This is one of those deep cut amps that really deserves a lot more recognition. Many times when I buy amps, I sort by “price: high to low” when hunting. I don’t always have time to keep going all the way down and I have a tendency to stop once I start to see the same amps over and over (how many 50w EVH 5153’s are there around $800? Must be hundreds at any given time…). Anyway I had some spare time one day and I spotted this Ashdown amp all the way down in the $300-ish range on MusicGoRound. I had no idea what it was so I did a little research - hand wired, turret board construction, maybe some Matamp connection… ok, interest piqued.
Before I get into it, I want to give huge props to the Littleton CO MusicGoRound store, who originally did not have this amp available for shipping and took a little bit of convincing to do so. They did a great job packing it up and it arrived perfectly. It’s a very heavy amp and I appreciate the risk they took shipping it.
It’s a single channel amp with a very interesting story behind it. Ashdown Engineering is a relatively well known UK-based manufacturer of bass amplifiers, although they never seemed to really break into the US market. The Peacemaker series was a (largely unsuccessful) attempt at both breaking into the guitar market and the US market.
The Peacemaker series actually consists of two separate lines of amplifiers, and the naming is a bit confusing. The Peacemaker 20, 40, and 60 are all standard production line, multi-channel, tube, PCB amps. I haven’t played one of these but they are very inexpensive and not all that well regarded. I’d still like to try one for myself though.
On the other hand, the Peacemaker 50 and 100 are both hand-wired amps, designed by Dave Green of Matamp fame, with transformers by John Page. I don’t really know who John Page is and I couldn’t find hardly anything about him online, but he is mentioned both in the release announcement and the sales copy for website listings. These amps came out in 2001. Sometime around 2004, a Peacemaker “Custom” 100 appears on the Ashdown website, but I couldn’t find any more information about this model other than it looks quite a bit different, with a single input and separate master volumes for the high and low modes. I gathered up a lot of information on these amps which I’ll put at the end of this article, but keep reading for a review of this individual amp.
The Peacemaker 50 has two gain controls which are both active all the time, your standard treble/middle/bass/presence EQ section, and a master volume. There are two inputs, the first is a “normal” input, while Input 2 is a “bright” input. Both sound fantastic. It also has a Character Switch on the rear panel, which engages some additional gain stages and adds a lot of cut - it’s still very vintage sounding to my ear. The rear also includes an effects loop and a pentode/triode switch for the power tubes. The Peacemaker 50 as shown here is equipped with KT88 power tubes, while the Peacemaker 100’s came with a quad of EL34’s.
It’s clearly in the same vein as an early Orange or Matamp type design, incredibly thick and full sounding, and fuzzy when gained out. The two gain controls really help in adjusting the sound, something you wouldn’t normally get on an amp like this, so you can keep the amp a little tighter than those traditional designs and with the character switch, much higher gain too. Of course, it does the authentic tones spot on, and playing it through a Greenback equipped 4x12 is a hell of an experience, I half expected to see that all my leg hair had vibrated off at the end of my first session with it.
I usually don’t have much to say about the physical features of an amp, but it’s also a very slick, practical design. There is no top handle, instead there is a handle on either side. The chassis itself doesn’t extend very wide, so you can easily fit large hands on the sides to pick it up, and this is how I carry most amps I own anyway rather than using the top handle. It’s a lot easier on the back. I know there are other amps that do something similar now, like Wizards or the EVH 100w’s, but for 2001 this was pretty innovative.
One of the other eye-catching features of this amp is the front panel VU Meter, which not only works, but is extremely useful. The rear includes a control which allows you to select each power tube and measure the bias right on the front panel. The rear panel is simply held on by velco like a front-loaded speaker cab, and there is a pot and fuse for each tube that you can turn to adjust the bias right there, no multimeter necessary. If you’re happy with the bias, you can then set the VU Meter to show volume… and watch the needle spike up and down as you play. That’s just awesome.
The design of the chassis is also just gorgeous, with a heat shield between the power tubes and the preamp tubes. It has enormous heavy transformers along with a choke. Interestingly, the mains transformer is marked for a Peacemaker 100, but the output is the 50w version. This is normal as all of the Peacemakers were staged as if they were 100’s, then some set up as 50’s near finishing. Interesting that there are even tube sockets for another pair of power tubes, you’d think they’d just leave empty holes there or use a simple plastic cap.
I actually emailed Ashdown to ask about the transformers, as well as request a schematic, and that leads to another interesting discovery. I actually got a reply back from Dave Green himself, who still works at Ashdown Engineering, and while he says there is no schematic available, he had an interesting anecdote about the design of the amp:
it was made specifically for a certain artist wjho had an “appetite for destruction” and tuned whilst we were in the states
I don’t mean to be dense, but does he mean the amp was originally designed for Slash? If that’s the case, there is zero online information about that. Perhaps it was one of those deals that they couldn’t say for a while. I’m not a huge Slash fan but I do know he was playing his own signature Marshall 2555SL’s around that time, and this Peacemaker definitely sounds nothing like a 2555. Then again, he’s with Magnatone now so I have no idea, maybe he wanted a different amp for studio use or some other purpose - it’s not like professional players just use one amp forever or anything. Either way, very interesting and if anyone knows more, please let me know.
Alright, I have a couple more loose ends to tie up, for those who care about little details. I’m going to put all of the pictures into galleries at the end to save space because this article is already far too long.
First, very early Peacemakers had slightly different knobs than mine. Promotional material and some pictures I located of another for sale with serial number 0006 have silver color with 8 small dots on the face. For comparison, my amp is serial number 0016… no idea how many were made in total but I’d be amazed if it was more than 50. Here are some photos of that SN 0006 Amp:
Second, I have photos of what appears to be a prototype or very early Peacemaker 100, dated 2001, without a silk screened rear panel and a different internal layout. I found these on an amp repair shop’s facebook page (sorry, I have forgotten exactly where now). This one also appears to be in the “birdcage” cabinet instead of the traditional wooden cabinet, which was optional. Photos of that amp:
Third, these amps were actually spun off into another brand name called “Hayden.” The Peacemaker 20/40/60 also made this transition, but I have never seen a Hayden Peacemaker that wasn’t the “custom” version which is different from my amp. There are quite a few other very cool looking Hayden amps, with a whole series of UK made hand wired amps. The Hayden website existed from 2005-2020, but sadly I can only get useful info out of the archive from around 2008, and by then the hand wired Peacemakers are long gone. The Custom is the one with the two master volumes, but interestingly the Hayden versions have both high and low inputs, while the Ashdown version only has the single input. Here’s a photo of the Ashdown version of that amp compared with two Hayden’s I was able to find from old Reverb listings:
Final bits here, the official announcement of the amps from NAMM 2002, a screenshot of the Ashdown website circa June 2004 of the Peacemaker Custom. I was not able to find the original Peacemaker website page, it looks like the site used some now unsupported discussion board back then, so I wasn’t able to locate the peacemaker page. I did scour over an hour of footage from a 2003 Beyonce concert at Wembley to find a shot of her guitarist Shaun Carrington using one in that show (the bassist is also using an Ashdown amp at this time). The last photo is of Stevie Salas, I think with his band The IMF’s here.
Here is the manual for the Peacemaker series amps, prior to the “Custom” version.
And a Brochure for the Peacemaker Custom series circa 2004.
Here are more photos of the amp itself.
As I dig down into some of the other Ashdown/Hayden amps, I have to say I am very interested. The Classic Lead looks and sounds great, and so does the Vanquish/AGM30 and Speakeasy. Thanks for reading!