New Amp Day: Peavey Vypyr VIP3 (Quick/Dirty Review)

[Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame]

Still loving the tone from the Millennium, but not loving that it isn't easy to make modifications (I haven't had any blocks of time to dig into it) and not loving that I don't have a bass amp.  So I did more research, and I thought the Peavey Vypyr VIP3 might be a good choice.  I knew to research this amp more deeply, at least partly thanks to that great comparison of marketing videos that Toadroller did a year or so ago, which was, incidentally, about the Peavey Vypyr VIP.

I saw a good deal on one last week on Reverb, made an offer, accepted the counter, and it arrived yesterday.

Really nice little amp.
I like the controls on this better than on any amp I've ever played on.

Basic concept:
Main knob selects banks. Not thrilling.
The main guitar bank has 4 different settings. They come with amps pre-selected but you can ignore that.
The point is they have 4 different settings of reverb, delay, chorus, or whatever, that most guitarists choose when playing, either on an album or live, to add "depth" and maybe even cover for mistakes.

The reason the pre-selected amps don't matter is the middle knob, give a twirl and change the amp without changing any of the other settings.
So it starts with an AC model, probably a Vox AC30 sound. Don't like it? Twirl the middle knob, get a 5150, or an XXX, or a Budda, or a Tweed, or a Brit (which is a Marshall).
That same middle knob?  Push once to get the clean sound, push another time to get the crunch or rhythm channel, a 3rd time to get the lead. Easy.

Want a stomp box, like to add a tube screamer to the clean channel to get a nice edge-of-break-up sound for some blues in your single coil neck pickup?  Twirl the first knob.
You can get tube screamer, chorus, phaser, flanger, etc.

Or you can get effects with the 3rd knob.

To be honest, I don't really understand the difference between stompbox and effect.  Except the stompboxes all seem to be mostly analog, and the effects mostly digital?  I don't know.

Don't quite like the sound you're getting from the amp?  the knobs have lights around the ring, making it easy to see where you are, so if you want to boost mids...woah, that setting was below middle, no wonder! crank that puppy! Yeah, that's the sound I want.

Easy.  Really intuitive after you understand the system.

Quicker/easier than a tube amp, I feel like, because I know exactly where I'm twirling the knobs to.  On a tube amp or even non-digital solid state, the closest I can come is "somewhere between 1 and 2, but slightly closer to the 2 than exactly halfway between).  Not with this amp.  The digital screen tells you the number, but the lights around the knobs also give some pretty good precision without numbers.

So I haven't figured out how to save if I find a setting I like.  At this point, it's so easy to switch around, I'm not feeling limited by that.
I also haven't figured out how to have 2 stompboxes on at a time, or more. Surely it's possible.  Probably even intuitive once I get the footpedal.  But I'm enjoying it as is.

It does seem to have a good organic sound. Probably not as good as tube amp with nothing else in the signal chain, but who does that anymore?  

Anyway, for basement purposes, it sounds great. I doubt an audience could tell much difference at performance/gig levels of volume, especially with, drums, bass, maybe a keyboard, and even singer in the mix.

It sounds pretty much as good as the Millennium, which is (to the best of my understanding) about as good as you can get from a non-tube amp.  The Millennium has a tube pre-amp, I think, too.  The Millennium still has a *little* more flexibility in different amp models.  But the Peavey Vypyr is no slouch.

It even made my beater PAC 312ii sound very good in all positions.

There's other crap on there I haven't tired out much: an acoustic simulator (decent), a 12-string simulator (crap, so far), a couple of other things I haven't tried.

As a bass amp, it works great!  I feel like I'm getting too much fretboard noise, but that might be my rustiness on bass.  The bass amp tonal variations don't seem all that great. And while it had plenty of volume for a basement, I'm not sure it would be able to keep up on a band or gig mix, despite the amp being a 100W amp.  So I wouldn't depend on this amp to gig a bass with.  But for practice? Sure. Credible.

[Thundersteel]

I've got one of the older Vypyr models (30 watts), and I am amazed at how good it sounds. I modified it so I can plug the speaker output into my Mesa 4X12 cab. 

[Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame]

After thinking about it a little more, I think it might not satisfy everyone as a gigging amp.  Maybe even not very many at all, dunno.

..at the ver least, however, it may be the best practice amp ever. Good sound at low volumes, and easily adjustable to the sound you want.