Ken Fox
From:
Nashville GA USA
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Posted 6 Feb 2003 7:42 pm |
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Well to make a short story long:
I just got in a few days a go the amp of my childhood dreams, yes an old Peavey Mace with Black Widows. Looked great and only sounded fair. Was I wrong about these old amps sounding that good? Well it had new Sovtek 5881 tubes and was running cold at about 8 ma per tube. I decided the Sovteks would not handle this amps 500 VDC plates. I got all new JJ tubes in tonight and tweeked the bias up to 32 ma and the plates settled at about 475 VDC. Sounded better, not great. Highs were not crisp, but a ton of power. I thought what the heck, I would try a Transtubefex to the power amp input. Turned it on and off standy and almost blew the speakers out with a load roar. I thought at first the new tubes had "red-plated"! I turned it off, unplugged the Fex and turned it back on. All seemed well. I plugged in the Fex and it started it again! I found the input jack to the power amp was very dirty, probably never used in 25 years or more. I got it a bit more stable by exercising the jack a bit and then I decided to go get some cleaner. I plugged in the guitar to make sure the speakers survived. Oh mercy, tone out of this world! It was a dirty input jack robbing the preamps tone!
The moral of the story, a lot of amps have power amp inputs (Nashville 400 for instance), they can get dirty and do this or even cut the amp off completely. It is a good idea to excercise the jack with a guitar cord once in while and even use a little cleaner on it if needed.
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