Great Amp

This is a great amp, esp for the money. I play a stock Gibson Les Paul Studio and I play everything from Hendrix and Pink Floyd to GNR and Metallica and the C30 sounds great.. It can handle any type of music except high gain shredding but you can always add a pedal since it takes pedals just fine. The cleans are sweet, the reverb is very usable and the dirty channel is perfect for GNR type riffs. Its pretty small in size but gets LOUD but still sounds really good at lower levels. The build quality is very nice (and its USA made) and it looks sweet in person. Mine has a cage around the tubes to protect them and there's even some dampening material in with the tubes to keep them from rattling, which I haven't experienced. I've had it for about 9 months and I haven't had a single problem with it. If you like playing the blues, classic rock and rock, I doubt you can find a much better deal than the C30. I looked at tons of amps before I bought this thing and if anything were to happen to it, I'd buy another one, hands down.

Fantastic Amp

I have had my Classic 30 for six years. It has an amazing, expressive
tonal range, sweet clean to dirty blues. It has plenty of volume.
It sounds great without pedals. Best combo amp I've ever owned.

A Great Little Package

This amp is just great. You get two useable channels. The clean chanel is as good as any fender i have ever played. The distorion channel is also great. With a little gain you get your blues tones. Push the gain half way you get that southern rock tone. Crank the gain all the way and you get that black in back ac/dc tone. Plus its got a boast that seems to ad midrange to your playing. Amp akes pedals very well also. Come with quality stuff the tubes that came stock in mine were ruby and jj's. Bought this jewel right here at sweetwater from nick raffaele very nice guy.

Peavey Classic 30/112

I just purchased this amp Feb 2008 and it Rocks right out of the box. This amp came stock with JJ EL84's and JJ 12ax7's. I play Country, Blues and Classic Rock and Prefer this sound over my Fender 65 Twin Reissue. Comparatively the clean is a little grittier but a little more Rock n Roll at the same time. And this thing weighs 25 ibs lighter. The stock speaker sounds great with this amp and is a Peavey Spec speaker built by Eminence in the U.S.... It works very well in a band situation. I've plugged in an Epiphone Valve Jr cabinet that I have dropped an Eminence Patriot Heat into and it gives it an even rounder tone with more bottom. I put my RP350 and other pedals away and at the gigs just use this amp for clean and dirty. Awesome amp, American Made and highly recommended.

Great Lil-big Amp

I really wanted an amp for my living room so when I want to pick up my guitar the sound was there. This does it all. I put my tuner, TS9, delay, Tremolo in front not the fx loop. I've tried all of the little amps you can think of Blues Jr, Marshall Class 5 etc., I even put my 50 watt Marshall but that was to much so I put that back in my office/studio.

This amp has power...30 watts' come on this will blow away a lot of amps out there.

The clean is clear like a fender and overdrive of a Marshall. simple and powerful.

Remember that this is a Peavey Classic 30 'MADE IN THE USA" these been around for a while and I am convinced because mine is right here in front of me ")

great little amplifier

I think the Peavey Classic 30 is a fabulous little amplifier. It really does the EL84 sound well. I replaced the stock tubes with JJs and that made the voice of the amplifier sweeter, warmer, better defined and much more useful. I purchased the amp as a back up to my Marshall DSL 401 (also an EL84 circuit). After the tube change, I use both amplifiers without preference to one or the other. They are certainly not the same amp, but both have an EL84 sound. The beauty of the Peavey is it costs about half as much! On the other hand, it only has one tone stack... I undertsand that TECHNICALLY the classic 30 is a one channel amplifier with an additional gain stage in the preamp section whcih they call channel two. That is, you are loading more preamp gain to the clean channel when you switch 'channels'. That is how the Hot Rod Deluxe works, as well as the Crate Combo amps that have one tone stack. It's not a bad thing, it's just different than having two channels like the Marshall DSL 401.

I tried different speakers via extension cabinets. I do think there are benefits to changing out the stock speaker, but not enough for me. Besides, if I want to change the speaker sound, I have a couple extension cabinets, so I can do that any time I want to. When I play with my band, I can't not hear the subtle differences between various speakers. They do not make me play better, write better songs or become a better performer on stage, so the stock speaker is okay with me.

All in all, the Peavey Classic 30 is light wieght, easy to tweak out for good clean and over driven sounds, it is inexpensive, and it looks good. If you like the EL84 sound, I do not think there is a better low cost choice than this amplifier. I actually prefer it to the AC30 and AC15s that I have tried.

New sound

I generally play blues and roots rock type things,I am an owner and long time user of fender guitars and amps,When I picked up the classic thirty and played it side by side with the fenders I found that instead of a not quite fender sound it has a unique sound, and found myself leaning more and more towards the peavey ,I use mainly the normal channel and set at a volume level around 4 it sounds really good and has no problem on it's own with bass and drums. The only problem I've experienced is tube rattle in the power section even with the existing clips it needs some tube taming.I love the way the preamp controls are interactive unlike most amps nowadays. the reverb is good but I suggest the use of a holy grail for a fender type vibe.I did use groove tubes in the power section to soften the sound and a speaker upgrade for personal preference, but if you have the time I would suggest breaking it in before making changes.For the price ya gotta know your gonna have to do some tweaking to get a first class rig but I find it to be a nice addition to the sound collection ! Buy the way I'm on strike over fender and gibson prices !

Versatile, quality amp

This is my gigging amp and I love it. It's pretty lightweight and portable for a 30 watt tube amp and really has a great overall tone. This is not an amp for metal, nu metal, shred or other hi gain genres. But if you play country to blues to classic rock, or anything in between, this is a great amp.

It does suffer slightly from cheaper stock tubes and speaker. I say slightly because the amp really sounds great right out of the box. But swapping tubes (as I did with JJs) makes a big improvement on tone. A speaker change also helps a ton. Not that it's bad before the changes, but the changes make a huge difference. Which leads me to believe that the amp circuit itself is really quality and that's what is really driving the great tone here.

The EQ is pretty responsive. It takes pedals great. I use a couple overdrives and some modulation on both channels and it sounds really good. The FX loop is good to have because the drive channel has a great crunch. So I can put my modulation in the loop. It's not quite a Marshall crunch, but then again few amps are. There's alot of headroom on the clean channel (even more now that I put the JJs in it. The clean channel has a nice sparkle. It's not a Fender by any stretch of the imagination. But unlike with Fender amps, you get a dirty channel here that you can actually use. In general this amp has two quality channels. Neither one is really top of the line (like Marshall or Fender), but both are very useable. I wish it had a direct out, but oh well. It does have an extension jack, and I'll probably pick up a 2x12 cab for it eventually.

I think the price is a little high (I got mine much cheaper that it normally goes for), but then again, I think tube amps are generally overpriced anyway. The price tag on it is pretty much in line with other smaller tube amps. So take that for what it's worth.