• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

preamp fie 6L6 PP power amp?

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OK, I recently (thursday) acquired a Peavey Classic 60/60 tube power amp. It uses two 6L6's per channel, push-pull, for 60W output. (it says RMS, but I don't believe that...). Pre section uses 12AX7's, don't know how many. Someone here may be familiar with it...

Anyway, when I hook it up to my CD-player RCA outputs, the sound doesn't really get that loud, and the midrange of has a bit of distortion. This could be because of the cheap, horrible cables I am using. OK, maybe I should re-phrase, it gets loud, really. But there is a limit to this loudness, and it is not puting out much power anyway. On the back, it states 60WRMS, 31V. It is putting out 2VRMS to my two KG-2.5's, and is achieving loud levels with florr shaking bass. (from two 6.5" speakers....)

But, I thought maybe I could preamp it and get more out of it. I tried... after having one circuit not work, another blow a chip up, and the last one kind of work but cause a clipping sound at louder volumes, I called it quits. Is this amp just not goint to do me any good?

I just wish there was a cheaper way to get a good tube power amp up and running so I could actually hear the true 'tube sound.' This thing didn't sound a whole lot different than solid state and if all tube amps sound this was, then they are dissapointing. I always think and wish I'd build my own, but deep down I know it wouldn't work, so I think I'll quit wasting my time...

EDIT: Would it take a decent tube preamp to get this thing sounding its best?
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

Would it take a decent tube preamp to get this thing sounding its best?

It will only give you more control of the soundlevels you send into the amp.
It won't solve the problem unless the input sensitivity of the amp can be altered.
This requires, more often than not, a complete rebuild since it appears that as it is now the amps outputstage is driven into clipping by the CDP.
It was probably optimized for guitar input as Dave suggested.

If I were you I'd leave it alone, maybe put it up for sale if you don't need it and build a nice stereo integrated amp.

Cheers, ;)
 
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