Peavey Ultra 212 questions - mod or sell?

[mushy]

Hello, all. First post. Searching brought me here. I recently picked up a Peavey Ultra 212, and I'm not thrilled with how it sounds. I mostly play with a semi-clean to overdrive tone, and this amp doesn't do that so well. The overdrive is lacking in dynamics and touch, and the character is a little fuzzish, buzzy, and compressed (not in a good way). Also, this amp sounds restricted, for lack of a better word.

If you're wondering why I bought this thing: a) It was cheap, everything works, it came with the footswitch b) the previous owner replaced the speakers with vintage 30's. c) I was ampless with not much extra money to work with at the moment. d) I figure if nothing else, I can resell it for my money back and continue saving for something better.

I'm wondering if there are any mods to make this amp sound passable as a real tube amp, as it does sound somewhat solid-state at the moment. I opened it up to have a look, and I see at least 9 transistors as well as an opamp which I assume is for the reverb circuit. I probably would have passed on this amp had I previewed a schematic before buying. Speaking of, does anyone have a schematic for this amp? I assume that this is the same amp as the Ultra 112.

On the current state of the amp: The tubes sound fairly healthy; not dull, not microphonic, no major humming or buzzing. The power section has a pair of GT-6L6's and the preamp has an assortment (Sovtek, GT, Ruby, non-branded). I tried swapping in a GT 12AT7 that I had stored away, which made a slight change but nothing dramatic, as well as swapping around the current 12AX7 assortment, without any positive changes in the sound to note.

I have read that jumpering a pair of diodes helps with the clean to dirty transisition on these Ultra amps, but I'm not seeing any diodes on the pcb other than two groups of 4 diodes in the power supply area of the board.

Any thoughts, ideas, schematic!, etc. welcome. Also, I'm wondering how similar the Peavey Triumph 112 is to the Ultra. There is one for sale here as well as an Acoustic G100T, which would likely make for a better tweaking platform. The seller says that the Triumph's reverb is tube driven (Ultra reverb is weak). Not that I'm overly concerned with the reverb as much as the basic tone of the amp, but maybe that is an indication of no transistors in the preamp of the Triumph. The Acoustic is 6L6 based with no pcb, but it does have a solid-state reverb circuit.

I guess this is a little wordy for a first post. Hopefully some of you are as bored as I am and won't minding reading this.

Btw, I can provide a recording of the amp if that would be helpful.

[mushy]

Another thought: Maybe this thing would make for a useable platform for building something else? I don't know anything about the transformers, but if they are useable, there is also the cabinet, speakers, switches, pots, knobs.

[Enzo]

The Ultra is a relative of the 5150, so it is not intended to make clean much.

a real tube amp, as it does sound somewhat solid-state at the moment. I opened it up to have a look, and I see at least 9 transistors as well as an opamp which I assume is for the reverb circuit.

Ah, c'mon. This is an all tube amp, as far as the signal path. Yes, the op amp drives the reverb. I don't object, I can't think of any prior complaints that the reverb part sounded solid state-ish. As to the transistors, a pair is part of the reverb driver. One drives the LED by the standby switch. The rest of those transistors are involved in channel switching.


Schematics for any PV product can be had from customer service at PV.


There are many diodes on this board. There are the main rectifiers you saw. Four more make the 17v rails. Each relay coil has a diode. There are a pair of flyback diodes protecting your output transformer, some clamp the reverb drivers, and so on. The ones you couldn;t find are on the preamp tube board. CR1,2 in the center. They are NOT clipping diodes. They are noise reduction diodes. They are only involved in the crunch/ultra channel, and have zero effect on clean. You can tack a jumper wire across them if you like. It will reduce distortion a small amount and increase noise somewhat. If you want to be fancy, wire a 1meg pot parallel to them, then you can dial them in or out to the extent you like. PV did that to them on the JSX model.

The Triumph and Ultra are closely related. The Triumph does have a tube reverb drive, but that is not why the reverb is weak on one amp. Peavey has driven reverbs with solid state circuits for decades, and I can;t think of any that fell short. And conversely, I can think of some pretty lame tube driven reverbs.

[silverfox]

Ultra 212 Schematic

This is the link I used to get the schematic.

Peavey Ultra 112 & 212 Service Manual free download,schematics,datasheets,eeprom bins,pcb,repair info for test equipment and electronics

If you are interested in learning more about amp design and construction this looks like a great candidate for a lab experiment. My gut tells me you will not be able to get a good High Gain or even medium gain sound out of this design without incorporating pedals and at that perhaps only by driving the power amp with pedals.

Please be advised I am a newby at this and others milage may vary. If it were me, and it has been in the past, I would use the power amp section with pedals for a while and be willing to tear the preamp section apart and point to point wire something different for a circuit. You may not want to get that involved with it but trying to find a good tube amp on a scarce budget is very hard to do- My experperience. There is also the challenge of trying to mod a PCB; which can be done but is more of a challenge.

I say the existing circuit is mediocre based on what appears to be clipping diodes employed to generated a distortion sound and the super secrete sauce circuits employed in the tone stack. Go ahead fellow forum members and feel free to critque my critique/assessments. If wrong I can use the schoolin.

School them dice says James,

Silverfox.

[Enzo]

You may not care for the amp, but there are no clipping diodes.


The "clean" channel has a conventional passive tone stack. The crunch/ultra channel has active EQ. Less common, but not a secret. many guys take some time learning to use active EQ.



If you are itching to build something, just my opinion, sell this for what it is and buy an old Traynor head to fork around with.

[mushy]

Enzo, thanks for the info. I'll hit up Peavey about a schematic when my internet connection isn't flaking out like it has been all day today. I can't complete a connection with their site at the moment.

That previous solid-state comment is out of context for what this amp was designed for, and it is probably unfair. I haven't been into metal for 10-15 years. I'm trying the higher gain aspect of this amp right now for some metal riffs, and the amp does that stuff admirably, minus my strat's single coil hum/buzz. So, as a metal amp, I would have been thrilled with it as my younger self. As a blues, hard rock, space rock amp, lower gain settings are ugly like a solid-state amp. The diodes thing might be part of what I'm hearing in the overdrive when the amp is transitioning from overdrive to clean. It sounds like a transistor in how a transistor fades in an ugly way. The character of the overdrive (lower gain than metal settings) reminds me of a classic 30 or blues junior, both of which I really dislike. It doesn't sound full or dynamic.

On the reverb, when I say that it sounds weak, that is in reference to an old twin and other Fender amps. On the twin, I never had the reverb higher than a couple of notches for one-man bluesy stuff, where it is dimed on the Peavey and still lacking in depth and character. Also the clean is pretty thin and hard where that old twin was thick and dark (and damn good).

As it is, this is definitely the wrong amp for me. I don't play (anymore) what it is good at, and it doesn't do well at what I play these days. I'm considering leaving it alone and putting it up for trade for another amp to see what pops up. There are a lot of metal kids kicking around this town. Maybe one of them is bummed about his lower gain amp and the stars will align for both of us.

[mushy]

This is the link I used to get the schematic.

Peavey Ultra 112 & 212 Service Manual free download,schematics,datasheets,eeprom bins,pcb,repair info for test equipment and electronics

If you are interested in learning more about amp design and construction this looks like a great candidate for a lab experiment. My gut tells me you will not be able to get a good High Gain or even medium gain sound out of this design without incorporating pedals and at that perhaps only by driving the power amp with pedals.

Please be advised I am a newby at this and others milage may vary. If it were me, and it has been in the past, I would use the power amp section with pedals for a while and be willing to tear the preamp section apart and point to point wire something different for a circuit. You may not want to get that involved with it but trying to find a good tube amp on a scarce budget is very hard to do- My experperience. There is also the challenge of trying to mod a PCB; which can be done but is more of a challenge.

I say the existing circuit is mediocre based on what appears to be clipping diodes employed to generated a distortion sound and the super secrete sauce circuits employed in the tone stack. Go ahead fellow forum members and feel free to critque my critique/assessments. If wrong I can use the schoolin.

School them dice says James,

Silverfox.

I'm thinking that this amp is altogether the wrong amp for me. I don't like the clean, the overdrive, the active eq, or the reverb. And hell, I'm not crazy about v30's, either. I have owned various cabs with v30's over the years, and I never got along with them that well. Thanks for the link to the schematic, though. I got it. I think I will go ahead and jumper those zeners, just to hear what happens, but modding this thing seems like it would be more work than starting from scratch on something that I know I will like.

[Enzo]

Hey. cool. If you don't like the amp, I won't try to tell you you should. I think too much emotion goes into the solid state vs tubes thing. The reverb works as designed, this is a screaming distortion monster, and too much body and low end in the reverb quickly turns to mud, so there is voicing there. Definitely this amp is not for surf music.

[mushy]

You may not care for the amp, but there are no clipping diodes.


The "clean" channel has a conventional passive tone stack. The crunch/ultra channel has active EQ. Less common, but not a secret. many guys take some time learning to use active EQ.



If you are itching to build something, just my opinion, sell this for what it is and buy an old Traynor head to fork around with.

I wouldn't mind going that route, but I never see old Traynor's come up for sale around here, and they tend to go a little higher than their value on fleabay.

[Enzo]

Oh just anything that isn't "desirable." I like the old Traynor heads because they are roomy, built like tanks, and cheap.

Hell, what's wrong with a dead Bugera? Big reasonable transformers, roomy enough inside, probably can leave the power amp section intact. Certainly not collectable.

[mushy]

Those YBA-1 heads are fetching $400-500+ on ebay these days. Someone might get lucky and pick one up for $200-300 occasionally, but it's not the norm. If I'm going to spend that, I would probably rather go for a weber kit and learn something in the process.

[Enzo]

Yeah, I don't do ebay, besides there is then shipping. I was thinking more like yard sale, repair shop dead pile, dumpster diving.

[tedmich]

is it this beast?

I modded mine to provide nice sustain and extreme gain without the fizz. If you you want it to sound like a Fender Blackface you are pretty much out of luck. If you want it to sound high gain and in your face you can get that in spades. What volume do you play at? Tube amps are completely different beasts at bedroom vs full volume. My Ultra is modded to provide low volume face melting gain. You want low gain you should trade it in or sell it. Its an excellent platform to learn about how amps work, but if you don't want to solder and think, you should do the rounds at GC and (hopefully) fall in love at a reasonable price.

I installed a JSX resonance /presence circuit and put a Alesis picoverb in the FX loop. This gives you some very nice reverb, plate and echo effects that make the onboard reverb sound pretty sophisticated. The amp (like most) sounds sterile compressed and dead without a little wetness. Combined with violin like sustain sound cool to me, but some want compressed slabs 'o rhythm which this amp can do in its sleep. Vai like lead tone is harder to dial in necessarily. Most of the mods involve losing the fizzy treble boost components; both coupling caps and cathode bypass cap values get increased. This makes the amp thick and less fizzy at low volumes. One neat thing this amp does is allow you to fully cut all the tone controls; at full cut (-15db) the amp is silent and you can peg gain and volume and (carefully) dial up the EQ until you can hear the crazy power amp distortion. Hard on tubes but hell it sounds great!

If you want awesome sound at ear splitting concert volume, invest in some better speakers and try a graphic EQ in the loop.

[tedmich]

I'm thinking that this amp is altogether the wrong amp for me. I don't like the clean, the overdrive, the active eq, or the reverb. And hell, I'm not crazy about v30's, either. I have owned various cabs with v30's over the years, and I never got along with them that well. Thanks for the link to the schematic, though. I got it. I think I will go ahead and jumper those zeners, just to hear what happens, but modding this thing seems like it would be more work than starting from scratch on something that I know I will like.

those are not clipping diodes, they are a poor mans noise gate, referred to as a "coring circuit" which is only active in the crunch and ultra channels. The (VERY closely related JSX) adds a 1M pot to dial in the amount of gating. Jumpering them does nothing to my ears. They are also not zeners, just regular diodes. Its easy to make the Ultra+ pretty much a JSX, and it has lower gain too, you might like it. People LOVE V30s, you may have unique tastes; explore that!

[mushy]

I tried the jumper thing. If it's doing anything much, it's subtle, and jumpering didn't change anything about the character of the overdrive, that I could hear.

is it this beast?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]28805[/ATTACH]
I modded mine to provide nice sustain and extreme gain without the fizz. If you you want it to sound like a Fender Blackface you are pretty much out of luck. If you want it to sound high gain and in your face you can get that in spades. What volume do you play at? Tube amps are completely different beasts at bedroom vs full volume. My Ultra is modded to provide low volume face melting gain. You want low gain you should trade it in or sell it. Its an excellent platform to learn about how amps work, but if you don't want to solder and think, you should do the rounds at GC and (hopefully) fall in love at a reasonable price.

I installed a JSX resonance /presence circuit and put a Alesis picoverb in the FX loop. This gives you some very nice reverb, plate and echo effects that make the onboard reverb sound pretty sophisticated. The amp (like most) sounds sterile compressed and dead without a little wetness. Combined with violin like sustain sound cool to me, but some want compressed slabs 'o rhythm which this amp can do in its sleep. Vai like lead tone is harder to dial in necessarily. Most of the mods involve losing the fizzy treble boost components; both coupling caps and cathode bypass cap values get increased. This makes the amp thick and less fizzy at low volumes. One neat thing this amp does is allow you to fully cut all the tone controls; at full cut (-15db) the amp is silent and you can peg gain and volume and (carefully) dial up the EQ until you can hear the crazy power amp distortion. Hard on tubes but hell it sounds great!

If you want awesome sound at ear splitting concert volume, invest in some better speakers and try a graphic EQ in the loop.

That would be it. 70 pounds of blah.

I play at both band and bedroom volume. I'm not into face-melting gain, uber-compressed, or pouring on effects. I like my sound natural like a hairy Italian woman...

This amp definitely has some fizz going on, but that's not the end of the anomalies. Describing sound can be weird and inaccurate so here is a short clip of the thing: https://app.box.com/s/quoq7yt0qsb818ee2eeq That is at bedroom volume, and I would say that in person, it sounds more compressed and with more of a low mid hump. There is a little clicking in there (forgot to change the asio buffer).

I have played around with different approaches on the eq: all the way down, all the way up, everything in the middle. I prefer everything at around 12 o'clock.