A music store, a Bo Diddley concert and an amp built from surplus parts.

Peavey Electronics comes from Meridian, Mississippi, and is still based there. The company gives its founding year as 1965 and its founder as Hartley Peavey, who it says started out with “a one-man shop.” English Wikipedia’s article on Hartley Peavey gives 1964 in one place; the company, Inc. and the Meridian Star all give 1965, which is the date we use.

The company’s story begins in the 1950s. Hartley Peavey’s father ran a music store in Meridian, Peavey’s Melody Music, and in 1957, after seeing Bo Diddley play in Laurel, Mississippi, the teenager decided he wanted to play guitar. His father told him rock ’n’ roll “will never last,” he told Inc. in 2011, so he built an amplifier himself from surplus parts. He went on to build amplifiers and PA systems for the bands he played in, and was put out of one band, he said, once he had built all its gear. He decided he was a better builder than guitarist, and that became the business.

The company’s timeline says its headquarters complex in Meridian opened in 1990, the firm’s 25th anniversary, with a recording studio and a 227-seat auditorium, and that President George H. W. Bush toured the company on 3 December 1991. It also lists Hartley Peavey’s induction into the NAMM Hall of Fame in 1988 and into Hollywood’s Rock Walk in 1990. In 2011 Inc. put the business at about 1,000 employees and a reported $270 million in annual revenue.

Affordable amps, a famous signature head and a group of brands.

Peavey made its name with equipment that working bands could afford. The company’s website and a 2025 Meridian Star anniversary article, which follows the company’s own account closely, credit Peavey with the CS 800 power amplifier, which they say broke the “dollar per watt threshold”; with making guitar necks and bodies on CNC machines in the mid-1970s; and with Black Widow and Scorpion loudspeakers whose baskets can be replaced without reconing. Solid-state guitar amps such as the Bandit, launched in 1980 according to Wikipedia, later used Peavey’s TransTube circuitry, designed to sound like valves; sources give different dates for TransTube, so we leave it undated.

The best-known Peavey amplifier came out of a partnership. Wikipedia says the 5150 went into production in 1992 as Eddie Van Halen’s signature model, named after his 5150 studio, and that design began in 1990 under the engineer James Brown. When the partnership ended in 2004 the 5150 name went with Van Halen, and Peavey relaunched the amplifier as the 6505 in 2005, a name that Wikipedia says marks the company’s 40th anniversary (1965–2005). Guitar World marked the design’s 30th anniversary in December 2022, and in 2023 Peavey reissued the 6505 1992 Original and the 6505 II. Guitar World has also written that Mike Soldano’s SLO-100 “significantly inspired” the 5150; see our Soldano guide.

Peavey also grew into a group of brands. Its website shows five in the “Peavey Family”: Architectural Acoustics, which the company says it set up in 1989 for commercial installations; Crest Audio, the California power-amplifier maker that Wikipedia says Peavey bought in 1999; MediaMatrix, a networked audio system launched in 1993 that the company calls the first of its kind; Budda, the boutique amplifier maker founded in 1995; and the British bass-amplifier name Trace Elliot. Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age has called the small Decade practice amp “key” to the band’s sound, and Peavey planned an updated Decade for 2025, the Meridian Star reported.

American amplifier makers.

American guitar amplification runs from mass manufacturers to small workshops and old names bought back and revived. The seven brands in this guide cover that range.

The largest is Peavey, founded by Hartley Peavey in 1965 and privately owned and based in Meridian, Mississippi; in 2014, as it closed a Meridian plant, Hartley Peavey said most of the lower end of the range had gone offshore while the expensive products stayed in the United States. Randall was founded around 1970 by Don Randall, formerly in charge of Fender’s sales, and its website now calls it a division of JAM USA; JAM, founded in Montreal, says it was bought by Ireland’s DCC in 2018, and its website now carries the name Nexora, DCC’s technology business.

Three carry the names of the engineers who started them. Soldano was founded by Michael Soldano in Los Angeles in 1986 and later moved to Seattle; English Wikipedia says he agreed in 2019 to sell it to Boutique Amps Distribution and stay on as designer. Rivera was founded by Paul Rivera in Southern California in 1985, and Egnater grew from the repair shop Bruce Egnater opened near Detroit in 1975.

Two are revived mid-century names. Magnatone, rooted in a southern Californian maker of the late 1930s, was revived in 2013 by Ted Kornblum, and now issues its news from St. Louis. Supro, made in Chicago by Valco until 1968, was revived on Long Island — its trademark bought in late 2013, its first new amps shown in 2014 — and has been owned since 2020 by the New York group behind D’Angelico Guitars.

Soldano, Magnatone and Supro each describe at least some of their amplifiers as hand-built in the USA.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Still in Meridian, but no longer making everything there.

Peavey is privately owned and calls itself “the largest independently owned manufacturer in the business”; that is its own claim. Its website lists Hartley D. Peavey as founder and chairman, Mary Peavey as president and Courtland Gray as chief executive. Wikipedia still names Hartley Peavey as chief executive, which is out of date.

Where Peavey equipment is made has changed, and the reporting shows which way. In September 2014 the company said it would downsize its A Street plant in Meridian, affecting fewer than 100 employees, the Meridian Star reported. The plan was to focus American manufacturing on premium products and move other production “closer to its critical and emerging markets.” Hartley Peavey put it plainly: “most of the lower end of the product line has gone off shore,” while the expensive products stayed in the United States. SuperTalk Mississippi reported in November 2014 that the closure cost nearly a hundred jobs and that about 270 people still worked for Peavey in Meridian. An episode of CBS’s Undercover Boss shown in February 2015 ended with a plant featured in the programme closing, The Washington Post reported; the company said it had “no other choice” if it was to stay competitive. In 2019 Guitar.com reported that two Mississippi factories had closed in 2015 as production moved overseas, and that Peavey was auctioning about $12 million of surplus stock and parts, while saying it still built its HP2 guitars and Budda amplifiers in the USA.

Today most listings on Peavey’s online store give no country of origin; one pedal steel cabinet is described as “USA-made.” In 2024 Peavey opened an Indonesian subsidiary, and its Asia-Pacific managing director spoke of “a view to both manufacturing within Indonesia” and supplying the market there, Pro AVL Asia reported.

For a design guide, Peavey shows how a brand built on affordability can keep its name and its home town while much of its manufacturing moves abroad. Compare Marshall and Fender. For this guide we use tolex black, a deep blue and panel silver with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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