|
Peavey 6505 Plus
|
Two channels of the loudest, most furious American high gain amplifier money can buy. 120W of all tube 6L6 based power with some of the most defined and highest gain settings give this the orignal sound that made it an instant classic. Each channel has gain, and master volume controls (PRE and POST respectively), as well as 3 band EQ and Presence and resonance...
|
Searched Peavey 6505 Plus in Reviews
Peavey 6505+ 
| Sound |
Ok, the bumflufferies first:
Guitars used with this amp:
RG7620 - basswood - DiMarzio New 7s
RG1527 - basswood - DiMarzio Blaze Custom bridge and New 7 neck
RG2027 - mahogany - DiMarzio Evo7 bridge and Blaze Neck
I play metal (at least with this amp). I mostly play progressive metal, but also venture in to some heavier stuff, too.
For cabs, I've run it through everything from my 1960B cab, a Blackstar cab, a Mesa cab to lots of impulse files and my Palmer PGA-04 speaker sim. It just sounds great on all of them.
Ok, the amp. I won't go into detail trying to describe its sound. There are plenty of clips and reviews that do that already. I also won't describe its features, as you can read all about them elsewhere, too. I really want to focus on the capabilities of the amp and what its lacking. I'll assume we all know what the + is about, and are aware of the 6505 "non-plus" (hurhur) version.
Straight out the box, if you play metal, I think you'd have to be a very tough critic to not like this amp. Set all controls flat and you'll have the beginnings of a great metal tone. That's what this amp does well; a great chugging metal tone. It's no surprise, then, that the '666' settings that so many people use work great.
The range of gain you get out of it is perfectly good, but the thing really shines in the higher gain settings. It also responds better to being run pretty loud, but then, what tube amp doesn't? Setting your gain around 5 on either channel is probably going to be enough for most situations (unless you insist on trying to emulate the Line 6 Insane amp). It's not super focused, and you will get a bit of 'flub' (to use John Petrucci's lingo) on tight palm muted notes. You can attempt to correct this with some judicious use of the EQ section, but the best results, as always, will come with using a boost pedal in front of the amp. I use the TS9. It works well and does what I want, but you may want to try out several with it. I'm using mine as a 'clean boost' - setting the drive at 0, the level at 10 and the tone anywhere around the 3-4 mark.
The green Rhythm channel is my favourite. It tightens up very nicely with the boost and sounds wonderful when double tracked. For jamming, I think it still has the edge, but I can see why some would venture over to the red Lead channel for jamming.
Ok, enough praise of the heavy sound. There's no shortage of kind words about this amp for metal. On to the divisive 'does it do clean?' question (afterall, you may be expecting the extra separate EQs would allow you to get one, right?)
For me, the short answer is 'no'. The long answer is you can coax a clean sound out of it at very quiet volumes, but not at anything close to how loud you'd run it, even at bedroom volumes. At anything like playing volume, this amp just breaks up too easily. You'll have to run your guitar volume very, very low and have to suffer a big volume change when going from rhythm to clean - uselessly so.
There are various things people do to get a clean sound out of this, like using compressors, or using delays and reverbs to soften up the overall perceived sound, but even then, the cleans they're getting are not pristine. And I'd say they're not very nice, but that's down to taste.
For light crunch, it does kind of ok. But, as with the clean, it's just not really the amp's forte, and it shows. It's definitely workable, much more so than the clean because you won't run into the same headroom problems. However, chances are, if you're looking at this amp, you're not really placing huge emphasis on clean or crunch. And that's a shame that this amp can't do it, because - despite being one of the cheaper tube amps on the market - it's still pretty pricey for something so one dimensional. That said, it does such a good job as a metal rhythm engine, you really can forgive it after five minutes with the amp. It's just such good fun to play.
In summary, it's great at what it does, it just doesn't do an awful lot. It's a metal expert, and that's it.
Peavey 6505+ - Rhythm channel (video) Peavey 6505+ Rhythm Channel and Metalheadz demo (video)
|
| Reliability |
The appointments aren't right up there with the best looking amps, but what can you expect? It's an entry level tube amp, and savings have to be made somewhere. But bells and whistles aside, it feels solid enough. They appear to stand up to the road for a lot of bands, too. Mine hasn't failed on me yet, but it's not very old.
|
| Customer Support |
N/A
|
| Liked about it |
Top three, ok...
It's a simple amp to use. Mesas are supposedly difficult to dial in a good tone on. That certainly was the case with my TriAxis, and this is just the opposite. It's practically difficult to get a bad tone out of one of these.
It's very good fun to play. I instantly liked it. A very rewarding amp, partly due to its simplicity (see above).
For the quality and pedigree of this amp, it's difficult to beat at this price.
|
| Didn't like |
There's not much to dislike, so long as the 'no clean channel' isn't a surprise when you buy it. But here's my stab at three, as I've been pretty effusively positive about it.
The lack of a clean channel does stop this from being a great amp. If it had that, I could see myself not needing my Framus Cobra.
It is a one-trick pony. For some that's fine. And even though I forgive it, I can see how others might not and would expect a little more breadth for their buck.
And it is fairly basic. You won't get any nice loop options, no level boost for solos, and some of the controls do feel a little cheap. But, again, it's a basic amp with a cost that reflects this, compared to other higher end amps.
|
|
| Overall satisfaction: |
|
4.0 |
Was this review helpful to you?
Report this review
|
WARNING: MAY CAUSE SHREDDING
| Sound |
First off, the whole time I owned this amp (now sold, I'll explain why later) I was using a Jackson RR1 with Seymour Duncan JB and '59 pickups. I play a lot of different styles, but with this amp, it was prodominantly rock and metal styles of different types. The reason I bought this amp is because it's very sudden and very defined. Even Mark series Mesa heads would have trouble pushing out this kind of power so effortlessly. As a result you get very clean high gain, which I'll explain. Tune your guitar down to drop C or B and plug into a standard Mesa Dual Rectifier and palm mute some low end power chords and you'll find that you get a really big, boomy response from the bottom end, which makes the guitar sound full and fat (and the room shake!), but its not entirely clear. Now do the same thing on a 6505+ with a similar EQ shape and gain level and you'll find less of a booming effect and more of a Hi-Fi bass response. You feel it less in your chest, but you really hear a very crisp, and, to repeat myself, defined low end. Provided you don't put the gain past about 6, which nobody needs to, you can clearly hear every note. That's why I bought this amp.
The gain capabilities of this amp are huge, and quite unencessary, past about 7 you find your sound is so compressed that when you're playing leads you don't get any sepeartion or dynamic range from your picking. I also found that with the gain too low the sound was slightly raspy - similar to when the battery on active set of pickups is running low.
The clean channel is scarcely clean, too - not if you want to use the crunch feature anyway. I found this was great for those ultra bright 'Images and Words' cleans, but did breat up early, even with the gain very low. The crunch mode also causes an uncontrollable gain boost that I found a bit excessive at times, because to have my cleans and Lead at the right levels made the crunch channel too loud!
The EQ is very very powerful, if slightly artificial sounding. All three controls have a hugh range but I feel with this amp they're not really altering the actual tone or feel of the amp, they're just adding the frequencies they're meant to add - some people like the simplicity of this, I didn't so much. The resonance is a very powerful control, adding a pounding low end I've never heard before, and loved, the presence control is much the opposite, and you really have to work it to get what you want. I like less presence to add a bit of compression which this doesn't do at all, it literally just takes off the ultra high frequencies.
It handles low tuning better than pretty much anything out there, and can do that really bright, jazzy clean sound well. I also found you can cram about ever effect going onto this and it won't dirty the sound. This can be a little noisy with the volume up, so keep away from it. I've even trie d a noise gate and it did nothing strangely...
In the end I sold this amp because it's a bit short on versatility, and it totally ignore whatever guitar you plug into it and does it's own thing. Quickest route to high gain metal, yes, most satisfying, unfortunately not.
|
| Reliability |
Absolutely. Built like a tank, and weighs about the same too. Eats preamp tubes for breakfast though so keep spares.
|
| Customer Support |
Nice bunch of guys, but never needed them for anything more than a chat at guitar shows, lol.
|
| Liked about it |
Very easy to use, you're never far from the tone you by the amp for. Very loud, very powerful controls, and sound great with effects.
|
| Didn't like |
...you're never far from the tone you by the amp for. VERY loud, overly powerful controls - but to no affect on the actual feel of the amp.
I also found that it sounded better at mid volume levels, turning it up too much has some nasty effects, but it's pretty much full volume from about 5 anyway.
|
|
| Overall satisfaction: |
|
3.0 |
Was this review helpful to you?
Report this review
|
internal use: spec82 spec409
|
|
