technical difference between Peavey Classic 30 and Delta Blues

[Jazz P Bass]

Yeah, I sure would like to know how old Jared made out in his amplifier quest.

[Chuck H]

I would not recommend "modding" an amp, especially a relatively new amp...there are a lot of people out there who make big money selling parts-improvements, fixes, upgrades, whatever...that are completely unnecessary and in some cases really bad ideas.

You DID see the forum title, read some content and DO realize the nature of this forums membership and know who your talking to, right?

It is much easier to tweak your guitar-set up the pickups, and yes, USE THE TONE CONTROL...They call them that because they can control the tone, you know...

Considering the bredth of any definition for "tone", often EQ knobs are too blunt a tool to gain the differences people want from their gear. We do this as much for the fun and satisfaction as for the actual validity. Of course ANY guitar should be adjusted properly.

[Enzo]

old mark, hi, welcome to the forum.

Yes the tone controls affect the tone of an amp, but they are not the sum total of all tone changing. To say stick to the tone controls is like telling a cook not to put herbs and spices into his food because he already has salt and pepper shakers. Or telling a hot rod enthusiast not to tweak his car engine because it gets good enough mileage stock.


SOme people are ambitious and want to design an amp from the ground up - no pun intended. Others less so, but want to experiment to see what affects tone and how it can be changed. Those are the modders and tweakers. SOme of them like their amp as it came, but there is something about it that just isn't quite what they want, and it is worth the personal effort to try to get to it. Just as someone might reach for the hot sauce or the mustard when they are served a hamburger. It was good the way it came, but I just might like it even better with some extra flavoring.

The thing about this forum is that no one is selling anything. We offer up our thoughts on various projects and hope it helps someone increase their enjoyment, or if nothing else, their participation.

[old mark]

I did not say that using the guitar controls and/or setting the guitar up as you like it are ALL that should be done, but that this is the place to start.


mark

[Steve A.]

I found this old thread by accident, and registered so I could reply to it. I have been playing electric guitars and basses since 1964, getting paid for it for many years. I played strictly tube amps for several decades, various brands and types.
I own only Peavey amps now, and they are all older models...my newest amp is well over 20 years old. I LOVE Peavey stuff, but I recognize it may not be for everyone.

I agree with you about the older Peavey amps. Like the older Fender amps you could get a lot of different sounds by replacing the tubes and/or speaker- and adjusting the tone controls. However James Brown at Peavey designed the Classic 20/30/50 amps around 1993 and they were quite different from their older tube amps.

Some comments about the Peavey Classic amps: I bought the C30 and C50 soon after they came out. I had been playing solid state amps for quite awhile since my old Fender tube amps were so unreliable; I thought that the Peavey C30 and C50 sounded great but I was usually just using the Clean channels with pedals for dirt. And then I got a Marshall JTM30 combo amp and thought it sounded it much better with a decent OD channel so the Peaveys got shoved in the back of my closet. After that I got into tube amp mods starting with a Torres Super-Texan board for my old Pro Reverb (which I had already butchered up with magazine mods in the 80's). I learned a lot about tube amp circuits just trying (unsuccessfully) to get some good sounds out of the Torres Super Texan OD channel. That whetted my appetite for amp mods and I figured I might as well try screwing around with my Peavey C30. In 1997/8, no one at the old Ampage forum had any desire to try modding an inexpensive mass-produced PCB amp like the Classic 30 so I took that as a challenge- and an opportunity to see what I could do with what I learned from the "Torres Institute of Technology." I tried out a lot of different ideas- some of them worked out well, some of them didn't. A lot of them were a waste of time since they really didn't improve the sound that much.

Funny thing is that I bought a Delta Blues 115 a few years ago and thought it sounded really nice right out of the box- even the OD channel! I was sure that they had revised the circuit but Enzo here assured me that they were still using the original design. Having that 15" speaker in there smoothed out the harshness in the OD channel and improved the bass response for both channels. FWIW all of the tubes were JJ's (they were Sovteks in my old C30).

There are some mods that would improve it, especially adding a bias adjustment pot. There is a resistor and cap going to ground at the input of the post-gain control which I think is very critical in balancing the tone of the two channels so that they can share the same tone stack settings. There was one mod that I missed altogether- there is a 2M local feedback resistor on V1b that makes the sound of both channels more compressed. Removing that resistor can make the amp more dynamic and responsive. Or replace it with a 22M resistor to emulate the LFB on the Dumble ODS 2nd stage. And I've heard great reports about Enzo's cathode bias mod for the Classic 30.

There are a lot more choices in tube amps today compared to 10 or 15 years ago, so if you look around you can probably find an amp that does exactly what you want right out of the box with no mods. However there is another factor. While you might really like an amp when you buy it, after playing it for awhile you might decide that it would sound better "if only ____(fill in the blanks)." At that point it might not be such a bad idea to try fine-tuning the circuit a little bit.

Steve Ahola