Peavey Delta Blues - Cap job and the PCB

[PRNDL]

I'm hesitating on removing the PC board on a Peavey Delta Blues. The volume is fluctuating when played (new tubes, EH preamp and JJ power), which usually means it's time for a cap job.

The difficulty is there are three PC boards mounted in a "C", which makes it almost impossible to get in there to either measure or replace the power supply caps.

It might be possible to replace them without removing the board, except C41 is tucked in the back.

Has anyone worked on a Peavey Delta Blues?
How hard is it to take out those PC boards?

Any advice?
What would you do?

Thanks!!

---

Well, I played the amp for a while then left it turned on for about 30-45 minutes and played some more. It sounds fantastic. The owner said the volume fluctuated after about 15 minutes, which lead me to suspect the power supply filter caps, but maybe it's something else, like his guitar cord.

Wouldn't that be nice!

[WholeToneMusic]

Delta Blues

It is possible to remove the PCB's very carefully however I wouldn't unless your are extremely careful. The PCBs are jumpered together with buss wire that is fragile and can break if there is any tension on them.You can get hailine cracks in them if not careful. Your best bet is to leave the PCBs alone and cut the leads off the old caps but leave the lead attached to the board and keep it long enough to work with and solder the new caps to the leads. You will save yourself alot of headaches this way.

[PRNDL]

Thanks --- you confirmed my suspicions - this is a crazy build!!

Fortunately, the amp seems to be working well, although it's hard to be certain.

The difficult issue is it has great tone and all the right gizmos - reverb, tremolo, and a fantastic lead channel. The owner won't take my advice to sell it and get a better amp, although he acknowledges it's a throw-away amp.

[WholeToneMusic]

You may not want to open a can of worms.

[Enzo]

Oh please. The Delta Blues is just a CLassic 30 with a different speaker and cab. They threw in a VERY basic trem circuit, otherwise the schematics and layout are the same.

You pull the chassis. You pull the tubes. Note their position and orientation and unplug the transformer wires and speaker wires. REmove the mount screws and the pot and jack nuts and it comes out. You have to "crunch " the boArds together a little to clear. You don;t want to in and out the board a 100 times, no, and limit flexing of hte wire jumpers. But note that two of the boards are mounted together at 90 degrees by small brackets, so only one side does any flexing.

And just before reassembly, tug on each jumper to see if any have snapped.

Volume fluctuating to me means dirty FX loop jack cutout contacts.

[WholeToneMusic]

Give it a go brave warrior.

[Enzo]

As a PV authorized service center, I can't very well turn them down anyway.

By the way, while the 5150 and 5150-2 heads are not, the 5150 COmbo amp is made in that same three sided fashion.

[WholeToneMusic]

The parasitic beast

I remember taking one apart that worked fine, the customer wanted a slight tweak in the tone stack. When I put it back together it had spawned a nasty parasitic beast inside. I put the original parts back in and it still reared it's ugly head.

The engineering dept at PV must have been feeling saucy when they came up with the design.

[rf7]

I had one where someone clipped all of the jumpers in the middle to pull a board and then soldered them all back together. That was really a mess--flaky jumpers everywhere.

[Gtr_tech]

I'da replaced alla that shit with some ribbon cable and been done with it.

[tubeswell]

I've taken the boards in my C30 in and out gazillions of times and its no big deal. The inter-board jumpers can take a surprising amount of flexing. But it is a damn PITA to troubleshoot because of that board design. So when you get the boards out, just replace all the electrolytics and be done with it