“The perfect pedal platform”: Peavey reworks state-of-the-art Misha Mansoor tube amp as a 20W combo

Peavey has unveiled a 20-watt combo version of its Misha Mansoor-designed Invective tube amp , with the Invective 112 promising all the same tones and features at lower volumes as its larger siblings.

Like the Invective 120 [note: these amps are stylised in the Peavey catalog as invective.112 and invective.120 ] and the lunchbox-sized Invective MH Mini Head, this combo offers blistering high-gain tones voiced after the classic fire-breathing 6505, and 100 per cent glassy cleans, and has the headroom and the footswitchable buffered effects loop to help justify its claims to being “the perfect pedal platform”.

What it is is a guitar amp with enough juice for the stage, enough features to make it a hard-working piece of studio, and enough good sense to make it play nice in domesticated settings. At full power, those 20-watts will take the paint off the wall. But you can switch this down to five-watts or a single-watt setting, the latter perfect for practice at home.

It is also an amp that will help you nail the sort of electric guitar tones that Mansoor has used to design prog-metal pioneers Periphery ’s sound.

There are two channels, plenty of tone-shaping EQ options, with each channel served by its own three-band EQ including a master section with presence, resonance and reverb (reverb something that the similarly powered MH Mini Head isn’t equipped with). The lead channel also has a Tight mode and boost, both are footswitchable. That lead channel really lets you sculpt your gain, with pre- and post-gain controls.

If you are playing staccato metal guitar, you are going to want to use a noise gate; the Invective 112 has one on its lead channel, and it is footswitchable. One of the key design principles behind this all-tube amp was that it could take on amp modellers and win, and functionality makes this more than just another high-gain tube amp for metal guitar players to get excited about.

Peavey has equipped this with an MSDI Output for direct recording. Send the signal out from the USB to your DAW and it will sound as though the amp has been close mic’d at around 3” from the speaker cone. You can send a feed straight out of the XLR on the back of the amp, or hit the speaker defeat button for silent recording. There is an output to connect your preferred guitar amp headphones , too.

Another feature, more practical than performance-related, are the tube status indicator LEDs that let you know if everything is running as it should. There are switchable impedance switches so you can hook up an extension cabinet of your choice.

As for the fundamentals of tube design, there are a trio of 12AX7/ECC83 preamp tubes and two EL84 in the power amp. All this drives a single 12” Celestion Vintage 30, which is housed in a cabinet of birch and poplar.

The Invective 112 is out now, priced $1,199 street. See Peavey for more details.

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