accidentally hit the AM/FM switch on the radio and it turns to an AM frequency without a station and you get all that static. It is really annoying if you don't turn on the Standby. It even shows up when you are plaing if you turn the volume knob on your guitar down too low. This could probably be fixed if you get a noise reducer and put it in the effects loops so it will clean it up the signal before it gets to the speakers, but you would have to be careful that it doesn't cut out stuff like sustaining notes. Another thing I'd like to add is that this amp has Sovetek 6l6GC power tubes and Electro Harmonix 12AX7 preamp tubes. This would probably make the amp more noiser sterile or w/e than it should/could be and if you invested money in JJ tubes at eurotubes.com and possibly better speakers then this thing could probably rival any combo out there, much less comprably priced ones. I can't be certain of this, but this amp is really nice already so there isn't any need to rush out and start putting money into it right of the bat.

Well, this amp seems really solid, but it had a problem right out of the gate. The first time I tried it and turned on the reverb, I would hit one note, then turn off the volume on the guitar, and the amp would start feeding back more and more unless the reverb was shut off. I didn't want to send the amp back over this and loose it for weeks/months if i could fix it myself, so i checked out the reverb tank. First off, it was barely screwed down and was moving all around. I took the tank out of the amp and had a look. The reverb unit consisted of a plate with two long springs extending to either end, long ways with some electric stuff at the end. The whole plate was being suspended in the tank by four small springs so it didn't touch the side. One of the springs had a broken loop at the end that hooked it to the side of the tank. I had to twist it around to make another loop in it so it could hook on to the side of the tank again. This solved the problem, and I'm glad I solved it becuase the reverb is nice, but I have my worries about other things going wrong due to this. The amp seems solid, so I probably would gig without a backup, mostly because its the only amp I have

Never dealt with Peavey, other than when I emailed them about the footswitch. They responded quickly, but I don't think its enough to rate them on.

Well, this amp is really nice, its really loud, I had the distortion channel on halfway and it easily kept up/dominate the rest of the band. It could handle a small/medium sized venue without being miked. Possibly in the outdoors venue. Anything bigger and you will be able to mic it anyways, so thats not a problem. It sounds great and gives you the opertunity to get you any sound you want aside from something extravagent like really hardcore death metal, or a Dick Dale surf sound. Don't get me wrong, this thing will let you cover Miserlou or Wipeout with no problem, but if you're only gonna play surf music and nothing else, you should probably look for a Fender amp. So far I am happy with this amp, I haven't had it too long and only played with the band once, but it seems like a winner. For this price, an all tube amp of this caliber for $560 cannot be beat. Really, all your other options in this price range are solid state amps that sound like crap, modeling amps that have cheesey or plain bad effects or are hard to use, or a faux-old school tweed tube amp that really can only handle old school blues or rockabilly. I highly recommend this amp, even over the Valveking 112 since it can't really handle the band setting too well. I'm rating this an 8 because, even though this amp is excellent it isn't the best amp out there bar none which is the only time I'd give it a 10. Also, it has a couple little problems, such as the useless volume boost, extranious noise, footswitch not included, and that reverb issue. If the footswitch was included and this amp got better tubes and speakers, (although you don't NEED to upgrade those since it is awesome already), you would be hard pressed to find a better amp at any price. But, as it stands, this amp already had one part broken, although an easy fix, and it was made in china. This leaves some questions that only time will answer, but I would have to say this amp is worth the money for sure. This amp probably has everything you're looking for so just buy it already.

Update to previous review, see features there

In a previous review I mentioned that there is a big delay when using the button on the front panel to switch between clean and distortion channel, this does NOT occur when using the footswitch, everythings okay. When using the button on the front of the amp I have experience the amp switching from distorion back to clean even though the button stays depressed for distortion mode, cheap front panel buttons, may become an issue as the amp gets older.

Okay except the front panel buttons.

Have noy used them yet

Still like it despite the button problem

Update to previous review

Tested amp with strat style guitar with humbuckers and all was pretty well. Then I got around to trying Les Paul scaled guitars (3/4 scale neck) and could not get a good sound. The amp lost all the nice distortion and characteristics I liked. No matter what I did the amp responded as if I plugged the guitart into the second input the LOW input. Well I changed out the tubes and put in some JJ high gain 12AX7's and now the amp performs well again. With the Les Paul the stock speaker sounds boxy and cardboard like and depressing the speaker dampening switch makes this worse (this was not that appearant with the strat using humbuckers). I used the external speaker jack (which cuts off the internal speaker when used) and plugged in my Emminence Red Fang speaker and things got much better. The amp is still weak on the bottom end lows so palm mutting is not as tight as it could be but fair (another speaker choice may help in this area). The mids and highs are great and the amp gets a nice singing sustain, chords arpeggios stand out well. Now satisfied with this amp and for $400 It's a bargain.

Not sure

Have not used them

For $400 dollars it's hard to give it a low rating but a Classic Peavey 30 could probably blow it away, Classic 30's can crank but their overdrive is not as refined as the distortion on this ValveKing.
The valveKing has that problem of pausing when kicking in the Distortion boost and that should not occure this day and age with amp technology as advanced as it is. What other tube amp is out there with all the features this one has and if a tube and speaker swap is all thats needed as an upgrade (something more expensive amps often need) I find it hard to give it a low rating, I give it an 8 do to the Distortion boost hestitation and what seems to be looseness in the bass at times (an inability to have a real tight speaker response in the bass (closed back cabinet may handel this)).

Made in 2005, two channels, clean has bright switch, dirty channel has volume boost and distortion boost. Effects loop, extra speaker output jack (8ohm), footswitch and speaker dampening switch. A knob to dial in class A or class A/B power output (great feature and sets the amp appart from others).

I use strat style guitars with humbucker pickups, clean channel is very nice (Fender like) and the tone controls work great to shape tone, bright swith works very well. I have compared the clean channel to my Peavey Ultra 12 and to my Pignose G60V and it sounds as good or better. It has that tubish three dimesionall tone and chime, the channel is NOT flat or sterile sounding. What makes this amp sound so good is the A to A/B knob. I have a Crate V30H all Class A tube amp, this means that there is no cross over distortion in the power tubes and it makes for a real smooth tone, even with tons of high gain pre-amp signal being driven into it. The Peavey ValveKing gets that class A smoothness with it's A to A/B knob and it definitly helps the amp sound better than other amps that are only class A/B. Using this knob can be comparable to having your amps Bias set right, warmer smoother sound from your amp. The dirty channel has plenty of gain thats not fizzy, very usable distortion and great sustain, you can dial in dark tones or bright ones as the tone controls are very responsive. It's not a Fender amp or Peavey Classic 30 overdrive but tends to be more like Peavey XXX or Marshall style distortion. No heavey bottom end, and this is where it seems have Marshall charateristics in that it is strong in the midrange, not much bottom. With the class A dialed in highs are smooth (not harsh like some peavey class A/B amps that are Biased cold). With the distortion boost on one can get some great feed back. It will do Metal but not New Metal as this amp does not do the Mesa Triple rectofier sound. Distortion and overdrive pedals work well on this amp and this is where the speaker dampening switch becomes noticable, it helped to firm up the speaker and tighten up the sound, glad to have it. The speakers not bad and this is the first time I did not feel I had to immediatly upgrade the tubes, the amp actually sounded nice right out of the box. I did notice that when you swith between clean and dirty channel using the button on the amp that there is a BIG delay. This does happen with the footswitch. However when you use the footswitch to engage the distortion boost there is a moments hestitaion, if you can't have this then you may not want this amp, it's okay by me but it is a disapointment. Reverb is digital chip driven rather than tube and can sound like it at times. It's not a bad reverb but if one is use to the real thing they may not be fully satisfied by it. As one other person mentioned switching to a Les Paul or similar type guitar the sound was muddy and had to be re-dialed in (strange). I have had no problem with dialing matching volumes between channels but I have only been using it in the studio and have not had the amp maxed out. For the money it delivers a lot.

It's new, made in China, will have to wait and see

have not used them

I have bought plenty of amps and I am always looking for a good bargan and for $400 dollars this amp delivers a lot and sounds as good as much higher priced amps.

this is a response to an earlier review that
gave a reliability a three. As a genral rule
about peavey combos 1x12 (owning a bandit 112, an Peavey Triumph, A peavey Deuce VT, A Peavey Envoy 110, A peavey PAG 60, A peavey Revolution) peavey amps have a huge problem with there foot switches with Amp with gain book.

Made in March, 2005 in Peoples Republic of China. Tubes were made in Russia, making this a complete communist amp! Power tubes are Russian made Sovtek 6L6WXT+ which are supposed to have 20% more output than standard 6L6GCs. Preamp tubes are Electro-Harmonix 12AX7s in Preamp, Gain channel, and driver/phase inverter positions. Switch on back for tight/loose (open/closed-back) simulation. Texture control reduces voltage to power to both tubes. I believe this dial on the back reduces plate voltage from the full 360 degrees of the input conduction cycle by cutting off one one side of the tubes for a portion of the cycle, while the other side (class A) remains full voltage, thus class AB. If the voltage is cut off during half the cycle, it is class B, the dial will be at 12:00. Since the signal is cut off one side, there will be less volume, but less crossover distortion. When the dial is in the class A mode it will sound cleaner becuase each power tube is amplifying half the signal, then are joined via the phase splitter and transformer. One tube amplifies the upper half and one the lower half of the waveform. When the dial is on class AB mode, both tubes are pushing more plate voltage and amplifying slightly more than half the signal each, resulting in distortion, the good kind. It also has a spring reverb which is solid-state driven, a gain boost switch, a volume boost switch, and a bright switch. An effects loop is also located on the front panel next to the on/off and standby switches. The second input jack is attenuated 6db. Both channels have full bass/mid/treble conrtols. The reverb works on both channels. On the back, we have a socketed power cord, texture switch, tight/loose switch, and a nice external spekaer jack that cuts the internal 12" speaker rated at 16 ohms. The cabinet is made from 5/8" thick MDF and uses a plywood baffle.

I use a strat with Jeff Beck noiseless pups, an Mexican tele, and mostly a Les Paul Classic with '57 PAF humbuckers. Sounds incredible with the LP as expected, both clean and dirty. I crank the gain up to 10, hit the gain boost, set the texture control to class AB, bass on 10, mid on 3, treble on 3, and little bit o' verb. Very Frenderish. The speaker looks and sounds like a Jensen C12N, very sweet, but distorts due to smallish voice coil. Rather heavy magnet, speaker weighs in at 8 pounds. I replaced it with an EV12L, but this is overkill. The clean channel sounds thin with the single-coil strat and tele, as expected. Here is the the shocker: crank the gain to 10 on the dirty channel and my strat will sustain for days and get that Clapton "woman" tone - even at very low volumes. The dirty channel seems twice as loud as the clean channel even with the volume boost and gain boost switches off. I did not notice any significant boost in volume with the volume boost on. I did notice about a 6-12db increase in gain with the gain boost on. Lead channel is very loud and does not hum when cranked, but I use all humbuckers. These is a rather loud hum when the amp is idling, not sure why. It can be anoying if I am playing clean at bedroon volume, which I often do. The tight/loose switch is probably just a low-end EQ cut switch, not a true negative-feedback attenuator. Same with the texture control. probably just a voltage pot/bias pot mounted on the back. It does very little to change the overall sound, but does help with distortion. Overall a very smooth, balanced sound, but no thump or thud. Chunkage may be obtained using an LP and cranked, but I am not sure it would be loud enough for a gig. Great practice amp.

It looks extremely well built. Transformers are very small for a 50 watt tube amp, hence the 16 ohm speaker which requires less transformer windings. This is the only area I see that is skimped. There are four separate PCBs inside, all of which are smallish. I am not sure how long the tubes will last with the voltage changing. I could not find a bias pot inside, so that's why I assume the texture switch changes the tube configuration from class AB to class A by limiting the voltage to two of the pins on the power tubes, basically like having built-in Yellow Jackets.

Never dealt with Peavey, but this is only my second Peavey tube amp.

I have been playing since I jammed with Eric Clapton in the 70's. For the price you can't beat this with a 20 foot pole. If you want Marshall-like sound with sweet upper harmonics, nice crunch, great blues tone, tons of features, and a sweet clean channel - this one is for you. If you need major chunkage, look elsewhere. It doesn't sound like a blackface or a Marshall, but I think it sounds as good. I prefer this amp over my HR DeVille for practice, and over my Marshall for any day for low-volume crunch. The best thing is the cost. I know the price went up already since I bought this one. Finally, a small amp with enough gain to satisfy rock and blues without getting muddy on the low end. I don't use the word "sparkle" here becuase I think that is a Fender verb. It does not sound as constipated as my Deluxe Reverb, but it does not have that great "surf" tone either. If I had the money, I would buy the 100 watt version becuase it has a presence control, which I wish this had. That is my only complaint.

Two independant channels with their own EQ, all-tube pre and power sections, foot-switchable volume and boost (Very nice!), all pumped out of a decent Sheffield-voiced stock speaker.

Seperate tone controls for each channel is almost a must, and the foot-switchable gain/volume boost is a very nice touch. There is also what's called a 'Class A' potentiometer (a rotating button, just like volume) in the back, which gradually cuts the power to one of the 6L6 tubes. This is perfect for guys like me who always try to pull half the tubes in old combos and heads so the volume can be turned up loud enough to get the poweramp cooking. The VK112 also has a damping switch similar to that found on Peavey's higher-end amps, howeve rit's only a two-position switch for 'Tight' or 'Loose' though it really does change the sound.

All of these tweakable goodies ensure that no matter what your taste is in tone ... Marshall, cranked Fender, Vox, etc. you'll be able to find something you like in the amp. Also, the EQ controls are VERY useable, unlike many amps on the market in which the Bass, Mid, and Treble controls have to be dimed one way or the other to hear a difference. On the Valve King they are so good I thought they were active, at first. Excellent!

OK ... I always wait till at least one week is up so I don't post the usual 'Honeymoon Review'.

Well ... it's been almost two weeks and I still love this amp. As I said, with all the available tweaks for this little thing ... active-like EQ, damping, power section tube cutting, etc. anyone should be able to pull soemthing useable out of it.

The clean channel is very good for an amp with this much gain on tap. Quite useable in stick trim, even if not quite up to the Peavey Classics or the Fender sparkle. It's still very useable.

What it does best, though, is Marshall crunch. It was a little buzzy initially, but a set of 12AT7s in the preamp, instead of the stock EH 12AX7s, smoothed it right out and reduced the amp noise at the same time. There is still more than enough gain to play thrash metal, if that's your thing, but now it's smoother and sweeter. Just like an old master-volume JCM800 cranked hard.

I also replaced the stock speaker, which really isn't too bad. This isn't a Blue Marval, rather it is a useable Sheffield-voiced speaker and it's OK stock. I just have a thing for Greenbacks so I put an Eminence GB12 in it and as you can imagine ... it's now moving even closer to that Marshall grind.

Singlecoil neck p'ups are great in the clean and dirty channels, but a humbucker really brings the dirty channel to life.

In all ... solid cleans, a very nice crunch, and a screaming lead tone.

Dunno .. it's new. It does have a few chassis buzzes, but a weatherstipping job on all the joined edges is a must for small but powerful combos, anyway.

It's a Peavey, so if it doesn't die in the first week it will probably outlive me. I'll go on past performance for the rating.

Hmmm ... Peavey screwed me over on some tolex last year, and this year they are having a hard tiome getting the VK footswitches out to the dealers. Not good.

I'm 42 years old and have been playing since I was a little kid, and gigging since I was a teenager (underage :o). I've owned twenty-five or thirty amps, most of them tube amps but with a few SS Peavey's and Fenders in there.

I love the sound with the new tubes and speakers, but it was certainly workable when stock. I'd buy another if it was lifted, because you just can't beat the features and the sound at this price.

2005 model brand new amp just came out. This amp can get alot of different tones from clean-heavey slayer kind of metal. I play anything from clean stuff to metallica. it has 2 channels a clean channel and a lead channel. doenst have a headphone jack has a line out. It has more than enough power for me i dont turn the knob past 1 on the volume knob. This is a ALL TUBE amp

Im useing a epiphone g-400 standard. This amp is not noisy at all you could barely tell that it is on. The distortion can get pretty heavey. I have to say the sound is a bit bassy but i really like it it sounds beautiful

It seems like i can depend on it seems very soild but then again it just came out and i cant really say much about its reliability just yet. It does come with a 2 year warrenty plus another 3 years if u fill out their survey. So you really cant go wrong with geting this amp. I give it a 5 because i dont really know yet i just got it

Customer support is very good they reply to all your questions before 48 hours the warrently is 2 years +3 more after filling out the survey.

Ive been playing for alittle over a year now and i own this valve king a dean markley amp, i got a strat copy and a g400. I have to say i love everything about it except for the fact it doesnt have a head phone jack. I compared this to the vox ad30vt i just loved this one more. I would really recommend this amp to anyone who wants a tube amp but cant afford a really expensive one this valve king will do the job for bedroom playing and giging its a really solid amp worth every penny.