Peavey Deca 1200 anyone?

[Techknowman]

Anyone ever repaired a Peavey DECA 1200.
Holy moly its an ugly unit.
I have to say I'm usually a big fan of Peavey products but this amp has to be one of the worst put together units I have ever seen. all straight pin connectors, same colors most with the same pin count and no ID information.
The thing is a vibration, solder joint cracking mess as well!
Unit was working OK but would shut off from time to time. found cracked solder joints on a huge inductor bolted to one of the PCB's of the power supply, took me an hour to just take the thing apart, marking connections and making notes. two hours later back together and now one channel is stuck in DDT. Grrrrr. To Peavey for a document package now.

[Enzo]

Peavey should send it to you upon request. Since this is one of their digital amps, they may balk. Not because it is secret,but due to the complexity of service. Then again I may be confused. There is a substantial service manual companiion to the separate schematic, make sure to ask for it. It shows waveforms and procedures.

Well, I assume the manual is offered on the 1200. I have the 700 in my files. Together they are 11MB file size, so I don't think I can post it here.

And I hope you don't run into it, but if I recall corectly, there was a supply problem with some of the power transistors, ie they are no longer available. Again I may be confusing a different system.

And lastly, for something like this, I always keep in mind the factory service department at Peavey. They have always done good work for me at very reasonable cost. And for touchy systems like the early digital amps, I am just as happy letting them handle it.

[Techknowman]

I hope its nothing major. being that it was amplifying on both channels just fine until i "fixed it"
since its the ddt compression, I'm hoping for something simple.

[km6xz]

Consider what Enzo suggested, Peavey will repair the module for less than buying the parts to do it yourself. I repaired a lot of them using factory parts and had good luck with them but they are not a fast repair. One day the sweet sounding girl who answered their parts phone asked "why not just send them here, we will repair them for $xx.xx"(I do not remember the exact figure but it was cheap). It made no sense to NOT send the module in at the prices they would fix them for, unless there was an emergency where that one just HAD to be done now. When those amps were popular we ended up stocking spare modules that rotated between Peavey and our parts stock. Even with UPS charges the price was too low to ignore. I am not sure if the same people are on the phones now, but that one company was the only one where a phone call always took care of all the intended business to be conducted. All the others got faxes so we would not have to deal with them in person.

[Techknowman]

I got it fixed. If I ever see another one it would be too soon. Lol.
The unit was working, just intermitant.
I got all the information from peavey, service manuals ect.
and dug in. The problem as I said in the erlier post was a cracked out solder joint on the huge inductor bolted on the main power supply.
When I reassembled, one side stuck in DDT. turned out to be a 4 pin connector that got clocked 180 deg out and the triangle way wasn't making it to the control board.
One of my biggest problems with the deca's design in that very fact. almost none of the connectors have keying and not all of then face the same way.
I had taken pictures of everything befor disaasembly, even of the connector that got connected wrong, just wasn't clear in the photo.
LOL live and learn.

[Zipslack]

Ditto for Peavey's Service Dept.

I'll second the notion on letting Peavey do the repair. I live about 2 hours from Meridian headquarters. For anything other than minor repairs, it makes more sense to drive it over and drop it off. They once repaired an older church PA for less than what it would have cost for me to get parts and it was only 1-2 days turnaround.

[jrfrond]

Another vote for dropping it in Peavey's lap, or you may very well be revisiting this thread with no results for days, weeks or months to come. They are very reasonable with their rates.

On a professional note, there have been quite a few times over the years where I have deferred dog repairs to the manufacturer and just tacked on our service fee, if it was non-warranty. On warranty repairs, it's almost a given that repairs are module-based, IF they are available, or I will negotiate for lots of extra time (older Mackie subwoofer nightmare repairs come to mind), OR send it back if necessary. There are times when it doesn't pay to drag your ass on customer repairs, just to say "I fixed it".

[Enzo]

Just a tip, I know that if it is possible to screw it up, I will. SO whether the connectors are keyed or not, I usually mark them. Get out the Sharpie. Draw a line along the connector body and one along the header base or a parallel line on the board next to the header. Or on ribbons, I might draw two or three or four little lines on the ribbon and on something it connects to. I even do that on hardware, maybe a metal shield or a bracket has to come off. Before I break it down, I draw a couple lines across where they join, so when reassembly comes around, I know if I got the pieces in the right places. Maybe one end of a connector gets some color, and a blotch on the circuit board by that end.

Even just color versus no color. On the Passport, there are two small 2-pin connectors down my the inputs. I colro one black and leve the second alone, and similar, the jack gets colored on the one. SImple as pie then.

[jrfrond]

Just a tip, I know that if it is possible to screw it up, I will. SO whether the connectors are keyed or not, I usually mark them. Get out the Sharpie. Draw a line along the connector body and one along the header base or a parallel line on the board next to the header. Or on ribbons, I might draw two or three or four little lines on the ribbon and on something it connects to. I even do that on hardware, maybe a metal shield or a bracket has to come off. Before I break it down, I draw a couple lines across where they join, so when reassembly comes around, I know if I got the pieces in the right places. Maybe one end of a connector gets some color, and a blotch on the circuit board by that end.

Even just color versus no color. On the Passport, there are two small 2-pin connectors down my the inputs. I colro one black and leve the second alone, and similar, the jack gets colored on the one. SImple as pie then.

I pretty much do the same thing, unless the connectors are already color-keyed or they all sport different numbers of pins. But I always have the Sharpies at the ready. One wrong connector swap could cause it all to blow up in your face, sometimes literally!

[Techknowman]

Yea I mark them with numbers or marks ect. to id them. it was just the one connector that i missed, was the one i swapped. Thankfully it was not a bad swap causing a smoking heap!

[Jazz P Bass]

Murphy rules.