The 5150 is ok for a cheap Marshall replacement, good for metal.

But the Classic 30 is actually a really good sounding amp. It's sort of it's own thing, which is great; Peavey finally stumbled upon something good.

The amp has a sparse control set, the usual is there so I won't go into that. You have a preamp control, master volume, clean channel, tone controls.

What makes this a great amp is that you can't really make it sound "bad". This is sort of a dichotomy for Peavey, something I associate with Marshall and Fender Twins and Deluxes.

The sound has a very class-A sounding top, sort of Vox-like, but the mids are Fenderish and it has a wide and warm lowend like a Marshall. The treble tone control responds much like Fender, and again the bass is wide like a Marshall. The controls work very, very well. The bright switch doesn't do anything for me, makes things thinner, but for certain exaggerated country/telecaster sounds it might be useful.

It's fairly loud. Maybe *just* loud enough for a "Rock" band. Wouldn't work in a metal band, though the basic warm sound will make for a good reproduction device of something like a Metal Zone pedal. Perhaps hooked to a 412.

It breaks up like a Marshall at first, midrange getting saturated, but progressively the high end does the Deluxe thing where the upper harmonics get louder - which is cool. A *great* solitary blues amp in this respect.

Overall a really nice amp, seems well built. Not loud enough for metal, but everything else should work. Supreme blues amp possibly. Great value regardless, and the best thing Peavey makes IMO.

[b]http://www.mp3.com/chipmcdonald[/b]

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