Peavey ValveKing 212 Combo Guitar Amp

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Excellent
Durability	Excellent
Transportability	Very awkward to transport
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Great value .  Awesome tone .  Very LOUD !
Disadvantages:	Very heavy .  Footswitch not included .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The ValveKing 212 is a 100 watt combo with a beautiful valve tone. It's a twin channel all tube amp with two 12" speakers encased in an open backed cabinet but unlike the "Classic" the valves are protected by a guard. I use this amp live for lead guitar in a blues band. Peavey are renowned for their reliability and it has never let me down.
There are two inputs, 1 is for single coil guitars and 2 is for a high output guitar.

The clean channel has volume, bass, middle and treble controls. These don't really seem to effect a huge change in the full warm sound of the amp. However, there is a Bright Switch which boosts the treble very significantly. To my ears it's way over the top and will cause a telecaster to bite your head off. It's a bit like an OTT Fender Twin. However, you may want this boost if you're a country twanger or if want a bit of extra bite from a Les Paul. Even so, you may still have to roll some treble off. Thanks to the 2X12" speakers there is a good dose of low end available. Overall this channel can be tweaked to produce two basic tones, warm or very bright. Either way this is pure smooth valve tone with sweet compression and gentle sustain. Lovely.

The lead channel also has it's own dedicated volume, bass, middle and treble controls with the added advantage of a gain control. There are also boost switches for extra gain and extra volume. The gain control goes from 0-10 with 0-2 giving a nice level of mild drive/crunch. 2-4 produces a rich overdrive with sustain. Anything above 5 gives full blown distortion with good sustain. There is loads of gain available on this amp giving you a good range of lead sounds. It's exceptionally good for rock and blues but (due to the mildness of the tone controls) the only sound you won't get is the drastically scooped out middle for nu-metal.

It must be said that unless you have the amp at eye level, the controls are very difficult to see, particularly in a live situation
Unlike a solid state amp, both channels respond nicely to the dynamics of your playing, pickup selection and volume controls on your guitar.

There is a spring reverb which effects both channels. I keep this turned off as it sounds awful to my ears. I prefer to use a nice sparkly digital reverb via the effects send and return loop.
There is also a master presence control to brighten things up and a resonance control to tame the bass at loud volumes.

On the back of the amp is a "texture" control which allows you to sweep between a class A and class A/B amp structures. This feature is very confusing but I think basically A/B is louder and cleaner, while class A adds a bit of saturation. I keep mine completely on class A so I get a small amount of drive on the clean channel.

This amp is VERY LOUD! It has tons of headroom so you can easily play clean sounds above a band with a loud drummer. It will cope with any size venue. The downside is that it's a very heavy combo and to avoid back injury you should fit casters immediately. Amazingly you can even use this beast as a practice amp. By turning the volume right down and the gain up you can get great sounds in your bedroom without blowing the neighbours away.

My one big complaint about this amp is that the footswitch is not included, you have to buy this as an optional extra (£20). The footswitch is a necessity for playing live. Not only does it allow you to switch between clean and lead channels but also allows you to switch on extra boost (volume or gain) thus giving you 3 channels on stage. I set mine up for clean, drive and dirty.

No 100 watt valve amp comes close to the Peavey in price or quality and best of all it sounds superb! A very versatile amp that you can rely on at any gig. Highly recommended.