Peavey 3120 is a Flamethrower with Elephant Balls

[skoora]

Tried one of these today and Holy shit does it have some gain and low end. Even on the tight damping setting the bass knob can get you too much low end. This amp will not do classic rock or medium gain. On channel 2 you're pretty much into metal territory after 2 on the pre-amp knob. It seems like it's an EL34 5150/6505 but truly separate channels with their own EQ. Clean is very clean and not fantastic but probably fine for the cleans metal would use. The breakup on the clean channel when maxed is nothing great. For gain it's a one trick pony but man, it is very aggressive and with the mids dipped a little and bass to taste was really heavy, super tight and fun. I kind of liked it. I couldn't imagine using a recto for metal over this, but I've always liked tight response with little fizz OOohhhhh!

The EQ voicing is very 5150 like but I would say it's even edgier sounding than a 5150. I'll give it a 9/10 on the Brootal's meter.

 

[loudgtr]

Cool! I really liked that NAMM video

Sounds good to me

 

[JerryP]

Pssst........ the 3120 is a Triple XXX with EL34's.
Jerry

 

[D-Rock]

Tried one of these today and Holy shit does it have some gain and low end. Even on the tight damping setting the bass knob can get you too much low end. This amp will not do classic rock or medium gain. On channel 2 you're pretty much into metal territory after 2 on the pre-amp knob. It seems like it's an EL34 5150/6505 but truly separate channels with their own EQ. Clean is very clean and not fantastic but probably fine for the cleans metal would use. The breakup on the clean channel when maxed is nothing great. For gain it's a one trick pony but man, it is very aggressive and with the mids dipped a little and bass to taste was really heavy, super tight and fun. I kind of liked it. I couldn't imagine using a recto for metal over this, but I've always liked tight response with little fizz OOohhhhh!

The EQ voicing is very 5150 like but I would say it's even edgier sounding than a 5150. I'll give it a 9/10 on the Brootal's meter.

Kinda ??

 

[skoora]

Pssst........ the 3120 is a Triple XXX with EL34's.
Jerry

I'm not saying that's not true but it sure didn't sound like a Triple X to me. It very much sounded like 5150 but as if the bass had such a large range that it encompassed having the 5150's resonance knob. I find the XXX to be a lot fizzier on the top end.

 

[skoora]

Kinda ??

I have no idea that if I bought one tonal short falls would reveal themselves when recording but it sure makes an incredible first impression.

 

[ranalli]

Pssst........ the 3120 is a Triple XXX with EL34's.
Jerry

I sort of suspected that all along. The XXX wasn't that popular and got a lot of bashing, however, people missed out on that amp IMO because with a good set of EL34s and pre-amp tubes with less gain that amp really smoked.

If they were going to re-package it they should put some different pre-amp tubes in there to tame the gain....it's just too much. With the stock tubes I never needed to turn the gain knob past noon or so.

 

[blackba]

Pssst........ the 3120 is a Triple XXX with EL34's.
Jerry

I sort of suspected that all along. The XXX wasn't that popular and got a lot of bashing, however, people missed out on that amp IMO because with a good set of EL34s and pre-amp tubes with less gain that amp really smoked.

If they were going to re-package it they should put some different pre-amp tubes in there to tame the gain....it's just too much. With the stock tubes I never needed to turn the gain knob past noon or so.

The Peavey Triple XXX also got a good deal of praise, especially when it first came out. But I must admit I didn't one reason I didn't consider was due to the looks, but the amp wasn't really marketed to me either.

 

[yngzaklynch]

Is this amp made in the USA?

 

[skoora]

Is this amp made in the USA?

Yes.

As far as an earlier post said above too much gain, with an SG, putting the gain on either OD channel above 11 O'Clock was superfluous. Maybe for a low output SC this will be great but any HB will pretty much rip below 12 O'Clock.

 

[crwnedblasphemy]

Even if it is a XXX, guts wise....the thing looks a hell of a lot better. Plus, wouldn't a XXX with EL34s be a JSX?

 

[shred-o-holic]

Pssst........ the 3120 is a Triple XXX with EL34's.
Jerry

A much smoother sounding XXX.....that was my take out of trying it....decent amp....I wouldn't term it like the OP is though..

 

[Fartknocker]

Gary Holt of Exodus has used XXXs on the new Exodus recordings. Apparently he kept it on channel 2 al the time.

 

[ranalli]

Even if it is a XXX, guts wise....the thing looks a hell of a lot better. Plus, wouldn't a XXX with EL34s be a JSX?

Actually, no...the JSX definitely sounds different. It's smoother and doesn't have as much teeth to the tone as the XXX IMO. The general tone is the same though....I can definitely hear elements of the XXX in there though....mainly the placement of the mids.

 

[D-Rock]

Even if it is a XXX, guts wise....the thing looks a hell of a lot better. Plus, wouldn't a XXX with EL34s be a JSX?

Actually, no...the JSX definitely sounds different. It's smoother and doesn't have as much teeth to the tone as the XXX IMO. The general tone is the same though....I can definitely hear elements of the XXX in there though....mainly the placement of the mids.

Yeah, the JSX has it's own thing going on. For the record, it's ultra channel is the XXX crunch channel and it's crunch channel is a Classic 50.
However, I do think the 3120 sounds closer to the JSX than the XXX. Just with less compression. I can only get so much out of clips though. I'm waiting to demo one at my Peavey dealer.

 

[JerryP]

The JSX and XXX are very similar. The JSX has a slightly different clean channel EQ, lower crunch gain and different crunch EQ voicing, slightly lower gain overall, other than that they are the same. The JSX does not have the Classic 50 crunch channel.
So far from what I see the 3120 is exactly like a XXX except it has EL34's. I haven't had a chance to verify every component value, but I've looked at 90% of it and so far no differences.
Jerry

 

[bartmcartman]

Played one yesterday and thought it sounded really good. The clean channel was nice and the gain channels with active eq were really tonally versatile. Easy to make it smooth or edgy. Master volume worked great. My only complaint was that it has almost too much gain for some stuff. I was trying to get some good classic rock gain on channel two and had to turn the gain down to about 1 on the dial to get there. Pretty cool amp for $1000! Sounded better than a few other amps I played yesterday that were a LOT more money.