Doing something a bit "speacial"

[Randy Jane]

Hey all! Today I’m going to tell you about how I’m about to do something a bit….well, Special. I’m going to take my new Peavey Transtube head, and trade it for a 1978 Peavey Mark III Musician Series 400, 300 Watt head. The thing is rediculous! I have owned one of these, but mine was 210Watts…so I’m anticipating hearing the 300W version…gonna be great. I was originally thinking of just keeping the transtube and just modding it to sound better, but now…I’m going to trade it in. I tried several times to get a Fender M-80, Marshall Mosfet, or Carvin SX200 head…but no one wanted to do trades on EBay. Oh well.

My "special" trade of the year that I’ll regret when I blow something up in about a month.

-R.J.

[ammaringnyc]

I had one of those peaveys. I found it when I worked at a garbage dump. I sent it to get fixed but it was so damn heavy I left it at the repair shop.

[Randy Jane]

Thats a shame, they’re probably my favorite heads for the time being…untill I can afford an ’87 Plexi

[Randy Jane]

ok, so im a woman and I change my mind every time I get a chance…I’m not doing it anymore. I’ll just keep it and mod the devil out of it.
I’ll post pics when its done….and pics of my greatly modded Park amp, before, during and after.
R.J.

[Annastefka]

OMG, Randy Jane is a WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!! All this time I have had an image in my mind of like a "boy named Sue" kind of thing. Randy is a very popular boys name in the South, in Athens we have a Randy John and a Randy Joe, so in my head Randy Jane was just a guy who was VERY comfortable with his sexuality. WOW, my mind just twisted. Oh, some very cool folks are playing tonight in Atlanta.

[Randy Jane]

no….not a woman….but not a girl either. lol hehe….hey anyone like my new sig? R.J.

[Randy Jane]

ok….now that I am keeping this head, I want to modify it a bit. I don’t know where to start though. Eventually, it will be purple with wheat grill cloth on it, but that’s jumping ahead. This head is 100W so it has no excuse for being muddy, but it is. I need to clean it up and get it brighter. It IS a tube simulating amp, therefore it needs to simulate tubes….not poop. Does anyone here know any mods to try? Changing a few caps to resistors doesnt sound like a bad place to start. I also want to make the distortion channel sound different. It sounds too…….light/sabbath/overdrive-y to me, I want to add some more gain to it…..it DOES have a Thrash button, so it needs to thrash me around the room right?

Also….I plugged the head into the mixer, (makes it louder you know?) via the preamp jack (says to do this in the manual). It worked for a while, but the volume dropped down to around nothing and then came back up, and then kept doing that…..why?

R.J.

[Mattman]

What model is the amp. If it’s too muddy then that could probably be fixed by reducing the value of the bass tone capicitor and maybe the coupling caps as well. It’d be a lot easier to tell if I could see a schematic though…

[Randy Jane]

Hey Matt…I dont know if you have ever tried to deal with Peavey or not, but they don’t like to give out anything to anyone. Plus, it’s one of their company policies to not give out any information on ways to mod any of their products because they "simply don’t have the recorces to try every mod people send them." It’s a liability issue, it makes sence, but then…they made the amp, I know Hartley (Peavey) knows ways to make his amps sound different. They also told me to try different speakers as they have a huge impact on how the amp turns out in the end. True, but if I asked them what cab or speakers to go with…they’ll just tell me a 5150 cab or something…I dont want a 5150.

The head is a new-ish Peavey Transtube Supreme. Peavey will send out schematics for like $2.50 each, but I havent ordered any. I tried to get one they didnt have listed (the ’78 Musician I had) and they sent to a parts layout, a cross reference sheet….but no schematic nor a parts list….big help there. As for changing the bass cap., I really wouldn’t want to do that, only because I like a lot of bottom end, however I don’t like my shimmering highs to be dull and bassy. I’m confusing on how I want my guitar to sound…and I’m very picky, but I know what I want and I havent found it yet….so I’m willing to take an amp I do have, and make it sound like the idealized amp. I really like the distortion tones my little Park G-10 gets, but it’s Pre section isn’t transistors it’s ICs. If the Peavey had IC’s, then I could put the ones like the Parks in and see how that sounds…but it probably has transistors seeing as its a TRANStube and thats how that works. It’s not a Intetube although it would be cool to make one and call it the Intertube.

[Randy Jane]

BTW the cab I am using is a Laney with H|H speakers in it (4×12).

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