The Peavey VTM (Valve Tube Modified) series, released in 1987 in 60W and 120W versions, is the earliest documented production amp to incorporate Jose-school circuit ideas — predating Soldano's SLO-100 by about a year as a factory-produced Jose-adjacent amp.
The lineage chain (per Amp Chat #17, ~[21:31]):
1. Bryan Jay of Keel (rock band) — owned an actual Jose-modded Marshall. 2. Hartley Peavey at Peavey Electronics referenced Brian James's amp during the VTM development. 3. The result: a 6L6-powered factory amp with a Jose-influenced front-end and a switchable cathode-bypass circuit that mirrors what JMIL's cathode-bypass-switch mod models.
Technical specifics per Panel #12 (Feb 2026, ~[133:51]):
- Switchable cathode-bypass cap on the second gain stage — the first production amp to make this a front-panel switch, predating the 5150 by years.
- Diode clipping using 24V Zeners (vs Jose's typical 20V — slightly less squashed, more dynamic).
- 6L6 power tubes (not EL34) — gives the amp a tighter low-end / less midrange-honky character than canonical Jose-era Marshalls.
- Longtail-pair phase inverter with ~470kΩ values (not standard 100k/1M) — distinctive PI voicing.
Adjacent-traditions context:
The VTM sits at an interesting historical inflection — it's a major-manufacturer factory amp incorporating boutique-modder concepts (Jose's preamp signature, the cathode-bypass switch) without being a Jose clone. The 24V Zeners vs Jose's 20V are a small but characteristic difference: Peavey wanted the diode-shelf character without the most-compressed bedroom-volume voicing that Jose's lower Zener voltage delivers.
The amp also serves as a chronological anchor: by 1987, Jose's work had escaped the LA boutique scene and was influencing decisions in Mississippi factory production. The "modder underground" was becoming a documented mainstream tonal vocabulary.
Notable players: the Peavey VTM had a moderate following among 80s/early-90s rock guitarists. Hartley Peavey's later 5150 collaboration with EVH (1992) inherits some of the VTM's switchable-bypass DNA — though the 5150 is much more aggressively voiced and uses a different gain structure.
JMIL surface area: the VTM is documented here as adjacent-traditions context for understanding when and how Jose's ideas reached production at scale. JMIL doesn't model the VTM directly — its 6L6 power section + asymmetric PI sit too far from the Marshall-platform focus of the lab — but the cathode-bypass-switch mod in JMIL is conceptually identical to Peavey's switchable-bypass implementation.