This amp rocks better than anyting I have ever use, and that's alot of amps since I have been playing for 35 yrs. and used to own a music store, so I had my choice of amps for wk.end gigs for yrs. Get it...or regret it.

I've had this amp for five years. It has been a part of every show I have ever played, I've taken it on the road, and it's even fallen down a flight of stairs. I've never once changed the tubes even, and it still sounds as good as the first day I got it.

Only drawbacks are no reverb. Oh well. It's kinda tough to get a light distortion out of it too...it's kinda either metal-claw gain or not. And the clean channel is very flat, nothing special to it.

But that's not really the reason you're buying this amp.

The Peavey XXX is in my opinion the best tour worthy tube head on the market for the money. Sure, i've played VHT's Pittbulls, and Bogner's, high-end Marshalls, Boogies, Knuckleheads you name it. Obviously most of those DO have more features and/or maybe a slightly more responsive sound but for three times the price.

I bought one about 7-8 years ago right after their debut at NAMM and it's been my core tone ever since. I dig that all three channels are useable. They all have seperate gain/eq/volume controls which is key as a metal guitarist who wants a clean/rythym/lead tone out of 1 amp but with different flavors. The main reason however that i've ALWAYS chosen XXX over marshalls and boogies is the gain structure. With marshalls and boogies especially, I find myself turning the gain up well over half way (almost all the way with boogies.) My "metal" tythym (crunch channel) tone is set at 9o'clock so maybe at 2 out of 10. The result is more than enough distortion without slamming my preamp. Thus I can crank the volume with zero white noise. I run all effects through the loop which is footswitchable - another nice feature.

Certainly everyone is different and I always respect other players reasoning for playing the rigs that they do. But I can say from experience, 2 XXX heads in stereo through 2 Marshall JCM 412 cabs w/ Celestion 75's made for some AMAZING studio and live sounds for an amazing price.

I got this thing and at first I thought it was a pretty good amp. It was a large step up from the solid state Marshall I had but as I used it more and more and became less and less tone deaf and wanted to tweak my tone to a less average sound I found out this amp isn't flexible at all.

The Ultra channel was the only thing I decent tone out of. You could almost get a high gain Marshall vibe going.

The crunch channel no matter what seemed flat always. It just didnt have the right sound ever. I couldn't use it as a rhythm channel or a lead channel it just had no flavor or zest at all. It doesn't even live up to its name as the crunch channel. You can't get a good vintage sound breakup at all which is prolly due to the fact the power amp uses 4 6L6. It's just dull and boring. The midrange tone knob just either makes it muffled or less muffled it doesn't really do much more then that. Usually if you mess around with ur mids ull gain some high end and output and lose some lows. I just don't like Peavey's tone circuit at all on this amp; there's no give or take.

The clean channel is one of the worst clean channels ever. You thought Marshalls had bad clean channels? Check this baby out. The clean channel seems flooded with midrange even when roll the mids all the way back. It feels cluttered and muffled. You might get away with single note lines but chords you might as well forget about it.

IMO this amp is very sorry compared to other tube amps out there in the same relative price range, but it probably comes down to overall taste and music style. I'm not into the whole tons of gain and death metal scene where as most people are who buy the xxx. Most of my tone is based off of a collaboration of Guns N' Roses and Scorpions albums. If you're into the 80's hard rock and hair metal or thrash metal then you might wanna steer away from here and get a Marshall tube amp which is what I ended up doing. But if you need tons of gain and don't use cleans too much then maybe this is a good bet but idk I have a JVM and there's more than enough gain, but if you wanna stick peavey maybe go with a 6505+ from what I hear it's pretty solid.

I got this amp with some Mesa Boogie 6L6's installed, and oh boy does this thing rip. The clean is sparkly, very vox-like and chimey. The crunch & ultra channels I was originally disappointed with, then I cranked the amp. THAT is when the amp's character comes out. Which makes this even better of a deal. Fantastic, WITH Mesa tubes.