Peavey 6505 a real monster

Last fall I bought myself a Peavey 6505 top 120 watts. I must say that this amp is a real monster  primarily suited for metal. But despite that fact you can tune in some nice crunch sounds and even pretty cool clean sounds too, but it's angry high gain this amp is created for. 

In the wake of the death of "hair metal" and the dawn of thrash metal in the 90's grunge rise and the metal genre was in great need to improve its sound. Peavey saw the window of oppurtunity and challenged Marshall in the fight about the new target group "modern metal generation". Even Mesa Boogie showed up with their "Rectifiers" about the same time, so Peavey were not alone in this trend.
Marshall was initially caught completely by surprise, and has not really recovered from this, but I admit there are some good exceptions.

As a manufacturer Peavey had a great success with their amp "Bandit" in the 80's but it never really reached it all the way. When 5150 was introduced in 1991 it was cobranded with Eddie Van Halen. Van Halen released in the album 5150 5 years earlier and Eddie played a modded Marshall and Rockman power rack to get that chorus-dominated Eddie sound. A sound that was close to what Peavey actually developed. 5150 is the designation for criminals with "mental disorder" in American policing language, but 5150 was far from a mental disorder.

The first models bore the name "Block Letter Models" and "EVH" was printed on the right side of the chassis, but it was quickly replaced with Eddie's autograph and named them just "signature models". Block Letters amps are very coveted in the secondary market nowadays.

How Eddie was involved in the actual development is harder to find information about, or if he was just cooperating in the marketing phase. However, he used them on the album OU812 later, and the Eddie sound was there, but very far from sounds that 5150 later would be associated with. The tuned down metal genre.

With 5150 Peavey really got into modern high-gain. Machine Head's Robert Flynn was overwhelmed after borrowing one of them for the recording sessions for the album "Burn My Eyes".
Most modern metal bands like Job For A Cowboy, The Black Dahlia Murder, Black Tide, All That Remains, August Burns Red, Whitechapel took the 5150 to their hearts.

Peavey later changed the namne, for copyright reasons, to 6505 when Eddie broke with Peavey and brought his name into other businesses. 6505 was a nearly exact copy in 5150, although hardcore fans claims that 5150 sounds clearly better. I have not noticed any dramatic differences myself.

Peavey 6505 
This amp has more gain and bottom than most amps in the same genre, and it really has its own character. The characteristic of 6505 is that the distortion is ultra strong, warm, dense and with a punch that kicks you right in the stomach. With an EMG-equipped guitar, you easily get in touch with the same sound as many of the modern metal bands of today. Add a little phaser, chorus and delay and lower the gain and you'll get Eddie Van Halen's more modern tone. Pretty impressive extremes, I would say.

It accept effect pedals very well to. One thing to consider in the context"pedals" is that this amp actually produce some bad noise, especially if you engage a TS9 pedal to highlight the tone a bit. It's wise to buy a noise gate and run it in the loop and in the chain at the same time. I run a Boss NS-2, it works great. The amp gets magical silent.

120 watts
2 channels, Lead and Rythm
EQ for each channel (Low, Mid, High)
Preamplifiers: 5 12AX7
Slusteg: 4 SL6
Output: 4, 8 and 16 ohms
Resonence
Presence
Input: High and Normal
Effects Race
Footswitch
Weight: 21 kg

If you play metal, you should definitely test this amp. If you play something else you should probably find a more versatile amp. This is clearly a metal monster.

These amps are pretty reasonable cheap today, you will find a 6505 on Ebay in the range of 800-900 dollars.

Rate if you play Metal:
5 zombies (5)

Rate if you play the Blues:
2 zombies (5)