NAD

ThePrettyDamned

@bigfuzz I'll sort it later for you.

@drew_fx I am going to look into it when I clean the pots. Don't suppose you'd know how to go about doing it?

Great amp as it is though. Nice as a backup if you're already sorted.

One sign that it is solid state (though some valve amps are the same) - changing from humbucker to single coil requires a change in gain, eq and general settings to sound good. Oddly enough, coil splits don't!

Richardj

For cleaning any electric type stuff I always use Servisol, Maplins etc always have it, excellent stuff. If you are lucky you might be able to squirt it into the pot around the shaft on the front (ooh er missus!). if you are feeling a bit more ambitious it isn't massively difficult to drop the chassis out, but you obviously need to be careful with the extraneous wires coming out of it and it's going to be heavier and more awkward than you think. BTW Peavey UK are excellent for spares, I got bits from them for an early '90s Transtube amp off the shelf. Helpful and not scandalous prices.

ICBM

I love these first Transtube Peaveys. Seriously, a candidate for the best-sounding solid-state amp ever, and a lot better than many valve amps. If they'd made them under a different name and launched them as a new boutique solid-state amp they would have made quite a big impression I think.

They are also as close to bombproof as any amp I know of. It's remarkable how many companies don't seem to be able to get either of these things right, either together or at all, even at much higher prices. Peavey did both and the amps weren't expensive!

Sadly the more recent non-USA-made ones aren't *quite* as good - the build quality is just a little lower, and in my opinion they don't sound quite as good either - but they're still not at all bad.

ThePrettyDamned

Yeah, I've heard Peavey are really great for service. I'd be interested to know how they went about voicing these. The clean is a fairly typical fendery one, though with a very powerful eq (you can make it sound crap if you wanted...), but the drive is quite unique. It's kinda 6505 ish, but solid state in style - it sounds more like they wanted to make it sound good as a solid state rather than emulate a valve amp (despite the transtube). It can be quite valvey at lower settings, though, but I use it with the gain up at 7 or 8.

Im amazed at how quiet it is, noise wise. Even gain maxed, it doesn't hum or hiss much at all.

@icbm, yeah I tried a new one against a 6505+ combo and while the valve amp won, the new one could do a lot of sounds the valve amp couldn't. Play the amp to it's strengths and it shines, but it was pretty hissy - this one is near silent, it's a bit weird! The new one has more voices, too - but one of them was... Er... Well, bedroom practice, scooped can be fun. Not useful though! I think it was similar to the thrash setting on this, which makes for great fendery od tones at lower gain settings but sounds horrible when the gain is cranked.

The reverb is nice, too. I've never been a fan of spring reverb because they seem to get very overpowering but this one is balanced and not too bright or nasty - just a nice reverb, really.

Drew_TNBD

ThePrettyDamned said:

@drew_fx I am going to look into it when I clean the pots. Don't suppose you'd know how to go about doing it?

I don't know for certain, but you could try making parallel connections from the PCB contact points to a SPST switch and see if that works.

ThePrettyDamned

Drew_fx said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

@drew_fx I am going to look into it when I clean the pots. Don't suppose you'd know how to go about doing it?

I don't know for certain, but you could try making parallel connections from the PCB contact points to a SPST switch and see if that works.

I actually messaged ICBM as he's a bit of a fan of these, and he said I'd need a relay.

When he said that, I thought of the Olympic event, so I don't think I'm cut out for this modding lark - he recommended much the same.  Still, while that's a shame, it doesn't make this a bad amp at all.  Just means, if I had a lower gain rock tone a la 70's-80's, and I want to give it a kick up the chuff, I press a button on the amp.  Less elegant, but it'll sound good!

I wonder what the Sheffield speaker is - as far as I know, the newer blue marvels are Eminence.  Someone said to change it to an Eminence Swamp Thang for an improved tone, but I don't feel the need.  

Drew_TNBD

Ahh okay. Well my electronics skills are pretty limited, so obviously listen to IC!

The clean tones sound quite nice though!

ThePrettyDamned

They really are not bad at all! I wouldn't say they are the best in the world, but again, I've heard worse sounding valve amps. It's very... Funky and clean. Perfect for nile but for fru tones, you wanna go to the drive channel. The clean tales pedals well - I put my route 66 in front with the od side on (modded tubescreamer). I switched the bass boost on on the pedal, and I swear, boutique drive killer. Sounds nothing short of amazing.

Such a shame about the gain boost not being footawitchable. I've dialed it perfectly for regular lead channel to be a randy rhoads style rhythm tone, which cleans up to a dirty blues, then push the gain boost for more modern rock and metal. If that had a footswitch...

ICBM

It certainly is *possible* - probably even with the existing component set, because the amp has a relay-switched FX loop which could be hardwired to 'on' and the relay then used to duplicate the push-button switch, without even needing to change the control circuit for it (it would simply be the FX button on the footswitch) - but doing so would require cutting quite a lot of board traces and jumpering with wires. By no means impossible, although I don't know enough about the amp layout to tell how difficult it would be - but there's also a small risk of it causing stability or noise problems depending on the PCB layout.

Definitely not something I'd recommend trying unless you're familiar with working on PCB amps and/or don't mind risking trashing the whole thing. On the other hand they're pretty cheap if you did come unstuck…

The 'thrash' button could definitely be made footswitchable very easily if that was useful though - it simply switches part of the tone stack to ground, so you could duplicate that with a single latching footswitch. There's also a possible risk of that causing noise though (in the 'non-thrash' mode).

Are these the right knobs?

[Pic hosting account expired]

ThePrettyDamned

I actually don't use thrash mode, sadly, despite playing a great deal of thrash...

To be honest, by the sounds of it, getting a pro to sort it would be risky and cost a fair bit. I could, if gigging, just buy another and set one up for lead, the other for rhythm and clean and use a simple switching box. It would also give me the option of running a ping pong delay.

Thanks for the advice though!

The pots are making less noise now, after twiddling them a bit. I think jookychap gave me a gem.

Roaster

I had one of these, got it brand new in 2001 I think, only just parted with it. Absolutely cracking amp. Remember Tony McPhee (groundhogs) playing one all night at a local gig. The t dynamics is a valve emulator , works very well. These are also very good to put a modeller into the power amp in jack, very transparent power section. Think I still have the manual somewhere

ChrisMusic

Hey TPD, inspired thinking about the two amp thing in Drew_FX's discussion.  Just put a bit in there about running two amps as two pre amps and two power amps, split by the effects loop, to run either or both pres in stereo.  I think that should work.  Could be the basis of an interesting setup.

ThePrettyDamned

ChrisMusic;88706" said:

Hey TPD, inspired thinking about the two amp thing in Drew_FX's discussion.  Just put a bit in there about running two amps as two pre amps and two power amps, split by the effects loop, to run either or both pres in stereo.  I think that should work.  Could be the basis of an interesting setup.

Yeah, if I was gigging I think I would. They're affordable enough, and pretty portable (this is not that light, though!). It's be nice to get stereo delay...

ICBM

I used to do that with two original Super Champs, which I had fitted with FX loops - the channel switching on them was very primitive and the best settings for clean were totally different from those for overdrive, so I set them up with a selector going into the amps, then a stereo FX processor in the loops - but it has to be a particular type of stereo, the sort that mixes both input signals and applies the resulting dry signal to both outputs with the stereo effects spread across the two (actually a rather poor form of stereo normally) - you need an FX processor that allows this. It sounds complicated but once you've got the FX unit set up right it's very simple.

I've thought about doing it with my two Trem-o-verbs as well, so I could get access to all four modes on the fly, but if you think that two Bandits aren't light…

ThePrettyDamned

Haha! I'd love to see and hear that...

I've just been experimenting and tubescreamers work! With the bass boost on, into the clean channel, it's a lovely overdrive. But when on gain channel, I can use it to kick in extra gain and sustain. It doesn't boost the volume as such, but it does mean I won't need the gain boost on gigs. For a volume boost, I could hit an eq pedal in loop (or set eq to cut a bit and switch it off for boost).

Thoughts?

Also, when I have a mic, I'll demo this just so you know. It's not quite the same as a tubescreamer pushing an amp over the edge, but it is like a tubescreamer in front of a driven amp, that is, it tightens the distortion and adds to the gain, if not the volume.