Peavey Bandit 65
I bought this amp in 1987 when I was getting into playing electric guitar. Since I had just spent most of my guitar gear budget on my '63 Strat, this amp seemed like a good way to get me into an amp with decent power at a low price.
As you might guess, I found its PA-like plain clean sound and it's buzzy overdrive sound to be undesirable so I ended up buying my Champ and Princeton Reverb and put this amp in the closet.
I stopped playing guitar for a while in the early 90's. During this time I did break this amp out of the closet where it actually saw duty as an auxiliary speaker on my computer. Its plain PA sound did a good job at with the sounds of Castle Wolfenstein and Doom.
When I started playing again in the late 90's, modeling technology was getting started. This amp's rather plain clean channel sound offered a way to amplify these devices without spending money on a new amp. I started out with a Tech21 SansAmp GT2, then a borrowed Ibanez VA-3, followed by a Korg AX1000G, and a Behringer V-Amp 2, and, most recently, a DigiTech RP-350. All have done well with the Peavey and produced decent sounds through this amp.
The amp, as you can guess from its name, is 65 watts. It is a solid state amp with a clean and overdrive channel and has a single 12" speaker. The clean channel is just about as clean (and you could even say sterile) as you can get in a guitar amp. The overdrive channel is kind of buzzy in sort of a garage/punk way. I almost never use this channel.
The amp also features a 3 way EQ adjustment (Bass, Mid, Treble) and a Presence knob that boosts the upper mids. Pull-out knobs also boost the mids in a guitar friendly way.
The amp also features a spring reverb tank that's adequate but not as good as tube driven Fender reverbs. An effects loop rounds out the features of the amp.
The amp can get very loud. I've never had it over about 4-5 at jam sessions and most of the time I keep it at about 2. Playing at home, I'll typically have the volume at 1 or less. The nice thing about this is that the sound quality stays the same at all volumes, particularly when used with a modeling device.
Looking back, this amp was a good purchase in spite of my initial disappointment. Peavey solid-state amps are built like tanks and this amp has held up very well with the light to moderate use I've given it. While its tone by itself isn't thrilling at all, it has worked very well with modeling units.
