Peavey and Periphery’s Misha Mansoor have collaborated on a brand-new combo amp that brings the tonal palette of its invective.120 amp head into a more compact format.
The 120-watt head has been condensed into a tube and power amp-propelled 20-watt combo amp, and Peavey believes it provides “the perfect pedal platform for endless sonic palettes in a road warrior package,” thanks to the blend of a “pristine” clean channel and footswitch-centred features.
Peacey’s engineers are said to have “embraced the challenges” presented by the digital amp advocate Mansoor.
His preference hinges on their on-stage practicality, meaning that tonal versatility, easy switching, and high-gain tones that could “outperform” digital technology were key deliveries.
Two EL84 power tubes and three 12AX7/ECC83 preamps provide the amp's tonal heart to ensure “crystal clear highs” no matter the setting. Its Clean channel offers a three-band EQ and focuses on consistency, and can be pushed by the gain stage of its footswitch, or by a user’s pedalboard favorites.
The Lead channel also gets a dedicated three-band EQ, a footswitchable Tight function, an adjustable Gate Threshold, and a Boost to guarantee its tones cut through the mix like a hot knife through butter.
The footswitch also provides dominion over a buffered Effects Loop, and Master Resonance and Presence controls, for even more scrupulous tone-tweaking and stompbox compatibility.
Weighing less than 40 pounds, its combo format strikes a balance between travel-friendly benefits and equally effective use in practice rooms and studios.
A Celestion Vintage 30 speaker has been chosen for its rock and metal-preferred qualities, handling high-gain distortion without muddying the midrange and definition. Tube Status Indication (T.S.I.) LEDs are also on hand to help users keep an eye on the status of the output.
Its semi-closed cabinet uses high-grade birch plywood to keep weight down and its low end tight and chunky.
Despite being a combo, it can also connect with a variety of speaker cabinets via eight and 16 ohms outputs, with an impedance switch ensuring appropriate power transfer.
A three-position power output switch allows control of an attenuator, meaning it can be amplified at 100 percent, as well as reduced to 25 percent and 5 percent, capacities for lower volume sessions without diluting its tones. This also means the invective.112 can be driven hard at the power stage without shattering decibel levels.
Mansoor’s digital adoration shines through the incorporation of Peavy’s MSDI circuit, which simulates the sound of “a certain popular microphone placed approximately three inches from the loudspeaker cone.”
The key benefit is that a mic’d sound can be sent to mixing desks without the acoustic spill of other instruments on stage or in the studio. Hum can also be cut via Ground Lift.
Mansoor-driven digital wizardry further extends to a USB Record Output to plug directly into computers for home recording, bolstered by the MSDI feature for a more authentic sound. This means the amp's built-in Celestion can be disabled for recording with just the MSDI feature.
The amp, Peavey says, “packs the full sonic tenacity and versatility that guitar players expect from the invective series – versatile features make it fit for any playing style right out of the box.”
The Peavey invective.112 combo tube amp comes in at $1,199, and is available now.
Mansoor also helped shape the sound of Peavey's 6505 1992 amp head, having said his '90s model sounded better than their modern-day counterparts, and will no doubt continue to be a key influence on future Peavey amps, too.
Head to Peavey to learn more.
