Peavey 6505 vs Invective 120

[Guitarjon]

So, since I have a Peavey 6505 and an Invective 120 it seemed only natural that I made a comparison between them. I really like both to be honest, they both offer great tones but the Invective is just very flexible and versatile because of all the added features.

The Invective is based on the original block letter 5150 so I was quite curious to see how it compares to my 6505, which of course sounds basically the same as the old 5150s. 'Nuff said, let's see how they compare!



It's hard to beat the Invective but the 6505 does have some serious CHUNK going on and great mids, for the gain tones that is. The cleans on the Invective are better to my ears. Let me know your thoughts, which one would you pick and why based on the sound and/or features.

 

[MASS DEFECT]

The Invective sounds good. About the same as the 6505 but it compresses far earlier or there is more gain at the beginning of the knob's taper. The presence brightens up earlier too. If anybody here wants an Invective, there's a ton of them at GC used.

 

[BurningRome]

The Invective is the best looking amp Peavey has arguably ever made but with that said the two amps sound so similar but the 6505 has an overall better presence on the gain. I feel like it could be possible to match the 6505 clean with the Invective if you dialed out some of the depth/low end but I don't know.

Either way, the Invective looks cooler and they both sound so similar it wouldn't matter to me which one I used, I'd pick the invective for looks lol.

 

[Joomis]

You should do a Quad Cortex capture of those 2

 

[TheWarAgainstTime]

Great video as always, Jon! I'm sure some additional tweaking could get them to sound even closer on the high gain channels. The cleans are no contest IMO, but the 6505 isn't as bad as it's often made out to be in that department

 

[Deadpool_25]

Good stuff Jon. I have both of these as well. I felt like they could do similar things on the gain channels. This makes sense as I believe that’s pretty much how the Invective was designed. I always felt the Invective had more presence at similar knob settings and this was confirmed to me by John Fields who worked with Misha to design the amp.

The clean channels are completely different to me. The Invective cleans are warm, sparkly, and a bit compressed. It’s definitely not a vintage-inspired clean tone. The 6505 cleans are flat and not very compressed at all. I think that’s why many people find them uninteresting but others say they’re just fine. I would describe them as “usable but bland.”

The reason I say the 6505 clean tone is flat is because if you run an EQ with a V-curve in front of it, it ends up sounding VERY good imo and goes from bland to inspiring. It becomes much more Fenderish which people always describe as scooped.