It's cool, you can 'fess up: you owned a Peavey Bandit, didn't you? It's nothing to be ashamed of, man, a lot of guitarists enjoyed the transistor-distortion glory of the Bandit as their first amp. Maybe you even continue to prefer the sound of the Bandit over more expensive tube amps. Maybe you're just nostalgic for your youth.

Regardless, many a musician has owned Peavey gear at the outset of their career, and Hartley Peavey wouldn't have it any other way. His company has always set out to produce a better product at a lower price, so that the average blue collar guitarist or bassist could get the most for their hard-earned dollar. "I've never been in the business of charging what the market will bear," Peavey said in an interview with Sweetwater. What kind of entrepreneur bases his business on that kind of relative altruism? Let's find out.

Founder, Owner and CEO of Peavey Electronics Corporation Hartley Peavey

Hartley Peavey was born in 1941 in Meridian, Mississippi, to a father who owned and operated a musical instrument retail store. After seeing Bo Diddly perform, a young Hartley Peavey decided he wanted to become a guitar player. His father, however, wouldn't buy him one, so he built his own, along with an amp to play it through. After being kicked out of several high school bands (for whom he built or serviced equipment), Hartley Peavey realized he was better at building instruments then playing them.

At 23, Hartley founded Peavey Electronics Corporation in his parents' basement. He started building guitar amps, making and selling about one a week, but the amplifier market in the mid 60s was already fairly saturated. What Peavey noticed during his weekly trips to the local music stores, however, was the general lack of affordable PA gear. Thus it was that Peavey was able to expand his business by designing and building PA systems.

Peavey has always done things a little differently than other guitar manufacturers. They were one of the first manufacturing companies to adopt vertical integration as a business model when, in the 70s, unable to source the parts from elsewhere, they began to manufacture their own guitar speakers. This philosophy of self-reliance eventually spilled over into all aspects of production, including in-house fabrication of cabinets and circuit-boards. Peavey even maintains its own advertising agency.

The PA-6A, an early Peavey PA Mixer; note the Putnam-style bakelite big knobs!

Peavey started making guitars in the mid-1970s, and was the first major instrument manufacturer to implement computer-driven routing machines in the production of their instruments. An avid firearms collector, Hartley Peavey got interested in CNC machines when he remarked at how uniformly excellent was the build of some of his mass-produced rifles. Peavey's use of computerized parts fabrication allowed them to produce better, more affordable guitars than the competition. Most major manufacturers derided Peavey Corp for their automation at the time; most of those same corporations now operate along similar lines. It's worth noting that Peavey's unofficial corporate policy has been one of "no layoffs," meaning they've never fired an employee because of the adoption of automated production means. Accord to corporate PR, if a production-line employee's position is made redundant by a CNC machine, she or he is found a job elsewhere at the company.

Perhaps Peavey's highest-profile endorser was Eddie Van Halen, when the shredder approached the company about collaborating on a high-gain amplifier for him to tour with. The resultant 5150 series became an instant classic. Van Halen also designed an electric guitar with Peavey — the Wolfgang — but that model was not quite as successful. EVH split with Peavey, but the 5150 lives on as the 6505 series, and Peavey amps continue to enjoy use by hard rock and heavy metal players like Jerry Cantrell, Joe Satriani and Dimmu Borger.

Peavey's first electric guitar, the T-60. You can still get vintage T-60s for fairly cheap.

Peavey Electronics Corporation holds over 130 patents, and continues to innovate in the areas of digital amplifier emulation and instrument manufacturing. And the company is still privately owned and run by the founder as its been for the past 40-plus years.

Next week we examine a company that seems to have a dearth of historical information available online — Numark. This should be interesting. . .