Cheap and Cheerful: The Peavey Delta Blues 115

Those who know me know my weakness for anything with a fifteen inch speaker and a nice set of tubes. So I had a Delta Blues 2x10 here for some repairs last week and when repairs -of which more anon-were completed I liked the sound enough to go and hunt one down in the fifteen inch configuration, which arrived today. The idea of spring reverb, vibrato, and a 15 inch speaker was one I couldn't pass up for $380 all told including shipping. Quite a value considering that they're about six hundred or so new.

A little more experimenting with it should tell me whether it's a keeper or not.

The Delta Blues has the same chassis more or less as the Classic 30, and thereby hangs a tale. They're known for needing to have the tube socket pins resoldered because they're kind of weak. This is a bit tedious because of the way that the three (yes, three) circuit boards are connected with bare wire and folded into a U-shaped configuration. Here's what I mean.

As I recall this one had some problems with filament voltage not getting to the right place, and a little rework because the solder joints with the connecting links getting loose because of the amount of flexing I had to do to make the needed repairs.

The new-ish 1x15 amp arrived in very clean condition with a cover and some unnecessarily heavy duty casters which I will save for another project. Some of these amps are known for acoustic feedback through the reverb tank, but this is not one of them. It does have a very slight hum, and if I ever get the notion to take it apart it'll get some nice new F&T electrolytics. In the meantime I shall try some different preamp glassware.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The date of manufacture of this amp appears to be circa 2004, and the background hum was accountable to a brand new preamp tube. Mr. Hickok said no, so in the trash it went. . If you're so inclined, give homage to one Job Barnart, who patented the Hickok tube tester mutual conductance circuit in 1935 and founded an industry.

UPDATE 2: Wouldn't you know it? A week after this arrived I stumbled over a 1971 non master volume Twin Reverb for a great price so the Peavey is gone-at a profit too.