Peavey Valve King Royal 8

[Duff]

I just brought home a brand new VK Royal 8 I got for my fiance's nephew. Paid 120 dollars out the door and got a korg tuner heavy duty ten foot cable and set of Ddarrio nine's strings thrown in free.

Tested the amp and it is awesome with both the Fender strat and the Michael Kelly Rockfield direct mount humbuckers. Great little practice amp, close my mini colossal and brighter than my Blackheart Little Giant on three watts, cranked thru my stock Epiphone So. Cal. 4 by 12 Emminence loaded cabinet.

I must say, however, that my closed back little Marshall MG15CDR sounds just as good and has a better clean sound due to the clean channel, but it is not a tube amp and the Royal 8 is an all tube amp and has that sweet tone and can be adjusted for a lot of different driving tones and has that inherent tube vibe and charisma that some of us seek and rever. I'm sure the eleventh grader will love it along with his white with gold trim AL2000 that I just ordered him. I'll set everything up before I send them to him. He will be very happy and his mother has already arranged for lessons and it will be a big surprise birthday present.

I will review my new Fender Special Edition FMT Telecaster HH when it arrives, with its Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates in the bridge and 59 in the neck, in deep cherry burst. This should sound interesting with its solid mahogany body with maple veneer and mahogany set neck.

[marnold***]

You sound like a pretty rockin' uncle (to-be) there, Duffy! I only briefly got to hear one of those Royals. My only complaint were those that you would expect from a speaker and enclosure that small.

[Duff]

Great house amp for home use. Gets loud enough to sound great but not really irritate a supportive and somewhat doteing mother. Loud enough to gig with a semi loud drummer in a small space.

Stock speaker sounds great and is totally suitable for a beginner but could be upgraded with a very sensitive eight inch celestion or eminence or some other Jensen or whatever that has a 102 - 104 sensitivity rating, thirty watt speaker or so.

Super great tones when working the gain and volume knobs against each other but no real clean sound like on my little Marshall practice amp with two channels. The Mini Colossal has almost no clean sound either. You need a bigger class A to get that clean sound at any volume. But this will be a great beginner amp with that sought after growling mildly distorted tone of a real tube amp that doesn't need to sound Fender clean. That really full sound even with a strat. Nice little amp that any beginner, practically, would be happy with. I wish I had one when I first started out and I probably paid just as much for a small thin sounding solid state with a fake sounding overdrive channel.

I'm sure you, Marnold, with some of your high gain guitars, would really like the Royal 8. It has high and low gain guitar inputs. The stock speaker sounds incredibly good. Way better than I expected after reading the reviews but maybe the newer versions did some corrections to improve the sound.

[oldguy]

Those 4x12 Epi cabs w/ the Lady Luck speakers make everything sound big.