Guitar World Reports on Hartley Peavey's 'Ubiquitous' Innovations

Writer Alan di Perna bookends his profile of Hartley Peavey with two of the music innovator's most famous maxims: "Life is a test," and "You can't be better unless you're different." The underlying thesis, of course, is that Peavey is different—and "Mississippi King," published in Guitar World magazine's Holiday 2005 issue, reflects on the 40 years of trials and tribulations that have informed Hartley Peavey's unconventional approach to building musical products and how we hear music. Beginning with his first patent—filed in April 1963, while Hartley was still in college—the article also details how his "southern small-town ideals" of independence and perseverance led to many innovations, including the groundbreaking T-60(TM) guitar, the first ever built using computer-controlled machines; the development of his storied amplifier line, including the 6505(TM), Triple XXX(R), JSX(TM) and Penta(TM) models; and his ability to offer high-quality, USA-made products for fair and reasonable prices. Di Perna calls Peavey "one of the most ubiquitous and successful brands in the musical-instrument/pro-audio business," and discusses how this "larger-than-life figure that could have stepped out of some Tennessee Williams play" is also an "inveterate tinkerer obsessed with mechanical and electromechanical processes."