Peavey, Amp Info

Hi all, I have been digging around in the pawn shops again. I saw a Peavey renoun? 400. It has two 12' speakers and two channels, with gain adjustments for both. Seems to be in Really good shape. They are asking $239.00 for it.It is a little suitcase but weighs a ton! I can not seem to find any info anywhere about the amp or it's history. Any one that can tell me if they have used one? Likes / Dislikes? Really appreciate it,

Renown, I believe.

It wasn't their best moment, and it wasn't their worst. I'd try and get it to 200 or less, then I might take it home for ha has. Early 80's solid stater, it isn't TOO awfully bad. Louder it gets the worse it gets though, so if you need it for gigging you might want to think twice.

I suspect it's the second generation Renown - does it have small rubbery knobs, a black faceplate and does the the lead section have a knob that says 'SuperSat'? If it is, that's a better model to go for, as its distortion circuit was much improved from the first generation. IIRC, that model is also 210 watts, so you'd have a lot of clean headroom.

Here's what a number of Renown 400 owners have to say about theirs....

Had one and hated it. Its too heavy to haul around. Its solid state and kind of brittle sounding. Damn its loud though.

That was because you spelled it wrong - it's RENOWN... Here's the Harmony Central babble...
http://www.harmony-central.com/Guitar/Data/Peavey/ Renown_400-01.html

I remember it being a pretty cool loud amp. There are a lot of people that bash Peavey, but, they really have some gems. I think Skynyrd uses Mace amps, and when they regrouped, had Peavey make them again for them.

Bottom line, it's a big heavy Solid State amp... So, it depends on what you want to get out of it.

However, on Ebay, they rarely clear $200. So, if you take shipping into account..... Show that to your Pawn place and offer them $200 cash..

Peavey didn't make new ones, they had the original 70s amps refurbished. I have an article with their tech that details what was done to them somewhere. From what I remember, the guy talks about digging birds nests out of them. Apparently they weren't stored well.

Also, the Mace (and Deuce) amps had a tube power amp section. Can't really be compared to a Renown (full SS).