Description
Design Input from Periphery’s Misha Mansoor
The Peavey Invective MH™ 120 head has been one of the most in-demand high-gain amps on the market. Produced in a collaboration with the skilled Misha Mansoor, this was one of the first amps designed to be a perfect match for modern pedalboard centric players.
The best-in-class clean channel from the Peavey Invective MH is the perfect launchpad for your pedal-generated sound. The high-gain channel in the invective is based on the legendary 6505®, known as the amp that created today’s hard rock sound. Now with the Invective™ MH, you can get this versatile performance amp in a mini-head form factor.
20w Guitar Amplifier Head
Guitarists with heavier tastes looking for their next upgrade will find a sturdy solution in the new Peavey Invective MH range. With design input from Periphery’s Misha Mansoor, these dynamic products are perfectly suited for helping players achieve the most revered metal sounds, from woody and clean to the most extreme of high gain tones.
Peavey Amp Head MH Key Features:
- 2 x EL84 power tubes and 3 x 12AX7/ECC83 preamp tubes
- Clean Channel with Low and High EQ.
- Lead Channel with 3 band EQ.
- Footswitchable Tight on Lead channel
- Footswitchable Gate and Boost on Lead Channel
- Footswitchable buffered effects Loop
- Tube Status Indication (T.S.I.) circuit
- Impedance switch for 16 or 8-ohm cabinets
- MSDI™ Output with XLR and ground lift switch
- USB Output
- Speaker defeat switch
- Headphone output
- Attenuator switch for 20 watts, 5 watts or 1-watt output power
- Master Resonance and Presence
- Weight Packed: 20.50 lb(9.3 kg)
- Width Packed: 13.125″(33.3375 cm)
- Height Packed: 19.375″(49.2125 cm)
- Depth Packed: 12.375″(31.4325 cm)
Peavey Invective MH Review
Review Time!
We are looking at the Peavey Invective MH Series mh so this amplifier was announced in 2019 and if you know anything about Peavey
invective you’ll know it’s Misha’s
the signature amp that is misha mansur from
periphery and he brought out the pv
invective 120 which i’ve done a video of
link in the description box did that
with joss and uh that was a beast
amplifier 120 watts it’s kind of misha’s
ideal sort of 5150 inspired
high gain modern bear moth of just
intensity it’s got gate it’s got a boost
it’s got three channels it’s got
uh nine volt power supply built into it
it’s got all sorts of stuff couple of
effects loops midi
controllable but anyway in this video
we’re looking at this absolutely
beautifully cute
little invective mh which stands for
mini head i’m assuming
so you can see on the close-ups just how
small this thing is i’ll put something
next to it
for scale purposes so you can really see
just how little this thing is but it’s
got two el 84s in it
and it’s 20 watts but you can switch it
down to five and then down to one watt
so that’s really cool it’s great for
bedroom rehearsing and just
having a little amplifier that’s all
tube at home that’s not going to annoy
the neighbors
they actually fit loads of features into
this amplifier so
let’s start on the front panel you’ve
basically got a clean and an overdrive
channel with a few switches
which misha wanted to bring over from
the bigger version of the invective
because he felt they were the most
important features of the invective
to him so you can see on the close-up
now but we’ve basically got a clean
channel with gain
lows and highs and the gain also acts as
volume for this channel so
you’ll be running the game to get the
desired level of volume out of it and
then we’ve got a lead channel with
pre-gain which is
of course your overdrive you’ve got low
mid and high then you’ve got post gain
which is the sort of master volume for
that channel
and then you’ve got a master section
with resonance and presence which is
great
considering it’s such a small head misha
obviously wanted to have those controls
available on this amplifier and then
obviously you’ve got your standby and
your power
now there are four little switches which
really make this
tiny little head even more impressive in
terms of feature set because
well firstly you’ve got your channel
select but then you’ve got built-in gate
which has come from the invective then
you’ve got a tight switch
which i believe has been designed to be
the kind of lower gain sound for the
lead channel
because they couldn’t bring over the
sort of crunch channel as well as the
cleaning lead on this mini head
so if you hit the tight switch in it
sort of it’s a reduction in gain
it’s a little more uh old-school sort of
sounding gain stage so i believe that’s
sort of a crunch channel as it were but
you can run the gain up to get it to
sound really thick and powerful
and then you’ve got the boost now the
boost is
designed to be like a tube screen in
front of a high gain head to do the kind
of progressive metal thing
now misha is i guess the theory here was
that he didn’t
feel that you needed to put any pedals
in front of this thing just use all the
tones built into it
so the idea of having the boost there is
that you can get tighter more aggressive
sounds
for even for leads as well in sort of
misha’s favorite preset
place for his boost that about covers
the front panel
aside from the fact that it looks
awesome with the little blue leds that
shine through and it just looks like a
mini version it’s really cute
really really cute if i had the bigger
one here because i actually lent it to
joss he’s got it currently
i would have put it on top but i don’t
have it currently now where this
amplifier
really does shine in terms of feature
set is on the back panel because
aside from your obvious like power and
impedance which you can switch between
16 and 8
you’ve got your little three-way switch
for 20 watts five watts and one watt but
then we’ve got
msdi which is a mic simulated direct
interface
so it’s an xlr out with a built-in
speaker sim
you’ve got headphones out and then you
can also shut off the
cab out of the speaker out of this head
so you can just have silent recording at
home
meaning you don’t have to have it coming
out with speaker and deafen everyone if
you want to run it the 20 watt mode
and get a bit more out of the power
section there’s a ground lift and then
you’ve got an effects loop and then
you’ve also got a
footswitch in and out that you can
control the gate the boost the channel
and the tightness
and then on the far right, we’ve actually
got a usb out which means
you can run this as a recording
interface so you could plug this
straight into your dow
via USB, it would recognize it as an
interface and let you record straight
into
any recording software you’ve got using
the features
of the amp which is fantastic, i think
it’s fair to say that in something so
small
you’ve got a lot of options not only to
get the sort of tones that you’re after
bearing in mind this is aimed at those
that like progressive metal and
modern kind of high gain and clean tones
uh
not for anybody that’s into sort of
old-school rock or any kind of classic
stuff this is
modern but if you’re into that sound uh
it’s a great option because it’s an all
tube head 20 watts so it’s going to keep
up with the drum kit
but then obviously you’ve got things
that is really set up for home
recording
like your silence recording out xlr and
then
you’ve also got your interface recording
out as well for usb and the other cool
thing is that in terms of price it’s
about 700 pounds in the uk
which considering what’s in there for an
old tube head
uh it’s really not too bad value for
money but anyway I’ve talked about it
enough I’ve given you all the features
we also know it’s very cute to look at
but how does it sound
so I’ve got a few guitars lined up we’re
going to try it with a baritone
and a sort of a drop c guitar and let’s
just see how it sounds
okay i’ve dialed in what i would
consider to be a my kind of high gain
rhythm tone got a bit of reverb and
delay as well
we’ll just mess around with this see how
it sounds.
so here’s a good example of how the
boost can clean up some chords so let me
just play a couple for a second
now if i throw the boost in
take it back out
back in again real quick
because it tightens up the low end and
it boosts the mid you just get a little
bit more chord definition
it’s a it’s relatively subtle but you
know it’s there so that’s a really
useful feature
having that on the gain channel just to
switch in and out or have it on the foot
switch
so the gain channel is super girthy it’s
pure 5150 vibes but it’s a little more
grunty a little more sort of growly
but if you throw the boost in
you can hear quite a bit of hiss throw
the gate in it reduces it and it
tightens everything up
so here’s a quick test with the gate i
came up with something suitably gatey
that was my gate song completely made up
but yeah it kind of demonstrated it
particularly
get really percussive with it
and also for that really palm muted sort
of tappy chug thing
it definitely does it definitely has
that vibe but then if you want that
girthy 5150 classic 5150 thing it’s got it
So i do like the way you can get that
girthy 5150 tone but then you can
tighten it right up again using the gate
i’m not really a gate user but it’s nice
to have it there but the boost is really
cool
because again having that thicker tone
and then just being able to throw that
in
it’s really really handy
so let’s try the tight switch i want to
see what kind of gain reduction we’ve
got going on so this is the lead channel
without the boost
[Applause]
and now tight switch
[Applause]
so it’s still a game channel it’s still
a lead channel but you can back it off a
bit more
it becomes like a thick crunch channel
which i think is good for rhythms
so for me so far it sounds like the
invective it’s got that same
grunty growl when you dig in when you
put the boost in and you boost the gain
and you give it some
it definitely has that and the leads are
so silky smooth like
there’s so much saturation and
compression and support for the leads
that it really really helps i really
like the lead channel
for me i think the tight switch could be
labeled differently i don’t think it’s
helpful
it being called tight because for me
that means doing what a boost does
tighten up the low
end give you a bit more mid-range so you
know but that’s what the boost does
whereas tight
really changes it to a lower gain
version of the channel
more beefy if anything i would i would
be calling it like a crunch switch
or something like that or like gain
structure or whatever you want to call
it
but uh overall i think it’s a great
sounding channel i think um
there’s a lot of gain on tap but the eq
is very powerful
for example check this out
so now i’m going to mess with the base
middle and treble
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
so
[Music]
um
so you’ve got a super powerful eq and
that’s even before i’ve touched the
resonance and presence
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
so it’s a pretty powerful eq as you can
hear basically giving you a lot of turn
shaping tools there between the three
band eq and then the resonance and
presence in the master section
so yeah i was i was able to find the
kind of heavy metal kind of tone that
i’d like out of this amp so
yeah digging this channel digging this
amplifier okay let’s check out the clean
channel
i’ve got a bit of reverb and delay from
ox now there is no volume as i said the
gain works it’s both the gain and the
volume
you’ve got lows and highs now rather
than being at bass and treble i think
it’s a case of it being like the kind of
low free end of the frequency spectrum
on the high end so you’re getting some
high mids in the highs
a little bit present on all the presents
and stuff and in the low end you’re
getting the girth as well as the the
sort of lower frequencies so
i’ve boosted the highs quite a bit for
this sort of sound that i wanted but
this is what we’ve got full humbucking
[Music]
so even with a high output humbucker
like that and the gains at halfway it
sounds really nice if i back off the
gain a bit
we start to lose that power so i’m going
to put the game back to halfway
boost the loads of touch
but if i move to one of my split coil
tones now
[Music]
[Music]
so
[Music]
so one thing that the invective 120
boasted was a great powerful supported
clean channel for modern progressive
cleans and that chime
and this certainly has it um i am
boosting the highs as i said quite a bit
and the presence is up quite a lot to
get that kind of chime but
with this particular guitar that is you
know
[Music]
it’s it’s a really nice sounding clean
again working in those
in between positions
[Music]
neck humbucker
both humbuckers together think i prefer
position two
honestly, i’m really surprised by that
clean knew that the invective 120 had
a great clean but that’s because it’s
you know running four six l sixes
this is two l84s and you know it’s kind
of not really aimed for the kind of
clean player as it were i know obviously
clean playing is
you know in the progressive metal world
but it’s always usually really
compressed and eq and full of reverb and
delay
but this sounds great it really does
having just the two controls the gain
the lows and highs you know admittedly
the highs are being boosted to hell
but it’s really nice okay then well
there is a look at the invective
mh from pv and misha mansour actually
really enjoy this little thing it’s very
cute looking but it does not sound that
cute it sounds
absolutely ferocious with all that gain
in there the lead channel
really shapeable i really enjoy that you
know caveat to this whole video
um that it is a modern amplifier so
don’t you know if you’re into your
cleaner and more bluesy or more
traditional or hard rock or whatever
other tones other than progressive metal
um then really you know I would say that
it’s not really aimed at anything
outside of that world
I think this sounds great for the money
for an amplifier like this is a
budget
tube amplifier you know 700 pounds which
obviously
700 pounds isn’t a small amount of money
but in the world of tube amps that is
you know budget because tube amps are
expensive not least ones that are filled
with all these different features in it
with all the you know mic outs and all
that kind of stuff and the boosts and
gates and everything you know
for the money it’s good but i would say
that like you know if you’ve got a 5150
or you’ve got the invective or you’ve
got anything that’s you know
like that way out then i would say you
know hold on to that
this is great if you’ve not got a valve
it’s a great
um modern entry-level valve amp you know
the invective 120
sounds different because obviously
that’s four 6l sixes well
it’s 120 watts so it’s got a different
transformer different power section
all of that makes a huge difference to
the sound so if you’re a young guitarist
or someone on a budget and you’re
looking for something that can handle
you know home recording
uh use it as an interface have a couple
of channels
uh lots of tone shaping ability uh this
is a great option for that and i don’t
think it’s unfairly priced for what you
get
well that about covers it for the
invective mh a little
beast i have to say i’m quite impressed
Ryan Griffiths –
Looking for a 20-watt amp for a while and am glad I went with the invective MH.