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Peavey JSX Mini Colossal review


BATSBREW

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gibson5413

the clean is easily had....

it does have a decent clean, i should have used my strat to do the cleans, instead of the custom axe...

but it has more unique tones to it, so i just grabbed it...

the dirty clip you liked, was the cream strat on the neck pickup... with a little grind on the gain of the mini...

 

i've spent the afternoon chasing after better high gain tones, and it's just too flabby to get it with just the gain on the Mini.... you gotta push it with something good in front of it...

i'm gonna tweak my barber (it has 4 trim pots inside of it, including a 'harmonics' pot, that i think will yield good results with this thing)..... and i'm going to focus on just the direct sound, and figure what i need to tweak during tracking, to get it just right.

 

metalfanat1c

you know, i've tried to get chunky sounds out of small watt amps, i just can't find it.

not on the mini Z, not on the bad cat, not on the epi, none of them.

i can get it from my mesa, at low volume.....

but honestly, you gotta move air to get any real chunk, and the whole point of this little doo-dad is to run it real quiet and direct.....i tried the 8" speaker at volume, it just honks.

it sounds so much better thru my greenback and closed back cab, it's a no brainer....

 

i need to record some stuff for real... get it in the mix with drums and bass.... and then see how it sits.

lots more experimenting to do, before i decide one way or the other..

 

 

thanks for listening and commenting!

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Yeah I know what ya mean. I have a set of Bugera speakers I'll sell ya for $10 each plus shipping. They're uber bassy but still clear. They'll help get rid of some of that honk too, they're moderately scooped in frequency response. If you're interested, let me know.

 

 

Or I'll sell ya the unknown 12 in my Peavey for like 15 plus shipping. That's an awesome little speaker.

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thanks for the offer metalfan-

 

well, i've got 2 greenbacks (my favorite)... a vintage 30, a carvin british series 80 watter, and a 25 watt eminence legend 122....

 

and a demeter isolation cabinet, that i switch speakers out in...

i can crank the boogie hard core thru that, and get all kinds of chunk, but i don't like the sound inside the iso cab.

 

i'll probably never record using the 8" driver anyway, the weber in it is fine, it just sounds like a 8" speaker!

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your playing is impressive. The cleans aren't bad, alittle small sounding. The high gain stuff sounds good, but small.

 

it sounds small. i'm not that shocked, seeing as it's such a small amp, but it definately sound sounds good.

 

i think i want a barber diect drive now.

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yeah, sounding small, i think, can be overcome with judicious eq tweaking, certain compression, and correct placement in a 'bigger' sounding mix..

 

of course, looking at the history of zeppelin recordings, for example, page used small amps to great affect...

 

once i get a chance to record some guitars with this, on a proper recording, i'll revisit this for you guys...

 

the 8" speaker, like i said, was never a consideration for the idea of getting this amp...

i'll mic it eventually, just for fun...

 

but i always intended on using it with an external cab, so that part's no biggy.

 

it makes perfect sense to me, not to have included reverb on this.

 

 

think about it..

 

the whole idea, is to push the POWER section of this sucker....

 

where does reverb go?

 

well, AFTER the preamp, BEFORE the power..

 

so if you take a nice reverb sound, and run it through a distorted, saturated power secton, what do you get?

 

 

 

MUD.

 

the trem, on the other hand, works wonderfully, both at clean and grunge, and is an intergral part of the sound going into the power section....

 

more like a pedal, than anything else.

 

there's no place for reverb in a 'higher gain' amp with no headroom!!!

LOL

 

it's always best for recording (what this is geared for, i believe) to add reverb after the fact, on mixdown, and concentrate on getting a great pure amp tone first.

 

i added the effects from my yamaha just to see how the fx loop would work, and it works fine, but i wont be recording any more delays or reverbs thru it!

 

 

thanks for checking this out.

 

i didn't do it for myself, i did it for anyone who's hunting for an amp like this.

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guys, as i detailed, NONE of this is recording the 8" speaker..

 

it's all a combination of direct (left side) and a seperate exteranal 12" speaker (a celestion greenback in a roland closed back cab)

 

so, if it sounds 'small', could be pre-concieved?

 

my boogie, thru the same roland cab, does sound bigger.

 

but a microphone doesn't care....

listen to any of the classic zep tunes, most all done with a small amp..

 

how big is the speaker in a champ?

 

i don't know, maybe the size of the transformer, the circuitry, and how satch decided to voice the overall sound of the amp, makes a difference..

 

maybe if i hadn't close miced the 12" speaker near the center of the cone, and had backed it off and put it off axis a bit, i might have sounded bigger?

 

it does seem to be voiced to fit into a mix, more than to fill out a lot of sonic territory (a dual rectifier, it is not!!)

 

either way, interesting conversation....

i really need to stick it in the middle of a 'real' recording...

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MY GUESS --

is it's simply economics....

 

if you know that you can't please everyone all the time..

 

and you're patterning a design after an old classic (the champ)

 

there's not much point in wasting cabinet space knowing that someone's probably going to attach an external speaker to it anyway...

 

besides, they have a second speaker out on the back, with three different ohm selections, AND the have the internal speaker connected with a plug that you can DISCONNECT....

so they've got it setup so you can use it as a practice amp, or output it to a bigger cab (it'll drive a 4x12 no problem)

 

most small watt amps like that (unless they're custom or OTHER) usually have a hardwired speaker, so you don't even have the option.

 

i'd say they thought it thru with this pretty well.

 

and i'm REALLY glad they left a crappy reverb off of it.

 

i mean, really, what would be the point of a reverb on an amp with a 8" speaker? and only 5 watts? it'd only be distorted reverb, with the gain this thing can conjure.

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well, i thought about the tiny terror...

cuz i used some big orange amps, years ago, and really liked them.

they were extremely loud.

 

but the terror is 15 watts (i don't like the sound of the pentode/triode switching to get to 7 watts)

 

AND - 15 watts is just WAY too loud, for low volume recording...

 

plus, it's got twice the tube set..... twice the power, twice the costs of replacement tubes..

 

plus, it doesn't have the effects loop, which is a feature i wanted....

 

plus, it only has (1) 16ohm out.......or (2) 8 ohm outs... no 4 ohm..... and i have a 4 ohm speaker set....

 

plus, it's a lot more gain than what i wanted.....

 

plus, it's only a head... the little speaker is good for practice and only having to carry around one small cab....

 

plus, the first batch was chinese made... which i did not want...

 

plus it's still at least 50 bucks more than the highest price on the mini...

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thanks for checking it you guys....

 

well, as far as micing the 8" speaker, i DID give it a quick listen in the cans, while i was setting up....

 

just didn't like it, figured i'd bypass that and use it the way i typically would.

 

it sounds fine for what it is, the 8" speaker, but it's just not fat enough sounding to me...

 

i WILL use it for recording, tho, especially for some special effects/eq'd blended guitar stuff....

 

also, i want to try running the xlr out of the mini, in full gonzo mode, into the input of my mesa, in full gonzo mode, and see what happens.

 

 

:idea:

 

actually, i could run the xlr out into the effects return of the boogie, with my fx inbetween that instead of the fx loop of the mini, basically using the mini as a preamp......

 

now THAT'd be prett cool!

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the xlr out, with the sponge all the way down, captures the power section distortion as well...

that signal, at line level, into the fx return of the boogie, basically uses the entire mini C as a 'preamp'.... and the boogie power section drives it, thru another cab....

 

sounds pretty intense!

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