Ancient Peavey Goodness

The Peavey Artist 240 arrived here Monday and I must say, $200 can take you a long way in this world.

The power tubes were pretty much wasted, and they were never very good in the first place-Mesa branded Chinese coke bottle items and one came apart and left the base behind.

Without further ado, a quartet of JJ 6L6GCs was installed and powering the amp up and letting things settle down a bit got me some nice clean tone from the.....wait for it....fifteen inch JBL that this amp came with.

Unlike the later amps this has an adjustable bias, and I have a set of Rubys I'm going to install mostly because I can sell the JJs to someone and I'm getting out of using Rubys. I've had a couple of them take early retirement.

Going by the serial number this amp was built in 1977, the year after it came out and won the Guitar Player best amp of the year award. No lie.

Looking at the schematic shows an earlier configuration, and this amp does not have the dual pairs of 100uf-350 v capacitors but only one pair which makes me think it was cribbed from the Fender Twin schematic-no bad thing-a single 20uf 600v capacitor with some serious leakage, and a 20-350v number to handle the third node.

For this part of the circuit the later amps use a pair of 100uf 350v numbers back to back with balancing resistors-I guess it was a lot cheaper to build.  There are 20uf 600v Spragues to be had but just one cost me about thirty dollars-ouch!

A good overhaul and some TLC and this will be a peach.

It also predates the use of Basler Electric transformers, as this came with Electrical Windings iron. It's also got the discrete transistors in the preamp which seem to be doing fine.

I had everything in hand except some 25uf 100v  numbers and the aforementioned spendy Sprague Atom. I guess it's there to handle the surge when the standby switch is thrown.

A fair amount of cleaning all the old flux off the board with a cut down acid brush and some 100 per cent isopropyl did the job nicely. Also, some straightening of the chassis was in order as this amp may have fallen over at one time, and the chassis is aluminum. It's not really necessary but I like everything to be at right angles.

Here are some gut shots. The parts were ordered from Mouser and with any luck they'll be here tomorrow or Saturday.

Then, the fun will start.