Peavey Classic 30 2nd channel tone...

[Jared Purdy]

I'm not sure if it is just me, or if I am correct in saying that when the 2nd channel switch is engaged, there is a decidely different sound coming from the amp. It is not just the crunch/gain that can be heard, but too my ears, the 2nd channel seems to lack the depth, fullness or clarity of the 1st channel. Both the bass ad the mids really drop off. Even with the bass and mids boosted, the 2nd channel still (to my ears) does not have the same richness of tone that the first channel has. Is there any kind of electronic modification that can be made to change this??

[Jazz P Bass]

Peavey Classic 30

The Gain channel has a "built in" tone filter.
The reason is that distorting a full tone signal sounds like ass.
This is not an easy amp to work on.
There are three circuit boards latched together in a "U" shape.
A real PITA to get parts on or off.

[Jared Purdy]

Thanks, yes I have seen the boards, and heard the horror stories! I know of a service centre that does work of that nature on pcb boards, so I am trying to identify a possible solution, a specific cap or to where changing the values might bring in better overall tone on channel 2. I wasn't aware that distorting a full tone signal was ill advised. Is there a compromise? Thanks

[Steve Conner]

Yes. Everything is a compromise.

Ever since the Mesa Boogie, modern amps feel they need to compete with it, so they tend to have the dirty channel voiced for an aggressive, well, "modern" tone. It has lots of bite and grind in the upper mids, but the bass is filtered out before the distortion to stop it getting farty, and the treble is filtered out after the distortion so it doesn't sound too buzzy or trashy.

This filtering means that if you play the dirty channel at lower gain settings, or roll back the volume on your guitar to clean it up, it can sometimes sound kind of thin (because the bass got filtered out) and dull (because the treble got filtered out) The solution is of course to play the dirty channel as it was intended: as loud as possible with screaming levels of gain.

If you're playing a Strat, I always found that the bridge and middle pickups together sounded great through a dirty channel.

[tubeswell]

I have tried twiddling with my C30 for years, to get a nice sound in the clean channel and a nice sound in the dirty channel, but it is nigh impossible to get both, like Steve said. You need to shoot for one or the other.

A lot of guys change their C30s to cathode bias, or make the fixed bias run a bit hotter. The best mod I did was the Steve Ahola Tone Stack mod. Check out the Blue Guitar site: The Blue Guitar

I also came up with a mod that put SLO100 values through the first four stages (which Steve Ahola borrowed for his Crate) - the details are on this board somewhere. That gives you a middy sounding clean channel but a fairly good sounding OD channel if that is what you want.

[Jared Purdy]

I'm actually quite happy with the tones on the first channel, in fact thats what really convinced me to buy it.

It was a toss up between the BDRI, the C30 and the C50. I liked the tone in all of them, but the C30 won over the C50 due to the size issue, and it won over the BDRI owing to the input jacks being better on the C30, that the C30 is made in the USA where as the BDRi is made in Mexico, and the second channel on the C30, while still not perfect, provides a more useable gain than the 2nd channel on the BDRI.

Many would think that those are foolish reasons to base a decision on, but it has to come down to something. Tone wise, they are all good, country of manufacture is always important to me, and then it comes down to the little things. I mean, if I thought that the C30 didn't sound as good as the BDRI, I woudln't have purchased it just to say that I suported "local".

Its the second channel on the C30 that I'm the least happy with, and it looks like I might be able to make a few adjustments to it, if I wanted to. I'll take the least invasive path first, that being the speaker, and then maybe the OT.

[Jazz P Bass]

Classic 30

Changing out the output transformer will not amount to diddly.
(They are selling snake oil)
Just my 2 pence worth.

[Jared Purdy]

Really? I've heard other wise, from one builder, from more than one player and more than one tech. What they did say, was that it would be hard to say how much change you'd notice. If you had a poor quality one and it was replaced by a higher quality one, then you are more likely to notice it. Whether the cost woudl be worth it is another issue itself.