Riding with the Kings

At Peavey, modern amp design is a global endeavour. The company’s UK-based product design and development manager, Paul Stevens, talks about being part of Peavey and the ValveKing project

What was the inspiration for ValveKing?

Before the first ValveKing, there was a Peavey amp called the Prowler made in Meridian [Peavey’s USA base]; about 10 years ago, the first edition ValveKing was released, which was sonically based on the Prowler. It was the first Peavey valve amp to be made in China — we had to have a Chinese-made product in order to compete with other manufacturers doing the same thing, but Peavey has always been about affordable quality — not making cheap products, but finding ways of making something to a high standard without it costing more than most working players can afford. So, taking the Peavey way of building valve amps to China and making it work was the challenge and that original ValveKing proved we could do that; a few years later, it was time to revise things.

There's a lot going on in the new models. One important thing we did early on was take the Vari-Class control — which was called ‘Texture’ on the original models — off the back panel and put it on the front panel. All the other new features followed on from that.

The way everything's laid out inside, especially on the small 20-watt head, must have been a challenge — you've got valves, discrete components, chips and surface mount all on the same board…

The layout, especially in a circuit like this, is crucial. You can have a great circuit, but if the layout isn’t quite right it will sound awful, or not work. There are extreme differences in voltage, from around 500 volts down to 3.5 volts, and micro-amps in some parts of the circuit up to six amps or so for the heaters. It all has to balance. The component and build quality is actually identical to the bigger American-made products; we're able to make it more affordably in China because of the saving in labour costs.

How long does it take to get an amp such as the ValveKing to market?

I think we started to look at the electronics in June 2012, along with the cosmetics and mechanical engineering. We displayed two of each model at NAMM in January 2013; after that, we were fine-tuning up until early summer, with the first production amps getting approval in early autumn 2013.

You’re obviously proud of the results…

I feel really lucky to have been involved in it – if someone had told me 20 years ago that I’d be helping to design amps for Peavey, I’d never have believed them – after all, I’m in Essex, not Meridian! Peavey has always been about making great products that you don’t need to be a doctor or a lawyer to be able to afford, and the ValveKings deliver on that promise. The proudest moment for me is going out to gigs and seeing amps being played that I’ve helped build; I think I’m going to be seeing a lot of ValveKings…