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previous: Ethan Back to the Peavey 5150 amp, any op... -- 3/9/2000 2:31 PM

Re: 5150 Circuit Opinions

3/9/2000 4:03 PM

Trace

Re: 5150 Circuit Opinions quote: "Back to the Peavey 5150 amp, any opinions on what's wrong with this amp?"     Now there's a year long thread as to correctly answer this question! (ha, ha) Many people feel it's just a silly design over all. the thing is designed to run on the edge" at all times which it pretty much does. It also does not help that it's built like a tinker toy.     quote: "Here's what I hear: it has plenty of gain (too much?)"     I would say it way too much but that's my opinion. I've seen guys who will not play any other amp so it's mostly personal preferance.     quote: "and lots of low end, but something is missing."     I don't think anything is missing per say, I think they need to take things out of the cicuit in order to help things out a little bit. A couple preamp tubes would be a good start     quote: "I think it needs to be more Marshall and less Peavey."     It's easier to buy an older Marshall than even consider modding (re-designing) a 5150. The 5150 is mighty close to a SLO-100 so someone would be better off buying a SLO-100 over the 5150. Same goes for the Dual (triple) rec amps. Just my opinion is all.     quote: "So what is the problem? Crummy trannies, cheap caps, or just not a good design?"     I think it's easiest to sum it up by saying it's a bad design over all. I'm sure there's people who will disagree with my stance on this but that's what makes the world go round.     quote: "It seems like a good model to modify as they are available pretty cheaply."     I would disagree on that one. There are a bunch of other amps that are far easier to mod than the 5150. I do not think there's anything easy about modding these amps. All the experienced techs I know hate working on these amps. It's not a lot of fun.     quote: "For what it's worth, I put an adjustable bias in a head once and set it up with EL34's. It didn't do much. It sounded like a 5150 w/a slightly different response."     There's too much happening in the preamp for EL34's to make much of a difference at all, or any tube for that matter. I would say a "cleaner" tube would be the way to go with such a hot preamp.     quote: "I went back to 6L6 later as I was afraid the power trans couldn't handle the extra filament."     It's better to run these amps with 6L6's. There's far too much gain in the preamp to use a tube that will add more distortion to the tone. Usually this is a good way to make a muddy tone.     My 2-cents worth   Trace

 

Replies:

Ethan Thanks for the opinions. Now that I... -- 3/9/2000 5:11 PM Carl Z Trace;Let me prefac... -- 3/10/2000 7:16 AM