Peavey Bandit 112

Besides the amount of time since it was produced, the amp still rock's. The clean channel sounds very clear, and the Bright swith gives you a boost on high frequencies. The Lead channel gives you a little trouble on the begining, because it tends to get fuzzy above the 5 gain, that can be fixed turning on the Gain Switch. For the metal players (like me) having a thrash switch is awesome, it changes the equalization completly, with a boost on low and high, and taking of medium.

This amp is versatile and gig ready. I personally love the sound, it's perfect for home practice, and playing small venues.

This 'reveiw' could be more a reveiw of my own ineptness than on this amp. But I have had this for over 10 years and still don't have a clue how to get even close to the sound I want, its needlessly complicated. I won't go into details on that, what I will say is I bought a Fender Champion 40 took me like a couple days and I'm getting it, dont get me wrong still messing around finding new sounds but with an understanding of how I'm getting there. And most importantly the Champion sounds so much better than the Bandit almost on every option.

I'm not saying the Champion is the best amp in the world, but I do think the Bandit is one of the worse.

This 'reveiw' could be more a reveiw of my own ineptness than on this amp. But I have had this for over 10 years and still don't have a clue how to get even close to the sound I want, its needlessly complicated. I won't go into details on that, what I will say is I bought a Fender Champion 40 took me like a couple days and I'm getting it, dont get me wrong still messing around finding new sounds but with an understanding of how I'm getting there. And most importantly the Champion sounds so much better than the Bandit almost on every option.

I'm not saying the Champion is the best amp in the world, but I do think the Bandit is one of the worse.

The peavey bandit is a fantastic sounding amp for the price of around $200 when I got mine. The clean channels are excellent and the distortion channels are just fine by themselves. Its a suprisingly light amp for its size and seems to be quite durable when I've been lugging it about. The transtube technology does seem to add a little something special to the bandit but I will be honest in saying that you are not going to get a true authentic tube tone. What you do get with the bandit is a solid and affordable piece of equipment.

Rather than post a review I felt that remarks I'd seen on a Peavey Forum were worth relaying here with credit to The author:

Re: 90´s vs 00´s Bandit 112 Postby therealjoeblow » Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:43 am

"I know this thread is a 1-1/2 years old, but I have to jump in here to try and dispel some myths that are constantly propagated on board after board by people offering advice and qualifying it with statements like "never owned either of the other two, but question the quality control in China"...

I have one of each of the Bandit 112 RedStripes that were in the original question, one of the Made in USA, and one of the Made in China, the MIC one is identical to the one in the photo at the top of the thread, with the unlabelled speaker. I have had both of these for several years, so offer a true A/B comparison with my opinions.

In my opinion, there is NO DIFFERENCE between the MIA and MIC models. People keep saying the following, here are my myth-dispelling opinions on these:

1) Myth: There is a quality difference. IMO, no there isn't, both of these amps have been driven very hard for a very long time, and both perform exactly the same, and neither has ever had a failure. None of the pots on the MIC model crackle or have ever needed cleaning, the fit-and-finish of the MIC is equal to the MIA one, the only difference I see is that the power LED on the MIA one leans a bit to the orange side, and the MIC one is a deeper red. Otherwise they are identical in quality, performance, fit-and-finish.

2) Myth: They sound different, the MIC one is inferior. IMO, no, they sound IDENTICAL to me, both clean and dirty, with the same settings. While I'll admit this can be subjective, I have personally tested these blind 3 ways, (a) with the amp sitting on the floor and me standing in front of it - they sound the same (not very good in this configuration btw); (b) with the amp sitting on the floor, but pointed at my face - they both sound the same; (c) through a recorder with a Shure SM-57 mic - they both sound the same. Again, while this is subjective, in none of the configurations I trialed can I detect a significant difference in the sound of either these.

3) Myth: The MIA has a Sheffield 1230, and the MIC has a Blue Marvel. I can confirm that the MIA has the Sheffield 1230, it is factory labelled as such. The MIC's speaker is unlabelled as in the photo at the top of the thread. But IMO, these speakers are identical in every way, so I believe that the MIC speaker (in the Red Stripe version) is an unlabelled Sheffield 1230. I took both speakers out and compared them side by side.

-The stamped metal frames are identical -The magnet diameters and depths are identical to the mm -The overall weight of both speakers is the same -The dust caps are identical both in size and material, and also in shape -The cones are identical, in contour (checked with a template from one to the other), in ribbing, in material, and in the surround coating -They sound identical (not very good, either of them, IMO) -There is no quality difference, driven at full volume, the unlabelled speaker did NOT self destruct, it performs exactly as the Sheffield labelled one does. -IMO there is no difference in these speakers, I believe they are both Sheffield 1230's, just one is unlabelled.

So as I said, I hope to have dispelled some unjustified myths that seem to be propagated by people who either have never owned one of these amps, or for sure never owned one of each. I have and still do own both, and use them regularly in a stereo configuration, playing mostly 80's hair metal, but also modern alternative rock.

Now, to finish up, on to my own opinion on the sound quality of these amps. The amps are great IMO, the cleans are second to none, very rich, and Fender like, with the stock speakers. The amp's overdrive ability as has been noted by many others is very tube-like despite being solid state. However, I found the stock Sheffield 1230's to be horrid for high-gain stuff. No amount of tweaking any of the on-board eq settings or voicing switches would get rid of the shrill, ice-pick harshness in the upper midrange / lower treble. It was even worse on any of the "modern" voicings which scoop the mids and give you that much more trebbly modern-metal tone. The high-end harshness is brutal. It was very unpleasant, to the point that after a few months of struggling with this I stopped using these for high-gain.

Then I stumbled on a video on youtube where another owner (noisezone) had replaced the stock speaker in his MIC model with an Eminence Legend v128. The tone he had was sublime, all of the upper mid-range spike and harshness was gone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oFSUBcSLBg

Noisezone does lots of tone testing on various equipment, and publishes his setup info describing the microphone equipment and placement, and I trusted that what I was hearing in his video was a true representation of the the amp would sound like with a speaker upgrade. I did lots of additional searching and comparison of other speakers online, mostly looking for comparisions of either the Sheffield 1230 or the Legend v12's, and eventually decided to give them a try after hearing the V12 compared to may other Celestions and Emi's.

Personally, I could not be happier! My experience is the same as Noisezone's, the V128's have made a 1000x difference in how good the Red Stripe Bandit sounds! The clean channels still rings beautifully for the styles I play (playing with a MusicMan Axis and a Boss Chorus); and high-gain 80's metal tone through these babies sounds awesome now. All of the harshness is gone and it's just pure tone heaven now! At $75CDN each, the Eminence Legend v128's were the best thing I believe I could have done to the Bandits and I am now thinking about possibly selling my 100W Hiwatt as I don't think I'm likely going to use it much anymore.

Hope this helps someone still looking at these Red Stripes. IMO either of them are great and there is no difference in them, but they need a speaker upgrade if you are going to use high-gain settings.

Cheers The REAL Joe"

Rob Chapman puts a current production (2106) Peavey Bandit through its paces.

Best amp for playing all styles of music. Very nice sounding, affordable, loud trans tube amplifter

This Amp has a great sounding clean channel with built in reverb, put them together and you've got a great vibe. I record with the clean channel on this amp its that good. Distortion channel on the other hand isn't very advertising. Great for metal guitarist but that's about it. the distortion channel lets of a fuzz sound when in a hi gain. but all in all a cool little amp to get you by.