Peavey 5150

[1] Design of the amplifier began in 1990 and it became a flagship project for Peavey and for then lead engineer James Brown (who has since founded Amptweaker[2]), lasting for about 13 years, comprising the 5150 and 5150 II, until 2004.

The 5150 was based on the Soldano SLO-100 which Eddie Van Halen was using at the time and designed to provide high gain saturation as well as a clean channel.

[5] While the product was designed around a centered printed circuit board (PCB), its cascading five preamps (actually four preamplifiers and one phase inverter) and four gain stages were implemented in a very simple manner.

This design and implementation allowed the individual components to carry themselves (such as by placing the transformer so as to ensure acoustical integrity by minimizing transconductance), in addition to commonizing the system's ground by way of a multilayer PCB, thereby avoiding a large source of unwanted nuances in most poorly grounded musical applications.

[citation needed] Both the 5150 and the 6505 are well known for their high gain overdrive channel, and have seen widespread use by rock, hardcore and metal guitarists.

An early breakthrough was its use by Colin Richardson and Andy Sneap, two "seminal" British producers of heavy metal; especially Machine Head's Burn My Eyes (1994) helped the 5150 gain a reputation for its sound, which "defined a generation of guitar tone".

[8] Used in conjunction with an overdrive pedal (such as the Tube Screamer) to tighten the low end, the 5150 has been widely used in metal music.

This combo also comes with a built in spring reverb unit that the head model does not have, controllable via the footswitch and indicated by a green LED when active.

[14] It is available in a 60 watt 1x12 combo (Called 6505+112), of which the internal circuitry is similar to the head, but with 5 tubes in the preamplifier, using 2 instead of 4 6L6GC powertubes an additional 3-spring reverb.