I bought this bass used from a Memphis pawnshop on 26 August 1995, mainly for recording demos on my 4-track. It's also been lent to friends (and inadvertently to one jackass) who needed a bass in a pinch for a show. The Peavey Fury was a budget copy of a popular Fender bass, selling for $300 new at music stores. It features Peavey's 2-piece all-maple neck design, a double-cutaway plywood body, and a split-coil pickup. Unlike the precision-made Fender it's modeled after, the neck profile is rather skinny, like some jazzier Fenders. This model has the older "lightning bolt" Peavey logo, and came without its original knobs (plus one non-original one). Much later, I bought a Peavey hardshell case for it on sale when Memphis' Amro MusicTron store went under, and later still it inherited a pair of ersatz "dome" knobs (finally replaced by a proper pair of "barrel" knobs).
The main criteria I had when I first shopped for basses was the skinny neck profile. (It takes just 15 minutes of playing bass for me appreciate how much easier the guitar is!) A friend of mine from Georgia (Vegas Oddsmaker of the mighty Round Ear Spock) had a newer Fury, and it withstood the abuse he gave it while sounding pretty good, and I couldn't beat the price. Since "graduating" to a Fender P-Bass Special, I've dedicated the Fury to a lower tuning (standard bass tuning, but down a whole step: DGCF). Unfortunately, I still didn't play this bass often enough to keep it around, so I sold it in summer 2005.
Vital statistics:
- Serial number: 03982729 (made in the U.S.A.)
[ Peavey serial no. info ]
- Body: plywood
- Neck/fingerboard: 2-piece maple
Scale length: 34"
Neck width:
- at nut: 1 7/16"
- at 12th fret: 2 1/8"
Neck radius: 7 1/4"
- String gauges (standard tuning, down a whole step):
Cheapo roundwound strings (.105-.045, but that still wasn't enough string tension)
- Electronics:
Pickup (DC resistance):
- 1 split-coil humbucking pickup (14.38 kOhms)
Controls: volume, tone
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