NAD: Peavey VTM 120

Ben Randolph

Power User
Okay sue me. Sure, I love my AxeFX II and the two Friedman ASM's I rock it through, but I can't give up my tube amps nor my stupid large collection of pedals.

So, today I made a psuedo-impulse purchase.

The Peavey VTM series was the precursor to the 5150. This one is about 30 years old and ugly as sin, but sounds amazing. This was made for only a year in the 80s. It was what Kim Thayil played on Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger album.

This amp is a bit sentimental for me. I owned one in the 90's and sold it to buy an engagement ring (she said yes and is mom to my kid now).

It found its way home today thanks to Sam Ash Dallas.

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I brought my trusty Gibson SG and a couple of pedals to test it out with. I wanted to hear if the "me" today would like it as much as the young kid in the 90's who put one on layaway at Glen's Pawn Shop in Denton, TX while working a minimum wage job as a dishwasher to pay it off. It turns out, this amp has a lot of JCM 800 in it. Plugging it into a Marshall 1960 cab and juicing it with a Tube Screamer, I was into instant Black Sabbath territory. It came home with me.

In a few days a Friedman 412 cabinet will come for it to sit on. And much rock will be played!
 
What do those dip switches do?

The dip switches allow you to modify the amp's output in ways that are akin to having it modded, except they're built in. You can activate extra gain stages, boost mids, add compression, etc. That's a cool feature to have and I wonder why that concept didn't catch on more.

Definitely a great amp...I had the 60 "watt" version.

Yep, so did I. Back then, I wasn't really sure what the dip switches did and I had no idea how to use an effects loop properly. I ran an early 90s Zoom multieffects into the high gain input. I didn't know that modulation and time based effects should be run through the loop. I'm sure I can coax better tones out of it today than the 20 year old me could back then.

I was in the market to build a professional rig back then. On my minimum wage job as a dishwasher, Marshall and Mesa were out of my price range, but I saw that these were played by Soundgarden, Tony MacAlpine and Vivian Campbell so I figured they must be good. And the price wasn't too crazy. It is a Peavey and not a 5150, so no one knows what it is. Helps keep the price down.

I remember I was using a Gallien-Krueger 4*12 cabinet (maybe it was 4*10, my memory is hazy). It was a big, ugly thing from the 70s. I know that someone posted a flyer for it at the student union building for $150. I just knew that it was big, loud and had four speakers. I knew GK was specialized in bass, so I asked the guy I bought it from if it was originally a bass cabinet and he said no. I'm not so sure now. I don't think GK has ever made big guitar cabinets. I'm thinking that what I got was a bass cab that had some guitar speakers put in it.

I have a nice Friedman vintage cab coming this week. It's this one:

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FVint412

I like the idea of combining greenbacks and V30s.
 
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I remember those amps well.. a friend still has the VTM 60 head and matching Peavey 4x12 cab. Sounds fantastic.. I had an original 2203 (JCM 800 vertical input) head back then paired with a '64 Super Reverb that I used for gigs. A few MIJ Boss and Ibanez pedals, a vintage fuzz face and Vox wah.. killer rig. Still use the SR. 2203 is long gone..
 
I just got the Friedman 412 cabinet last night. This amp sounds spectacular with the Friedman. I have not done any A/B comparisons between the AxeFX's JCM 800 model and the VTM, but I will today. Since the AxeFX does not model the VTM, I figure the Brit 800 is the closest amp to it.
 
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