Okay, picked this guy up cheap and I'm going to somewhat follow through on my "Matange" plans, except I'm dropping the Orange part in favor of a Matamp/JCM800 blend. Hey, its got a third preamp tube, why not?
So far all I've done cosmetically is move the back grille to the front. Not sure I'll do much more; maybe cut a new back grille out of expanded metal.
The preamp is currently fairly awful. Way too much gain, too little decoupling, lousy tone stack. I'm probably going to turn that cold clipper preamp stage into a cathode follower and the tone stack into a James with mid shift. I'll probably use the worthless "texture" control for the FAC. Then I'll use the "boost" relay to switch the second gain stage in and out.
For now I've started in on the power amp mods: 100k for the EL34 grid leaks, suppressors tied to cathodes, grid stoppers up to 47k, and 1k8 screen stoppers (didn't have any 1k5). Very noticeable improvement already!
Incidentally, Peavey seems to have paid the extra nickel for halfway-decent circuit board material. Id rather remove every component in this amp twice than remove one resistor on a Marshall made in the past decade.
Hey Paul, i know this is an ancient posting but could you let me know how you removed the front panel, thanks.
ReplyDeleteThe white-tolexed part? Pretty easy - you have to take the back grille off, then take the amp chassis out, then there are screws on the inside of the headshell that go through those black rectangular sections immediately to the sides of where the chassis goes. The screws go all the way through the black rectangular supports and into the white front panel.
DeleteYou can see the screw holes in that picture, actually.
Oh, and you also have to take the oval Peavey badge off; that holds the white front panel to the black one. In my picture, the oval badge is the only thing holding up the old mesh back panel.
I eventually put it back to stock because I couldn't think of a good way to both protect the tubes and have adequate ventilation, but in the future I'll probably just put the chassis back into the headshell backwards and add a Marshall-style roof vent.
Hello! Is it possible to remove the "black" part of the front and leave in only the "white" part? basically the opposite of what you did? For a more traditional Marshall look
ReplyDelete