Peavey Nashville 1000 manufacturing problem

[Terry Edwards]

I have been working on my Peavey Nashville 1000 for several weeks now. I sent Peavey an email and left phone messages asking for schematics or a service manual with no response from Peavey. I realize that my amp is way past warranty and to be fair Peavey has the right to protect proprietary circuit design. But most of the amp is decades old standard preamp and Switch Mode Power Supply designs that don’t need protection and could be released. So I used a multimeter and visually sketched out the Switch Mode Power Supply circuit by hand. A 5 watt 50 ohm ceramic snubber resistor on the input of a transformer was overheating and actually discolored the circuit board. I traced this problem to a bad transformer connection. The soldered stranded wire inside a crimped push on connector was severed inside the connector (see photo). Soldering stranded wire before crimping is a bad idea and not usually done in industry. Crimps are designed to provide a compression weld on wire - not solder and can result in failure over time due to vibrations and temperature changes. I checked all the crimps on the transformers and inductors (chokes) in this particular Peavey Nashville 1000 and the wires are all tinned with solder before crimping. One other connection was loose and I repaired it.

My amp has had intermittent problems for years before it finally failed hard. I am posting this discovery to help others that may have a Peavey amp with intermittent issues or a hard failure. Check those connectors. It’s an easy fix.

[Jack Hanson]

From all recent reports it may seem that Peavey is merely a shadow of its former self. It was good while it lasted.