I tried out a Windsor Studio yesterday for a good half-hour. It's a 20W, 1x12 combo with reverb, effects loop, and power soak (done with a huge light bulb hanging in the back of the cab. It uses 2 EL84s, though it is built to experiment with other types for different sounds. $399.
The first thing that struck me is the almost total lack of bass. Using a tele neck PUP with the tone back, I still had to turn the bass knob up to 12 to get any sort of fullness. I think this is done to keep the distortion tight at higher gain settings, but it was a bugger. The mid and treble knobs are voiced rather high - twang is difficult as anything over 5 on the knob gets a little shrill. The mid knob also never adds fullness - just a strange honk as it is turned up. Again, I think this is to scoop the upper-mids for high-gain, but it's annoying when you want warmth and can't get it. Reverb is acceptable, but anything below halfway is almost unnoticeable.
My main issue was no clean headroom WHATSOEVER. Trying to find a jazz tone, I plugged the tele into the low-gain input, turned up the power soak, and turned the pre-volume down. It didn't get clean until 2, where it was almost off. Even then, the neck PUP distorted when pushed. Also, the Master volume is before the power tubes, so anything above 3 was distorted. I wasn't able to get a clean tone at anything above soft conversation volume.
It's clearly made for distortion, and in its defense the distortion sounds are OK. At mid levels they are appropriately Marshall-like, with some reasonably nice grind. Above that (or with the boost on), you start to get what sounds like a broken Marshall - not useful as far as I'm concerned.
On the upside, it's good-looking. I think for someone just getting into the tube game who plans to use nothing but higher-gain ALL THE TIME it would be OK. For the price, though, there are more versatile tube amps and better sounding solid-state models. Versatility with the WS is almost nil - you can always step on a pedal to make a clean amp distort, but you can't do the inverse. The Crate V18 has almost the same specs minus the power soak, is $70 cheaper, and has reasonable clean range.
Peavey Windsor Studio mini-review
Moderated By: mods
For the first half of their existence, all they did was crystal cleans. Now it seems like all they do is over-the-top distortion.
They finally accomplished what people in the 1950s and early 60s wanted in the 1970s and 80s. Now they've created what people wanted in the 1980s in the 2000s.
They're 20 years behind the curve - stupid bastards.
They finally accomplished what people in the 1950s and early 60s wanted in the 1970s and 80s. Now they've created what people wanted in the 1980s in the 2000s.
They're 20 years behind the curve - stupid bastards.
