Happy Birthday to me! My dad gave me a rockin Peavey Transformer AND a Peavey 112SX cab for my birthday. I already have two amps that i use all the time so I didn't really need this one but I still think it's very cool for a solid state amp. Dad got it with no speaker for 50 bucks and got the Peavey cab for 100 bucks. The cab has a Peavey Sheffield speaker in it. Dad put an 8 ohm eminence wizard in my birthday amp. it rocks. He put a speaker extension cable in the amp so i can hook up the cab. Man it's so cool! The Transformer is a little heavy for me to carry. But that doesn't mean it's not a good sounding solid state amp.
I already ordered the new chip that everyone says is the one to have. It's already in the amp now. The foot pedal makes it so easy to run this setup, and it comes with the amp for free.
Okay let's start by saying I'm rating it for what it is. It's a solid state amp. It's a transtube amp. It's a modeling amp but it's not a digital modeling amp. So what we have here is a nice Transtube amp like my Peavey Envoy but it has a lot of features attached. The amp models don't mean much just like most modeling amps. But who cares if they sound good. Honestly with 16 amp models to choose from I honestly like all of them so far.
There are four new ones that come with the new chip and they are very cool combinations of other amps. Plus the new presets with the new chip are actually sounds you can use. I used one of them as the basis for my personal patches. The equalization on this amp is phenomenal. Each amp model has a unique bass, mid and treble setup of its own, plus you can add even more eq with bass boost, presence, resonance, adjustable mid frequencies, and even different cab models. Variable pre-preamp gain is adjustable too so you can set the gain up any way you want. There is a power knob that takes the final power down too.
There's waaaaaay too much to list it all but I think the BEST feature is how easy it is to work. My dad has been playing for over 35 years so if he got this for me then I KNOW it is a good amp because he knows his stuff. You don't have to spend hours and hours with it. It's very easy to tweak and you can hear the difference instantly. Save what you like as a user preset! Duh...a caveman could do it!
Sound Quality:
Here we go again. So far I only made four fave presets using the Peavey Crunch model. It sounds very good and it's pretty easy to figure everything out. I can totally hear my guitar's sound with every model I try and my personal 4 presets rock with each of my guitars. There is no digital crap in the tone. It sounds very real, not digital at all. Besides real, it even sounds very good (tubey goodness!) and with the 112SX cabinet plugged in it's pretty loud with thumping bass.
I like the Transtube sound. I have a Peavey Envoy amp (the newest one) and this Transtube stuff is for real. It sounds like tubes. It's the best solid state shot at sounding like a tube amp that I ever heard. The Transformer uses the Transtube stuff as the base for all the eq-ing and cabinet types. It's sort of like adding a bunch of eq to the Transtube stuff. Plus you get all the pre-preamp gain adjustments for every user preset and you can save all of it. Then there's the effects. They're okay. Not quite on the level with TC Electronics or Eventide ha ha ha.
Reliability/Durability:
I really don't know?
Ease of Use:
It's very easy to use. I had a model selected and a patch made in 10 minutes after we put the chip in. Then i just took it from there. The software is version 2.0 I guess. That's what the new chip says, version 2.0.
Customer Support:
Dad says they are stupidly fantastic.
Overall Rating:
I'm just getting used to it so I'll just say that I like it a lot so far and i think I'll like it even more once I get to know it better. I like my Envoy too. I'm so glad I got this and because it's a present I love it even more.
