Peavey Stereo Chorus 212 Reverb Problem

[patlaw]

While I'm a great fan of Peavey amps, this Stereo Chorus 212 is a bear. It was WAY too many parts in it. Seriously, the complaint is that the reverb footswitch doesn't work correctly. All of the digits on the display aren't working. I powered it up before I took it out of the cabinet, and everything seemed to work from the front panel although some of the controls don't have much effect. I haven't connected the footswitch yet.

If I can make the footswitch misbehave, my first thoughts are to look for cold solder joints. Failing that, I'll start by troubleshooting the display segments.

Are there any idiosyncrasies of this amp that you can share? If it has any known issues in its design, it would be good to start there. Uncle Doug hasn't done a video on one of these yet.

STEREO_CHORUS_212_92.pdf

[glebert]

Wow, that is pretty complicated. Have you tried cleaning the ribbon cable contacts? I have never come across one of these, didn't even know Peavey was doing digital reverb in 92.

[Enzo]

Are all the power supply voltages up and clean?

[patlaw]

Yes, they are. I'll be back on it this weekend.

[patlaw]

Update: The footswitch/panel is fixed. When I got it apart, the LED displays fell out. They were not firmly in the socket. The LEDs are plugged into a socket that is plugged into a second second to give the displays vertical height. The LED is pretty snug in the first socket, but there is little mechanical holding power between the first and second sockets. A couple of drops of hot glue at the intersections of the two sockets should solve that problem for the remaining life of this amp.

If you get one of these foot switch panels with LED displays, you should physically secure the display in the socket. I don't see how it lasted as long as it did. It was a very poor design choice on Peavey's part. At least it's easy to correct.