Peavey TKO 65

[jake974112]

I have been using my Peavey TKO 65 for more years than I should admit but seriously, the thing is a tank. Never had any problems until just recently. I noticed that if I tap the front of the amp, I get a crackling noise and when playing through the amp, if I have the volume up, it cracks as well due to the vibration. I know it is not the speaker and has to have something to do with either a bad connection somewhere or bad soldier. If anyone ever experienced this problem, please help. I am no electronic whiz but if I had an idea of what could be causing the problem , it would help me decide if I want to take it in and spend the money to have it fixed. I had to buy a new amp because I had 5 gigs this week and couldn't risk having any problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Enzo]

It is a very rare old Peavey amp that cannot be restored to perfect health. SOme solder connection has cracked.

I assume if you whack the top of the amp it crackles too.

What we do is to first make sure everything is tight, the nuts on the jacks and the nuts on the controls. COuld be that simple. But I suspect it goes farther than that. What we do then is pull the chassis out of the cab. I put it on my bench and connect a speaker to it, in the home you can leave the speaker connected, pull gently all the slack in the wire and if possible, set the chassis on top, or lay the amp on its face and set the chassis on the rear panel. The speaker will face the ground, but you can still hear it enough to tell is it is crackling.

Now we use something insulated - a wooden chopstick is ideal, preferably one that has not been used with sweet and sour pork first - and wwith the amp running we go along the circuit boards and poke each part, looking for any that reaspond with noise. Be aware that tapping on the board anywhere will probably get a response, so we need to gently probe each part so as not to shake the whole board.

Somewhere in the middle, I think you have a coil of wire with a brown or gray cardboard layer wrapped around it. Linda ugly thing. Wiggle that and see if one end comes loose from the board. It will probably be near where the blue and yellow speaker wires plug on.

You may not find anything this way. so the we remove the main circuit board and inspect the solder to each jack and control.

For a competent amp tech this is not a complex repair, check with your local shop. In my shop this would cost under $100, and my minimum is $60.

[Ronsonic]

Isn't that one of the PVs with the driver transformer? Probably the only place in old Peaveys you are likely to find bad solder joints. I've found broken leads on those as well.

[Enzo]

No, it is not that old a model, but I do notice that this particular one does NOT have that coil of wire at the speaker output, so scratch that advice.