PV Pacer Overdrive

[drewl]

Hey anyone have a schematic of this amp with the Overdrive circuit?
All the schems I've found don't have the overdrive part.
Looks like another transistor stage with a pair of clipping diodes.
Doesn't sound so great, so I was thinking of maybe tweaking it for better sound.

If not I'll have to sketch it out, but I thought I'd try here first.

Thanks.

[Jazz P Bass]

That is odd.
The Peavey Pacer 100 owners manual shows a picture of the amp with 7 controls.
Then the panel layout & description shows 6 controls (sans OD control)
And the attached schematic shows 6 controls.
I would call Peavey.

[drewl]

Peavey sent me both versions.
What, do they have someone that just emails schematics all day?

Anyway, gotta' be a way to make the overdrive sound better, maybe turn it into a fuzz face!

[Jazz P Bass]

Can you please post the schematic with the OD section?

[Enzo]

Here.

[Jazz P Bass]

Thankyou, kind sir.

[Enzo]

Some people sell Girl Scout cookies, I do this.


Of course a couple PV drawings are nowhere near as tasty as a few Samoas.

[Jazz P Bass]

Some people sell Girl Scout cookies, I do this.


Of course a couple PV drawings are nowhere near as tasty as a few Samoas.

You are talking about the cookie, correct.
Or are you a cannibal?

[Steve Conner]

Cannibal 1: What happened to your leg?

Cannibal 2: Self-catering holiday.

On a similar note, I heard that the distortion circuit in some cheap solid-state practice amps is just lifted from the Rat pedal. Might be worth trying one of the Fetzer Valve type circuits, too. The Fuzz Face can be touchy as it has a low input impedance that interacts with the guitar pickup, so driving it from a previous stage could give weird results.

IME, just building a Fuzz Face can give weird results.

[drewl]

Thanks for posting both schematics Enzo, I thought i did yesterday but this board is sometimes a pain with my computer, or I'm an idiot.

Probably the latter.

[Jazz P Bass]

Repost of the Pacer A_B schematic: Pv-Pacer-A_B.zip

[drewl]

Arise ye olde ancient Pacer thread of mystery!

So, a friend gave me one of these and after fixing some had PC board connections and a loose output driver that would cause some weirdness- the amp works and sounds okay.

The Overdrive, again, not so much.

So I removed the Ge clipping diodes and installed a couple sockets for experimenting.

Tried other Ge diodes, 4148's, and some LED's and it sounds pretty good with 4148's.

Dare I say Tubescreamer-ish?

I have no need for it, so I'll probably sell it cheap or give it away to some poor kid that needs an amp.

We do that at my friend's store for kids that can't afford gear.
Or sick people without much money.

We give them stuff nobody wants so they can play.