Peavey
Peavey Electronics Corporation is one of the largest audio equipment manufacturers in the world, headquartered in Meridian,
Mississippi. Hartley Peavey founded Peavey Electronics in 1965 after building his first amplifier in 1957. Since its foundation,
Peavey Electronics has been privately owned, and has grown massively from their humble beginnings in Hartley's basement in 1950's.
The company maintains a museum featuring memorabilia related to Peavey Electronics and its notable users, which is open to the public.
Although Peavey Electronics produces a wide variety of equipment, a few notable designs stand out through their popularity and/or use by major professional musicians.
These amplifiers and speaker cabinets were the result of a collaboration with Eddie Van Halen. Originally designed as specialist
amplifier for Eddie, the 5150 has gained massive popularity with modern hard rock, hardcore punk and metal bands and guitarists
due to its large amount of distortion, such as Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains. The 5150 is considered by some to be one of the
best amps available for heavier styles of music, rivaling other top brands. In 2004 Peavey and Eddie Van Halen parted ways, with
Eddie taking the 5150 brand name with him. This resulted in the renaming of the amplifier as the 'Peavey 6505', with slightly
updated styling but original circuitry. The 5150 II, which contains an extra preamp tube for more headroom and gain on the Rhythm
channel, is the old equivalent to the new 6505+.
The Windsor series was introduced as a low-cost clone of the vaunted Marshall JCM800 2203 Master Volume. The internal design is
essentially identical to the vintage Marshall, with the exception of using a plate-fed tone stack instead of the Marshall-trademarked
cathode follower. Peavey held several promotional events in which a Windsor 100w head and a JCM800 2203 head were played through the
same cab with the same guitar, and the guests were then challenged to try and differentiate the two.
The Peavey Wolfgang guitars were a result of a collaboration with Eddie Van Halen to produce his ideal guitar. The design was
relatively successful, but did not gain the reputation or popularity of similarly priced guitars such as the Fender Stratocaster or
the Gibson Les Paul. The Peavey Wolfgang was discontinued in 2004, but remains a popular choice among musicians.