Well, it's just "Basic 50" on the front panel. Perhaps it was intended as a bass amp; I don't know; but it was CHEAP---$50. Couldn't even make the chassis and cabinet for that. I am going to put in OPA1642 opamps, replace the 2.2uF electrolytics with 10uF film caps, up the power supply to 10,000uF filtering, and install a jack for putting the volume pedal insertion point after the first preamp stage. As for the the input terminating resistor (currently 220K), there are varying theories as to what is optimum---one manufacture even goes as far as making it adjustable (from 100K to 1 M), acting as a sort of tone control---evidently the termination depends on the pickup used, and taste for tone. Perhaps I am gilding the lily, but it's still cheaper than buying a new amp!!
If it is the bass version, I think there is a compressor limiter circuit before the power amp section. That amp is designed for clean sound, so should be quite good for steel. JM Fahey made a very good suggestion to try swapping the speaker, in this case a speaker for guitar amp in place of a bass amp. I would suggest looking at tone stack too if you find the response of the controls to be lacking for steel.
As I am going through my upgrades, I have realized that Peavey must have deliberately put in low-value coupling capacitors to roll off the low end. I am suspecting that this was done to "hide" the performance of the speaker. They have coupling capacitors of 0.47uF and 0.22 uF around the 10K volume pot, and an additional 0.22uF following. I ran a simulation on SiMetrix, and it shows -7db at 40Hz!!! Hmmmm.....
Well done, Peavey. Extending base response of a guitar amp below some 150Hz is just wasting energy.
I have to wonder: what sort of a guitar do you play that has no output below 150Hz?
Today's 7-string guitars and drop tunings go well into territories that once were occupied by classic 4-string bass. One octave lower than the standard 82Hz E from the past, easily
Of course all guitar signal are highpassed/sloped (1st order) in the amp especially with distorted sounds, otherwise it will just be a mushy mess.
Of course all guitar signal are highpassed/sloped (1st order) in the amp especially with distorted sounds, otherwise it will just be a mushy mess.
This last supports the philosophy of getting the whole signal in and then process it to create the music one wants the audience to hear.
On a six-string guitar, I often use a drop-D tuning (ala Keith Richards) which has the low string at ~73 Hz; C6 tuning on a D-10 pedal steel guitar has low A at 55 Hz. The last thing you want on a pedal steel is a mushy sound; but I don't see steel guitar amp manufacturers rolling off the low end response to avoid this. If you look at the settings many steel players used when playing through old Fender amps, the bass is often at 10 and the treble at 0.
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Sorry to hear it's broken!! My Fender Stratocaster puts out a nice, fat low E at 82 Hz !!It is called Stratocaster, made by Fender
You believe it does. Did you ever see the p.u. voltage on a scope? You will have a hard time even to trigger it! In fact there is very little content of the fundamental but much more harmonics. A FFT should show the same.
A 7 string will usually have a low B and that is the 7th Fret on a bass E string. Drop tunings for guitars and 7 stringers are a bad idea. It just puts more noise in the low area that is occupied by the bass. That encourages everyone to go down and there lies boomy and muddy sound.
Even with bassists, drop tunings and the low B on a 5 string cause more problems than they solve.
One of the reasons why many good bass amps have high pass filters centred on anywhere for 30-70Hz. Virtually no viable speakers can properly handle even 40Hz let alone the 32Hz fundamentals of a low B on a 5 string.
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You believe it does. Did you ever see the p.u. voltage on a scope? You will have a hard time even to trigger it! In fact there is very little content of the fundamental but much more harmonics. A FFT should show the same.
Of course the fundamental on the strum is 82 Hz but the pickup will have a resonant frequency much higher than that meaning that some of the harmonics are much higher than the fundamental frequency.
Of course guitar speakers are really lacking in low end and that makes the situation worse.
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"worse" implies that the goal is something like a full power fundamental. But this does not reflect common taste that has developped over the centuries. Consider the harmonic content of the low e-string of a "natural" acoustic guitar or a double base: There is very little fundamental content. On my opinion many electric guitar players tend to boost the bass frequency beyond healthy levels. When you play in a rock band or similar, there normally exists some bass player, so it is wise to restrict the guitar low frequency spectrum. http://www.djangobooks.com/archives/ZT_Amplifiers_Lunchbox_Whitepaper.pdf
I think that what can get people in trouble with low end guitar distortion is intermodulation. But this is very subjective, and what is heard as acceptable these days is pretty hard on my ears. To me a rolled off low end with some even harmonics thickening up the bottom with a nice even/odd distortion as the frequencies get higher ( some crunch) sounds big enough and you are not limited to 5ths and power chords.
What I don't find great is chord splatter, which is large dose of IM distortion and this spread of harmonics right through the spectrum. Just my humble 2 cents.
What I don't find great is chord splatter, which is large dose of IM distortion and this spread of harmonics right through the spectrum. Just my humble 2 cents.
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