Hello All,
I'm new here, never posted before, and have signed up because of this particular thread topic and how useful I've found it to be. I'd really like to thank everyone for the interaction on this thread, regardless of how old it is! Quick background, old guy just over 50, played through many of amps over the years, lots of influences with my main inspiration being George Lynch, played in some bands in the early days and now too busy with work but still have some fun.
When George Lynch first helped the design of the Peavey XXX, I purchased one of the originals and have really enjoyed playing through it, still my go to amp. When I turned 50 my wife bought me a 5150ii as a present, which was something I wanted to check out and have some fun with. I'll have to admit, I was less than excited with the amp in general, and in comparison to my XXX, not even a close 5th...really. As a result, I was ready to sell this amp immediately, but held on to it based on too much work. Then I thought I might have some fun doing some mods on it to see if I could make it sound any better, and if not...toss it in the trash. I'm serious, my preference and style looks for a big smooth bottom and mid tone with a dynamic and loose/fat/dynamic frequency range...and with great sustain. This thing flat wasn't doing it for me...
So...on to the mod cabinet, and thanks to you guys/gals for helping that out! The first mod I did was the 'bias mod' which helped me get the 'fizz' out. Very simple and I've biased the output tubes to 37mA, which works great for my ear. I also love and use JJ tubes as a personal preference. Still not working for me though...so I continue my search/quest, and find this thread... Great find and interaction...thanks! I start reading through the dialog, find a frequency response diagram done in spice, original designer talking about modding it back to the original 5150, everyone's questions and additions to the mod results, and I'm finally psyched about having some fun tone shaping this amp, to my preferences of course. I'll have to say, while the II has a split eq and better voicing of the clean channel, the original has a so much better voicing for the lead channel, for my ears and genre. Peavey rolled so many of the original lows, and some mids, off the II that it really found it to be neutered and inept...entirely, and in my opinion of course.
Right...so I did the mod today, had some fun doing it, and prepared my ear for the marginal tone changes I'd thought I'd made/face...NOT! The audio clips don't even begin to demonstrate how drastic these changes really are! However, based on how hard the lows were rolled off, I should have realized. Quick end to a long story is, I'm now keeping the amp as it's been resurrected from the 'dead' in my book...massive improvement overall, and according to my taste, ear, genre. Thanks again to everyone, I thought based on the time I'd spent reading and re-reading all your comments, I should at least provide a detailed response and say thanks!
Peace, Rodent