The Story Behind The Peavey Guitar Center
Hartley Peavey was just an ordinary kid growing up in the South in the 1950s. That was until he went to a Bo Diddley concert and returned home telling his father he wanted to become a guitarist. When Hartley asked his father to buy him an electric guitar, he was told that he could have some lessons and if he mastered them, his father said he "consider getting me a guitar." Hartley said.
Being an impatient teenager, Hartley took any old classical acoustic guitar and modified it so that it could accept steel strings and then he hand crafted his own set of pickups because he didn’t have any money to buy a factory made set.
And of course he needed an amplifier in order to play, but his father was not impressed enough to part with his hard earned money yet, so Hartley simply made his very own amplifier. That was in 1957-58. Once Peavey graduated from college he immediately set out to develop his own line of guitars and electronic gear for electric guitars.
Inspired by his hero Leo Fender, Peavey felt that he should build products that may not be all that fancy but were “great equipment at fair prices”, and so began the Peavey guitar center.
Although Peavey Electronics has 33 different facilities spread across North America, Europe and Asia, the Peavey guitar center that most people associate with the company the most was its old Leakesville plant located in southern Mississippi.
The now legendary Peavey guitar center at Leakesville was where some of the greatest Peavey guitars were both designed and built. The master craftsmen and engineers at this facility produced some the company’s more noteworthy and better known guitars such as Eddie Van Halen’s original Wolfgang and Wolfgang Special.
Plus it was the home of the Firenza, Firenza AX and the Firenza JX plus the highly rated Limited HB, Limited ST, Limited VT and Limited STD. One the things that made this particular Peavey guitar center so special and that keeps Peavey Electronics in the forefront of the musical equipment industry is that the company is a family run business.
When the Leakesville faculty was closed in 2003, all the equipment, custom shop and master craftsmen were relocated to the main Peavey guitar center at its headquarters in Meridian, Mississippi. This facility continues the tradition started at Leakesville by producing the HP Special.
The HP Special is Peavey designed electric guitar that is modeled from the EVH Wolfgang Special, which was discontinued when Eddie Van Halen parted from Peavey in 2004. Many guitarists, who don’t care whose name is on the neck, feel that the HP Special has superior style, quality, craftsmanship and playability compared to the new Fender/EVH Wolfgang.
Peavey, unlike many other well known guitar brands; that are actually run by giant, faceless conglomerates which overran the guitar manufacturers in the 60s and 70s, Peavey has been guided by a single vision for over 37 years.
This ensures that the musical gear coming from a Peavey guitar center will be known for its quality, performance with fair pricing.
