Peavey Nashville Session Amp Review



Here's some pictures, sound files and comments on my new Peavey Nashville Session 115 Amp amp. I opted for the 115 over the 112 because the weights are pretty much identical and I've always used 15" speakers for Steel Guitar.
  • This amp is REALLY light
  • No casters are provided (not really needed)
  • No cover is provided (not a concern, just information)
  • You can see pictures below where I placed this amp side by side with a Fender Steel King for size reference. Have no fears about the size of the new 115 if your used to the older and larger sized 15" speaker amps
  • I use a popular amp stand and thankfully the amp upper rear cross brace catches on the stand with no modifications
  • I've added a pic of a nice tool box I bought at Lowes for storing all my miscellaneous electronic gear. It was $100 off and sold for $399 and has soft close doors and interior pads for each shelf. Home depot and others have similar setups but this has turned out to be the best storage option I've ever had. The toolbox top makes for a great work bench.
  • I purchased this amp from a major retailer for $1190 including tax and shipping (shop around for the best price!)
  • The provided headphone jack is a nice feature. It does cut out the input so the speaker is quiet with the headphones plugged in.
  • The XLR output is a nice feature and you can have it with or without speaker volume by adjusting the master volume on the front panel. It also has a level control.
  • Another nice feature is the backpanel remote switch which can not only switch the amp reverb on and off but can also bypass the effects loop (ring/tip switch wiring).
  • A generous 1000 mA 9 vdc ouput is available on the back panel.
  • Back panel speaker jack aloow for use of the internal or an external speaker or no speaker at all.
  • There is a 3/16-18T T-nut insert on the bottom of the amp that can be used ato add a tilt back foot similar to the one that the Telonics amp uses.

Some useful links:






Review Summary

This amp is very quiet with low input signal, no white noise at any signal level. Overall the amp has a ton of gain allowing for really nice volume pedal swells.

Other than sound, I know that weight is an important consideration For comparison here are the weights of other common amps:

Peavey Nashville Session amp 25.1 pounds
Fender 68 Custom Deluxe Reverb 40.2 pounds
Fender Steel King with casters 64.4 pounds
Peavey Nashville 400 57.0 pounds
Telonics TCA-500C Combo 37.4 pounds

I am struggling a bit to get the tone that I like out of this amp at this point. Three things I've noticed are:

1) The reverb dwell is extremely long at all reverb level settings. It would be nice to be able to adjust this on the amp or with a phone app. The reverb is otherwise very high quality. The Plate setting is much like a hall reverb. I'll probably go back to using a separate reverb stomp box that has these settings available.

2) At low signal levels, the amp cuts out kind of like a noise gate effect on the input. This is most noticeable at practice volume levels as the amp sound cut out before the volume pedal cuts off all the signal. Interestingly the XLR output has none of this annoying low signal cutoff and the volume goes smoothly to zero with no abrupt dropoff as the foot volume is decreased to full off. This effect does get reduced quite a bit with higher level settings of the post gain control. I did try all three of my foot volume pedals and they all act the same.

3) There is a sort of boxy sound most noticeable on the lower strings regardless of the amp settings. I have seen this effect on most every low weight speakered amp (e.g. neo speakers). Once I get a great tone on the higher strings, the lower ones just sound boxy and lack clear definition. I am hearing the same boxy tone with the XLR output and the headphone output. So maybe it's not the speaker! I did try the user manual suggested settings for both Nashville and Session preamp modes with similar results. I did try all three of my foot volume pedals and they all act the same.

I've had good luck getting my desired tone out of my Nashville 400, Steel King, Webb 6-14-E amps and my Tone X pedal right out of the box with some very quick adjustments. I'll continue to work with this amp to find some settings that eliminate the boxy sound but I suspect that may be related to the lightweight speaker setup. I did include a sound sample recorded with the back panel XLR out. The XLR out does have a lower reverb level than comes out of the speaker.




Sound Samples



Here's some sound samples from my first day of playing through this amp. All samples use the Goodrich volume pedal with a Dunlop Hotpotz, 12' of George L's cable between the amp and volume pedal to roll the highs off a bit, Peavey amp with a Shure SM-57 with an inline premap onto a Zoom R24 then ported to Reaper to convert them to mp3 files at 320 kbps. Both of my Studio Projects VTP-1 preamp boxes died so I bought a Triton Audio FetHead in-Line Microphone Preamp from Amazon that works flawlessly with the Zoom inputs. No hiss and 48 volt phantom powered from the Zoom. See pictures of the preamp below. Other than the first sound file, plate reverb was used on all recordings.

See the last picturs below for my amp settings in the Session and Nashville modes

-- Row 15 Column 1 -->
Selection
Recording Method
 		Comments
Shure SM57
 Amp Reverbs, Plate low to high, Spring low to high
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Nashville setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, pot pedal, Nashville setting
Shure SM57
 Excel EXStar S-10, Session setting
Shure SM57
 Excel EXStar S-10, Session setting
Shure SM57
 MSA D-10, Session setting, XLR output

There are quite a few pictures below. Click on them to see them full size or at least sized to a browser window. Click on the picture again if needed to zoom in even more!







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