Peavey Raptors and dating

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Jayjtu
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Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:24 pm

Peavey Raptors and dating

Post by Jayjtu » Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:39 pm

I have a Peavey Raptor International Series and am unsure of the year and other questions. It is black and white and is a stray style. It honestly sounds pretty good. I received it as a gift for Christmas 2000, my dad bought it used from a pawn shop. I’m curious about the raptor in general. There seem to be multiple models, the raptor I II and III, the plus, the plus exp, the plus tk, and the special. What is the international series exactly? I’m trying to figure out what model I have exactly. I can’t find pictures of the raptor III but the II looks like a tele and this is a strat style. I imagine I have a raptor I

Rand O’Merik
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Joined: Sat Apr 16, 2022 8:06 pm

Re: Peavey Raptors and dating

Post by Rand O’Merik » Sun Apr 17, 2022 7:03 am

There doesn’t seem to be any definitive source on these particular guitars anywhere. Unless you have a SN for the guitar and someone at Peavey can use that to give you more info, you’re probably going to have to roll up your sleeves and spend some time sleuthing it out.

Not to get off-topic, but a similar situation exists with the old BC Rich NJ Series. It ran @25 years, was manufactured in 5 different countries, BCR never bothered to keep any sort of database on them, there were different variations for different markets, and most of the SN’s were meaningless for a 15 year period. To make matters worse, a few guys attempted to put together some sort of reference “tools” on them, many of which were ultimately built on inaccurate inferences and copying each other’s mistakes. It took me several years, and a lot of frustration, but I was finally able to put together a timeline on them from 83 - early 2000’s. It took countless hours, but I learned a lot and even met a few guys who had been dealers and/or were affiliated with the overseas factories back in the day.

Sometimes you can date a guitar if there’s a date code on the pots - that should get you within a couple of years. My experience with Asian- built production guitars is that this is seldom going to be possible though.

Color/finishes, control layout, body construction (laminate vs solid wood), pickups, and hardware are all useful for comparing against archived catalogs, old sale postings, current sale postings, etc. That’s usually your best bet to determine exactly what you have, when all else fails.

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