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I just finished the repair/restoration of a 1974 Peavey Musician 400 Series 200W solid state guitar head for a customer, and, in the end, I found myself liking it a lot more than I expected to, being prejudiced in favor of tube amps. It was bought cheap/non-working and arrived with a blown-up power supply, so neither the customer nor I really knew exactly what it was going to sound like when fixed. He picked it up because he used to have a similar model years ago.
I went through it thoroughly and ultimately replaced all the electrolytic capacitors in it (Nichicon Muse in the signal path), improved the ground integrity, and made a few other resistor/capacitor replacements. I've heard them described as "sterile," but I actually found that the Fuzz/Distortion effects in combination with fairly well-implemented reverb and tremolo circuits and the EQ section could produce a lot of interesting and musically useful sounds. For example, it was easy to get the sort of tone that Syd Barrett used on early Pink Floyd recordings like "Interstellar Overdrive."
It's pretty ruggedly built--it survived some sort of impact that almost tore the power transformer loose from its mounting plate. Once recapped, it was very quiet at idle--and, of course, VERY loud when played. Maybe solid state isn't so bad after all...
I went through it thoroughly and ultimately replaced all the electrolytic capacitors in it (Nichicon Muse in the signal path), improved the ground integrity, and made a few other resistor/capacitor replacements. I've heard them described as "sterile," but I actually found that the Fuzz/Distortion effects in combination with fairly well-implemented reverb and tremolo circuits and the EQ section could produce a lot of interesting and musically useful sounds. For example, it was easy to get the sort of tone that Syd Barrett used on early Pink Floyd recordings like "Interstellar Overdrive."
It's pretty ruggedly built--it survived some sort of impact that almost tore the power transformer loose from its mounting plate. Once recapped, it was very quiet at idle--and, of course, VERY loud when played. Maybe solid state isn't so bad after all...
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