MusicRadar

• Review

At the neck is a standard-sized Strat-replacement pickup: a Duncan Alnico Pro II APS-2. The electrics aren't quite as involved as those of the 1997 JD Fender Strat but do give five very useable, yet different, tones controlled by a five-way lever selector switch.

In Peavey parlance, position five, "voices the neck pickup and yields the rich, sparkling tone of the traditional three-pickup guitar. The result: that unmistakable single-coil sound that echoes the soaring, majestic blues tones of the sixties and seventies."

Position four again voices the neck pickup but with "a special capacitor engaged", creating the sort of sound you'd hear from "a full-body jazz guitar", and is "also great for the classic woman tone".

In position three the neck and bridge pickups are in a customised parallel wiring, producing an enhanced, more contemporary version of the customary middle-position timbre on the classic two-pickup guitar.

Position two again combines both pickups but, "with a capacitor and resistor in a controlled degree of reversed phase. This position offers the popular 'in-between quack tone' found on three-pickup guitars." Position one voices just the bridge pickup - no tricks.

Sounds

Now, it's always good to have some kind of switching jiggery pokery that gives access to expanded sound options from your single-coil pickups. Fender's S-1 system does the series/parallel thing successfully on its American Deluxe Series Telecaster, but with the Peavey Omniac you're offered a combination of conventional sounds that go beyond that, using resistors and caps and upping the versatility stakes still further.

The bridge pickup certainly captures a wonderfully old school vibrant and trebly twang that's the cornerstone of so many genres. Position two is very similar indeed to a Tele's central position - all glassy mids and transparent lows - and, when compared with position three's much fuller, rounded tone, you do start to realise just how much is on offer here.

Clean, the guitar sings like Carreras on a hot date, but adding gain allows the loveable, warm tone provided by position four to give an almost SG-style neck pickup sustain: in fact the Peavey boast about this setting's 'woman tone' credentials prove to be true, albeit a somewhat lower-powered version.

All settings work very well with a nicely overdriving amplifier and the gamut of all T-style tones are present and accounted for, save perhaps that humbucker-driven grind enjoyed by hard rockers and metal fiends.

Donahue's technique is, at times, so astounding that it's actually fun to try to get close and, if you're able to execute double-stop multi-bends, the guitar comes out of the box perfectly set up to do so. Remember that he does use hybrid strings (an Ernie Ball set comprising an .010, .012, .017, .024, .032 and .042 sextet), but we were, thanks to the aforementioned behind-the-nut scallop, able to bend the G up a full two tones here. Though we're still learning...

It might have taken some time but Peavey and Jerry Donahue have come up with something a little special. So, would we say that this is the best non-Fender T-style electric currently available?

Yes, without doubt, and especially at this price. It's beautifully put together and is certainly tonally versatile. In fact, unless you absolutely have to have the Fender legend on your headstock, we'd wager it'll even attract the deserved attention of die-hard Telecaster fans. Very impressive.