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Author
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Topic: Peavey Artist VT amp
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Brad Sarno
Member From: St. Louis, MO USA
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posted 30 June 2004 11:07 AM
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I found this amp locally and thought I'd give it a shot. It's a 1980 model Peavey Artist VT. It's got the 12" Black Widow speaker which sounds a lot like a JBL D120 (or E120) to me. The preamp is solid state and the power section has 4 6L6 tubes for about 100 watts of power. It's a monster of an amp. Some have called it a Boogie killer. I believe it. I played a gig last night and used it on steel. Very impressive and super clean amp. The small cabinet sort of chokes the fat low frequencies, but for E9 it was pretty balanced. The EQ seems sort of like a Fender in that all the action happens around 3. I'd never seen one of these before and was wondering what others have thought of it. Brad Sarno |
Doug Earnest
Member From: Branson, MO USA
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posted 30 June 2004 03:03 PM
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I used to have an Artist. Heck of an amp! Mine had the Automix feature which provided for a lot of different sounds at the tap of a footswitch. Seems they might have made them in a 15" version, too.------------------
Doug Earnest
The only Zum Keyless U12, Fender Cyber Twin |
Al Marcus
Member From: Cedar Springs,MI USA
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posted 30 June 2004 06:25 PM
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I had one with a 15 inch JBL and it was great! I only sold it because it got too heavy for me. Altthough, if I remember, it was lighter than the Nashvile 400 I got later. I had an LTD too all great Peavey Amps...............al  ------------------
My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/ |
jim milewski
Member From: stowe, vermont
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posted 01 July 2004 03:41 AM
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I like those amps, had an Artist long time ago, like a poor mans Mesa Boogie, I just got a Heritage, similar but a second BW, loud and good eq control, but heavy |
Darvin Willhoite
Member From: Leander, Tx. USA
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posted 01 July 2004 06:38 AM
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I also had an Artist with a 12" spider web BW in it a few years ago. I used it quite a bit with guitar but only a few times with a steel. I liked the sound with both. A young preacher/singer/musician came to our church a while back that had a steel he was learning to play, but he had no amp. I gave him the Artist, and you would have thought he had won the lottery. It was worth the cost of the amp just to see how happy he was to get it. ------------------
Darvin Willhoite
Riva Ridge Recording
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Ken Fox
Member From: Ray City, GA USA
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posted 01 July 2004 06:39 AM
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Brad, great find! The VT series followed the initial series and changed to opamps instead of a discrete transistor frontend. I have a Mace VT with 2-12 BW speakers. Great amp all the way around. I had a Mace non-VT back in the seventies, wish I could get another one!
The Mace has 6-6L6GC tubes and will slay about any amp out there! The Artist and Deuce were 4-6L6GC. The Deuce is another great amp, very warm abnd big tone. I believe the Heritage replaced it in the line later on.
Those older hybrid amps were and still are some of the best amps for tone Peavey has made, IMHO.
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David Langdon
Member From: West Bridgford, Nottingham Notts, United Kingdom
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posted 01 July 2004 08:16 AM
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Until very recently I had one of these amps, but with a factory fitted BW 15! This must be quite rare. I bought the amp cheap and used it as a stereo pair with my Nash 400. It has the same size cabinet. It's a great steel amp and fantastic blues amp too. I've just sold it to a pal who'll let me borrow it if I need to. With the 15 it weighed about the same as the Nashville, so I could just about carry one in each hand to balance me. I'm a real light-weight but reasonably strong. I'm surprised this is the first time I've seen a thread on this amp. I thought it bridged a gap between a Fender twin and a Peavey session or Nashville. Dave. |
Brad Sarno
Member From: St. Louis, MO USA
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posted 01 July 2004 09:34 AM
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I'm really liking this amp. I've been rehearsing on steel with it. That 12" black widow is great sounding. The EQ in the Artist seems to be voiced a whole lot like a Twin with a similar mid response. The smaller cabinet will naturally not give the fat bass of a Twin or a Session, but it's still a pretty fat sounding amp. I recapped some of it since it's now going on about 25 years old. It gets so loud and clear. The EQ, the tubes, and the old Black Widow really work well together. Great little, but heavy amp. I'd like to put it up next to a Boogie MK4 and compare. I use the normal channel for steel. My strat thru the bright channel gives that killer sparkly strat tone. It makes me want to play the intro to Sweet Home Alabama. Well sort of. By the way, I've really grown to like the older spider-web Black Widows, both 12" and 15". They are made with a thinner paper and seem to be much more like an old JBL D-series cone only with the ceramic magnet. I've got a perfect one of those old 1501-4's in my '78 Session 400 and it sounds so much like a JBL it's hard to tell them apart. The newer Black Widow cones sweem to be a thicker, more rigid paper. But even the new ones sound good once they've been broken in and softened up a bit. I know the new ones handle higher power, but the old ones have a real tonal sweetness to them. Brad Sarno
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Chris LeDrew
Member From: Newfoundland, Canada
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posted 30 October 2006 06:29 PM
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I did a search and thought I'd resurrect this thread for a question I have:There's an Artist VT 112, like the one described above, at a local store for the equivalent of about $240 US dollars. It's got the spider web Black Widow. It's in very good condition, not great. It's working fine. Anybody have any idea what this amp is worth? I've been looking for something with a bit of balls for lead guitar. Should I get it? Any input would be appreciated. Thanks. |
Chris LeDrew
Member From: Newfoundland, Canada
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posted 31 October 2006 05:58 PM
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A little bump......... |
Paul Honeycutt
Member From: Colorado, USA
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posted 01 November 2006 10:25 PM
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I had one of those back around 1979. I played a Travis Bean TB-500 guitar through it playing country rock. The other guitarist had a 60 watt MK I Boogie. The Artist was a good amp. I never had a problem with it and when I traded it for a Peavey XR-800 powered mixer, they gave me in trade what I'd paid for it (and the mixer was discounted). How often does that happen?
Anyway, it was a bright clean sounding amp. I wasn't crazy about the distortion tones. In that respect, the Boogie blew it away. Wasn't the best amp I ever owned, but it was far from the worst. |
David Mason
Member From: Cambridge, MD, USA
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posted 02 November 2006 04:14 AM
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I just saw this over in the "for sale" section, some New Hampshirite might get lucky: http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum17/HTML/006213.html |
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