

How I Did It: Hartley Peavey of Peavey Electronics - jkuria
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201110/how-i-did-it-harley-peavey-electronics.html

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babycakes
I grew up in Mississippi playing Peavey gear dreaming of designing it. Now, I
have a PhD in electrical and computer engineering. I don't do audio
electronics, but I might not have even considered EE if not for this man.

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zwieback
Back in high school in the early eighties I played with a bass player who had
a Peavey amp and right in the middle of a concert something exploded and his 4
speakers all blew out. Luckily there was another guy who could loan his amp
but our bass player was pretty upset (and broke) so I offered to try to repair
his amp and we all chipped in for new speakers.

Anyway, this guy had a bird and its usually open cage was usually on top of
the amp, which had a ventilation grill on top. When I opened up the amp it was
full of bird poop baked onto everything. I like to think the poop had
something to do with the failure because I really like Peavey stuff in
general. After a thorough cleaning it didn't take long to figure out that the
filter caps after the rectifier of the power supply had blown and a huge 50Hz
(Germany) ripple was sent out to the speakers.

I got some caps with more margin (the original parts only had 3V of margin
over the worst case expected surge) and with the new speakers we were back in
business.

Fast forward 30 years and I'm now a bass player myself and I have to say that
Peavey is still great for budget gear, especially their basses. Of course
there's really nice budget gear in general now, due to China and the general
downward prices on electronics.

I go to a country jam now and then and the bass player there has a ton of
vintage gear (he's pretty vintage himself) but for everyday playing at the jam
there's of course a Peavey combo that works great every time.

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pmorici
I like the way this article is written it's very concise.

~~~
maqr
I noticed that too. It seems like it's formatted to make skimming easier, but
that actually caused me to read the entire thing.

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Luyt
Peavey writes: _"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."_

This seems to contradict the saying _'he who thinks in dimes will never become
a millionaire'_.

~~~
epo
For every saying there is a contradictory saying.

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jkuria
for me, my first encounter with Peavey was when the rich American kids from
the international school came to my school for concerts and sports. They had
Peavey speakers and Reebok sneakers!

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pud
That's funny because (as a rich American) Peavey amps were known for being
inexpensive, but LOUD. When you're a 14 year old guitarist and you need big
volume without big bucks, you go Peavey.

Rich kids got Marshall. Or Mesa Boogie.

~~~
kahawe
I play guitar and this is still very true today - Peavey deals mostly in the
lower to medium bracket and their most legendary (and "premium") amp is
beloved for just that: (comparatively) cheap, reliable and a distinct sound.

Interestingly enough, another guitar amplifier company that could be
considered VERY premium started in a very similar way: modifying and building
their own gear just out of frustration with (back then) existing gear and lack
of money: <http://diezel.typo3.inpublica.de/history.8.0.html>

Actually, Boogie did too: <http://www.mesaboogie.com/US/Smith/our_story.html>

~~~
TylerE
True for any number of companies, including Marshall/Orange/Sount City/HiWatt
in the UK, pretty much ALL of which got into business after being recruited to
build louder amps for The Who.

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bdwalter
Having bought 10's of thousands of dollars of sound equipment over the years,
much of which was from Peavey...this is pretty cool.

~~~
mjbellantoni
Same here. A lot of the gear I've bought has come and gone, but I've still got
my Peavy Backstage 20 ... the first amp I ever owned.

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andrewtbham
when i was in a band, peavey was low end. everyone always wanted a mesa boogie
or a marshall.

~~~
daydream
Sure, and it's still the same way now, but their stuff is affordable and it
works. I like their basses and guitars best, they're a really good value, and
they do make higher-end amps that sound pretty good.

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kahawe
This is a very inspiring "so I just made my own stuff" story but then again, I
think the music instrument business and especially the market of guitar
players has got to be a horrible example for hackers.

Imagine your customers swearing by and specifically asking you to produce
hand-wired tube-based computers with punch cards that run as fast and reliable
as modern PCs but at the same time they will shun pretty much any innovation
you try to introduce and then just spend 4 to 6 figures on some old tube-
thingy from the 50s or they over-spend on some very small boutique shops that
swear they are building that tube-computer just like they did in the golden
days and they swear they only solder during full-moon and its only done by
virgins, so they charge you triple-premium for it. And then they tell you
"hey, RMS is actually using that thing" and then they pay RMS lots and lots of
money so he will take pictures with that thing while actually working on a
small modern *NIX PC behind the stage/under his desk.

Aside from HiFi gear, I doubt there is another industry SO full of emotional
marketing, dark obscure magic and so much mis-information accepted as fact as
guitars and especially guitar amps.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Nice rant, but, what if there's a perceptible difference between tube and
solid state technologies?

Just because it cannot be objectively measured doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

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stdbrouw
That's not what he wrote. He's talking about hand-soldering (vs PCBs) and
using certain components or technologies that work really well when marketing
but have no effect or even a detrimental effect on sound. For example, people
want Class A amps, not Class AB ones, even though the designation is purely a
technical one and is not correlated with sound quality.

The difference between a tube amp and a solid state one, by the way, is one
that you _can_ objectively measure through spectrograms.

~~~
fr0sty
Re: A vs AB.

The difference is the fundamental mode of operation with different distortion
characteristics. Class A amps will have both odd and even-order harmonics but
class AB will be mostly even-order. That is both an audible and and
electronically quantifiable difference.

If you are talking sound reproduction then A vs AB is insignificant because
you only see the difference when the amplifier starts distorting. If you are a
guitar player who drives an amp to distortion as a matter of course this
difference is germane.

