Peavey Article

[ToneMerc]

Hartley Peavey interview

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/ ... 00229.html

TM

[M Fowler]

Youtube has the same info but in a series of interviews.

[ampmike]

Good morning coffee read!!!I love rags to richies stories,For years I loved Skynyrd and wanted to find a Peavey Mace,That was their touring amp.
He seems like a very cool guy,Mr Peavey,Mikey

[VacuumVoodoo]

Everything's in that article is fine and nice except for this little gem:
"I go out on the factory floor and I see a resistor on the ground, I pick it up. That's a penny to me. You see a penny on the ground, you pick it up."

Wrong. Somebody might have stepped on it. It could be damaged and cause failure later on. Warranty repair will cost a bit more than a penny.

[martin manning]

I've never met the guy, but everyone who has says he is a gret guy. There are some good tech articles on the Peavy pages too.

Re picking up a resistor from the factory floor, perhaps he was speaking metaphorically?

[diagrammatiks]

penny resistors...

tsk tsk tsk.

[brentm]

I had one peavey I wish I didn't sell.... Peavey Bravo. Amazing little tube driven amp. Had it dialed with Ei 12ax7s and a greenback speaker. Then I suppose my taste got more sophisticated... But it's on my pawn shop hit list if one ever turns up.

[Structo]

I've had a Peavey Century 100w SS head forever.

Well since around 1989.

It's a great back up amp because it can be used as a PA amp, a bass amp or if worse comes to worse, a guitar amp.

[brentm]

Yeah, I guess the best thing about Peavey is they found a need and filled it in the musicians gear market.

Here's a cool demo of the Peavey Bravo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m--jFYVr4E

Great amp if you want to get your Satch Boogie on.

[ampdoc1]

I had a repair shop from 1985 to 1995. In about 1990 I had a guy bring in a popular Peavey mixer, which I statred "dissing". It wasn't a bad product, but required removing and replacing the entire back panel (lots of jacks) before it could be repaired and tested., and I had just had two of the units in my shop over the past few weeks.

Couple of days later, I get a call from Hartley Peavey!! "Why are you down on my products?" Turns out the guy called Peavey, and got Hartley on the phone. I explained the situation, and he and I became friends. A few months later, he flew me to Meridian and took me thru all his buildings. At the time they had just taken over some 1,000,000 square feet of manufacturing space.

Beyond that, it was very interesting. Peavey was the first amp manufacturer to front mount the speakers in all his products, and used glued partical board for all the cabs. The excess small cuttings of the partical boaard was burned in some of the old fashioned heaters in some of the buildings. And, while particle board is heavy and not my favorite for large boxes, I only saw one Peavey speaker cablinet that had been damaged in transit over the 10 years I was in the business. It was also interesting to see railroad flat-cars loaded with sheet metal that was to become chassis. Computers guided a cutter so a long piece of metal was sheared down to the point that the scraps were only the size of your hand.

I got to meet many of his employees including his amp designer, James Brown, and his solid state guy, Jack Sondemeyer. Nice guys and VERY smart.

I was also lucky enough to be invited to his home for a family dinner. Melia was a charmer (as well as a great business woman) and the boys were just "regular" kids.

While I love guitar tone, I have never been talented enough to bring out the best in any amplifier. But one of my old "buds" has been using a Peavey amp since the 1980's, and still gets as good a tone as anything out there.

I congratulate Hartley for always making affordable and well built equipment. Not a Dumble or Trainwreck? Maybe not, but a real guitarist can play anything and make "magic".

And let's not forget the Media Matrix products. I work in the audio/video market, and when I started in 1995, WHITE equalizers were the top of the line audio gear. About a year later, Hartley saw the precursor products to the MM at one of the national shows and realized the potential. He bought the company and their inventors and turned the audio market on it's ear. All the companies with like products owe Peavey a debt of gratitude for seeing the future of digital audio control.

Hartley has earned respect, even if you don't like his products.

And, I'm proud to say that I own a 1 of a kind Peavey Destiny guitar, made in their Custom Shop. At the time, I was playing regularly, and wanted a guitar with certain characteristics. Fender and others were building "customs" so I called Hartley. He told me they didn't normally do that, but would make up one for me. I sent in my list of modifications, and a few months later received the guitar. And yes, i paid for it, albeit at a "discounted" price. Still my fave axe.


a'doc1

[GtrGeorge!]

To add..
I was fortunate to make friends with Chip Todd (at Peavey for many years..and the man who is the T in the T 60 guitars etc etc..)

anyway, Chip is the nicest guy....whip smart..
and one of the funniest guys you could ever meet.

He still does great work for peavey and others, out of Galveston,texas.

And from all accounts, Hartley is great guy,as well.

GtrGeorge Barry

[M Fowler]

I ran Peavey equipment for years and still use PA gear from them.

I loved my Bandit 65 with the Scorpion speaker great little combo amp.

Those old six channel PA mixers dd have a lot of problems and the repair guys didn't seem to be able get all the bugs out on mine so I did move on to other mixer boards and separate power amps.

Great products in my experience in and out of small town bars

Mark