EVH 5150

I am a person to steer away from signature amps because I don’t want to sound like someone else but the 5150 is really not a signature anymore. It is more of a staple in the Metal music scene. This creation of theses amps started with Peavey but EVH broke off after the contract came to an end and became its own brand. Fender is the company that currently making the current era of 5150 amps that you can purchase today. If you want closer to the original, Peavey rebranded their original amp as the 6505 and 6505+. This amp has not changed over the years but this is the first time that I could get my hands on one to play. I have played 5150 profiles and amps that emulate them, but never actually the real thing.

What I Wanted

I have been hunting for an amp for my personal use for some time. I needed two major things out of an amp. A really good clean channel and a really good High Gain channel. I have several high gain amps where I love the high gain part but I hate the cleans. I love Fender Cleans so after digging around, I discovered that these were made by Fender, it piqued my curiosity because I do love the original 5150 Block Letters by Peavey.

The Specs

I will be using the 50 watt Version. The main differences between the 100w vs the 50w besides the power output is that the Green and Blue Channels share EQ controls but do have different volume and gain knobs. The Green Channel is the Clean channel, where the Blue Channel is Crunch and the Red Channel is Lead. It has 7 JJ 12ax7 tubes in the Preamp whereas the 100w as 8. It has 2 JJ 6L6s for power tubes.

Base Metal Test Signal Chain

For this sample, I used my Jackson Juggernaut into my Horizon Devices Precision Drive directly into the EVH direct into Revv 412 IR. All knobs set at 6 on the Red Channel.

My Thoughts

After 3 months of solid use, I have settled on this amp as being my staple amp. It does everything that I need it to do plus more. It takes all of my pedals on the clean channel and sparkles like a British Amp, the high gain is common but I mix that up with pedals which I do quite often. For half the price of its big brother, I am extremely happy. There is a reason that Eddie Van Halen creates these and knows what he wants.