Peavey Windsor Studio

Sounds
The big EL34 cathode takes its good half-minute to get ready for work, then reveals that this amp is reasonably hum-free – not always to be expected from single-enders. Starting with the Power Sponge wound up full and all else at half (no reverb yet), our Strat excites an edgy, rasping crunch, with lots of whistling overtones but no feedback tendencies. Backing off the Volume and increasing the Master gets us into a much cleaner area, but there's a dominant clang in the sound that quickly has you dialling up some support from the Bass control. Fortunately this has enough reserve action to provide it – in fact all three tone knobs have something valuable to offer, but the clean voice of the Windsor remains, well, pretty twangy. It's also unexpectedly loud, and may even be up to small gigs. A dash of reverb is useful for mellowing the sound but, as promised, winding down the Power Sponge alters nothing but the volume. Pushing Volume against Master to where we came in gets back to that nice crunch again, and some inner quality of the sound makes us want to play more and more. Higher Volume settings can sound a little fizzy, but that's easily reined in by using the guitar's volume pot, and the turnover point isn't too sudden.
With the SG things are a bit different. The clang'n'twang of the Strat is transformed to a full but distinct clarity, with a percussive response to chords that makes you feel possessed by Chuck Berry, and a snarl on the middle strings that effortlessly morphs into high harmonics as they ring on (and on). All the crunch values we noted with the Strat are there in double measure, with the naturally fuller SG sound making a good sonic backdrop to some amazing overtones. These two, it would be fair to say, were made for each other.
The Power Sponge takes away some of the full-tilt feel of the amp at lower settings, and is far from logarithmic, but this is more about the way we hear than the amp itself. It's very useful, particularly if you wind up the Master to max, where you can get a good legato lead sound at neighbour-friendly volume even if that means setting the Sponge to around 2/10.
The reverb isn't perfect in that there's quite a bit of after-note dwell, but it does its job well enough in the context of the other qualities of the Windsor, and makes a contribution to the ambient quality rather than only being noticeable after the event. The shorter spring types seem to be better from this point of view than the full-length ones, and the Windsor’s serves its purpose at sensible settings.

The sound of the Windsor is addictive. We put this down to the single-ended design, richer in those ear-catching second harmonics that seem to give any guitar another lease of life (out of curiosity and beyond our brief, we measured them – no less than 10 per cent within the amp’s clean limit, at least double that of any push-pull). Added to a refusal to be pushed into class AB (push-pull class A’s tend to go that way if driven hard), this all results in a great low-level playing experience, which is what a good recording amp has to be able to offer. The fact that it’s less than three hundred quid is a pretty good reason to be cheerful.