Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: Dmoney on October 20, 2013, 07:27:50 PM
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Got me a 5150 to add to the tower of power. Think its from around 1995?
I say got... its at my flat... all going well i just need to hand over the cash
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Always wanted to have a go with one of those
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Ah. the old 'block letter' 5150 ... good score.
I remember receiving Peavey catalogues back when these came out, must have been 1993. I had a Peavey Unity bass back then and they used to regularly send me catalogues to promote GAS
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Is it a block logo? I get a little confused by this.
It has the older block '5150' on the front but it has Eddie's signature on the control panel, instead of the letters 'EVH'. I thought that had something to do with aging them. I thought it was 95 based on the potentiometer codes. I will say, I think the laters one are built slightly better.
Gwem, if you want a go you can always pop round.
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It looks just like the ones in the first ads that I remember, but I can't see the signature on there or remember where they were. The Peavey logo though is one that was introduced with the 5150 at some point and then went over to other amps like the 'red stripe' Bandit.
EDIT: you are right ... it is the signature that indicates that it is a slightly later unit. I couldn't see that in the photo. Bother 'block letter' and 'signature' versions have the block logo ... very confusing!
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/gear-equipment/221233-anyone-have-knowledge-peavey-5150-serial-numbers.html (http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/gear-equipment/221233-anyone-have-knowledge-peavey-5150-serial-numbers.html)
1995 is fairly old though.
The caps are probably bubbled and would need replacement now or soonish, unless they have been done before or the amp has rarely been used.
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It's not been used much at all. I got it from a friend of a friend who spent years travelling and kept it in storage.
The outside is really dusty and the valves looked past it. It has some weird chinese 6L6's in it and unbranded 12AX7's.
Inside it's immaculate. The bias is amazingly cold. no burn marks anywhere. The stupidly low value screen grid resistor are all intact (I've seen a few 5150's where these go open circuit effectively shutting down one valve socket, but because the filament in the valve makes it glow people think they have 4 working valves). It sounds fine, I've had amps with old filter caps before so I know what that sounds like. I might swap some caps though still.
I'm tempted to go down the route of modding it, adding a choke and all that stuff.
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Congrats! Nice score.
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The 5150 series amps are generally biased very much on the cold side for reliability reasons (remember, Peavey give a five year warranty). Sounds like yours has been left stock except for a (cheap?) revalve at some point. Frank at Custom Music (who make Woogie amps) here in Adelaide says he's modded a couple of them with a bias pot that is adjustable from the back panel, this seems worth looking into but take care to avoid biasing it too hot.
I will switch out the valves in my 6534+ eventually. I'm pretty sure they are cheap ones, they sound fizzy
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I've done the adjustable bias mod on a few 5150's and 6505's. Adding external pots and test points isn't a huge deal either really but I check bias using plate current draw these days and not cathode (+screen) so I always open the amp to bias anyway.
There are two or three points people make about the cool bias. One is reliability like you said. The second is usually 'crossover distortion', which some say is a contributing factor in the sound of the 5150. This 5150 is biased so cold that it's beyond what would normally be considered 'cool'. It's ice cold! The other thing worth noting which may well be different in your amp since it has EL34's and some other changes I think... is that in the 5150/6505 the Screen Grid resistors are 100ohms. In most amps you see those resistors at 470ohms (for 6L6's) or 1Kohms (EL34's). In actually fact 1K is fine for both, so is 1.5K. Some amps even have 2.2K screen grid resistors. They are there to keep the screen at a lower potential than the plate. 470ohm and 1K are legacy values that every just copies. Bugera have used a value between that in amps that can run 6L6 or EL34 but that is actually just stupid. You may as well use 1K for both. You won't hear a difference. Anyway, the value of those resistors is so low in the 5150 that they don't do a good job and I've seen loads of them fried, which is why it they were the first thing I checked on this amp. Increasing the size of these resistors will increase reliability way more than an ice cold bias. The push on ribbon cables don't help the reliablity issue either. I'm going to try and replace them with something like the cables in to the newer amps. Still push on connectors (not great) but with discrete heavier guage wire rather than flat ribbon.
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nice :D
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Tower of Power indeed!
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bet your neighbour loves you :lol:
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Ordered some new valves to try in my SLO so I'll be moving valves around into the 5150. It'll end up with Tung Sol 7581 output valves. JJ's in the pre and probably a JAN 5751 for V1.
I've played around reducing the noise in these before so I'm going to do those tricks I can remember too. I have a spare choke so I can see how the choke mod sounds. I might see if I can make a cable to actually bypass the whole FX loop too (I'm not a fan of FX loops). All those things are reversable and easy to set up to test.
Upgrading the screen grid resistors is going to be tough since peavey in their wisdom when this was made decided to rivet that PCB the chassis and mount those resistors on the underside of the board.
The intention is to run the 5150 with the green clone and pick up a 2x12 at some point as in my current band I'll be the only guitarist. Going to make some jazzy use of a stutter pedal and a y-splitter. Also, I kind of feel like starting a little high gain amp collection.
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Dude, where exactly do you live and what are your working hours? :lol:
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i've been looking at these lately. always sounded great. and i'd like to have a nice backup amp to my dual rectifier
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I might see if I can make a cable to actually bypass the whole FX loop too (I'm not a fan of FX loops).
I don't know if the loops on the 5150 are much different from that on my 6534+ - I know the 5150 II loop is the same as mine - but I've found the loop to be extremely useful on mine, mainly for noise reduction purposes with the G-String pedal. I really haven't found any downsides to the loop on mine, although I know that some amps (such as the Marshall JVM) can have problems with their loops. I think there may be some effects that have problems in the Peavey loop, but I don't have any in mine. Most of my pedals - and all of them in the loop besides the ISP - are MXR analogue pedals. I don't know if they play nice with digital reverbs etc. I'd suggest giving it a try first. The Peaveys generate a lot of fizz in the preamp section so I found that the noise reduction really needs to go after the preamp.
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Nice collection!!
How would you compare the 5150 to the SLO?
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I might see if I can make a cable to actually bypass the whole FX loop too (I'm not a fan of FX loops).
I don't know if the loops on the 5150 are much different from that on my 6534+ - I know the 5150 II loop is the same as mine - but I've found the loop to be extremely useful on mine, mainly for noise reduction purposes with the G-String pedal. I really haven't found any downsides to the loop on mine, although I know that some amps (such as the Marshall JVM) can have problems with their loops. I think there may be some effects that have problems in the Peavey loop, but I don't have any in mine. Most of my pedals - and all of them in the loop besides the ISP - are MXR analogue pedals. I don't know if they play nice with digital reverbs etc. I'd suggest giving it a try first. The Peaveys generate a lot of fizz in the preamp section so I found that the noise reduction really needs to go after the preamp.
I used to own a 6505 and I found the preamp generates enough noise to force me to have unnatural settings on my NS2 if I ran it in the loop. I've never used loops and I don't use many effects. My SLO has no loop at all. At most I have a tuner, possibly a wah, maybe a delay, and I run those at the front of the amp and usually on batteries but I do have a good isolated mains supply for them.
Adding a choke will improve the power supply filtering a bit, I'm half way through doing that. I also happen to know from experience which resistors in the preamp can add a LOT of noise. One in particular will be having it's value reduced, which will cut a lot of hiss. The loop being slightly surplus for me, if bypassed, will get rid of 2 valve stages (send and return stage), the associated gain drop/increase in the loop (also boosting noise) and the series resistances in that circuit. I need to check a few things before I try it though but it should just require a jumped wire. The 5150 loop bypass only switches the send and return jack sockets out of circuit. The loop is always passing the signal. There are some more noise reduction tricks too. I'm also careful where I run the gain and I'll be using a 5751 in V1 which should help too.
Compared to the SLO the 5150 is very noisy, has less pushy mids, more fizz, more gain, a poor clean/crunch channel and isn't built as well. BUT... it has that 5150 sound. When I use it I instantly feel like I'm playing with the rig from loads of albums I like... If that makes sense. It's very much a go-to kind of amp for certain styles for a reason. It's based on the SLO100 but it's nowhere near a clone. Just a couple of similarities in the circuit.
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Just out of curiosity, how did you get into amp modding DMoney?
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I let a mate borrow an old amp at a show and during his bands set a pint of water vibrated off the drum monitor and onto my amp. It blew up. all the power valves shattered. I tried to get an idea of what it would cost to have someone take a look but I had no money. So i decided to learn how to fix it myself. After that a few years of trial and error just trying things out. im very much still learning.
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Note to myself: borrowing amps might result in increased knowledge about modifying amps :lol:
I'm just at the beginning of the whole subject, I think once I swapped out Power Amp Tubes and set the Bias myself I'll be feeling less uneducated... if I don't get fried that is :P
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I will say, I have had some pretty nasty shocks and burns but nothing for a long time now. A mixture of risk taking and messing with amps while being half awake. urgh.
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Compared to the SLO the 5150 is very noisy, has less pushy mids, more fizz, more gain, a poor clean/crunch channel and isn't built as well. BUT... it has that 5150 sound. When I use it I instantly feel like I'm playing with the rig from loads of albums I like... If that makes sense. It's very much a go-to kind of amp for certain styles for a reason. It's based on the SLO100 but it's nowhere near a clone. Just a couple of similarities in the circuit.
Thanks mate, sounds like it's a nice addition then!
I have always been curious about the variations between the 5150, a Dual Rec and the SLO100. I have always heard very very good things about the SLO100, yet both Peavey and Mesa thought it was worth doing their own variants of them that sound quite different. I own an old Rectifier myself and love it, yet the SLO100 is spurring my GAS.
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Compared to the SLO the 5150 is very noisy, has less pushy mids, more fizz, more gain, a poor clean/crunch channel and isn't built as well. BUT... it has that 5150 sound. When I use it I instantly feel like I'm playing with the rig from loads of albums I like... If that makes sense. It's very much a go-to kind of amp for certain styles for a reason. It's based on the SLO100 but it's nowhere near a clone. Just a couple of similarities in the circuit.
Thanks mate, sounds like it's a nice addition then!
I have always been curious about the variations between the 5150, a Dual Rec and the SLO100. I have always heard very very good things about the SLO100, yet both Peavey and Mesa thought it was worth doing their own variants of them that sound quite different. I own an old Rectifier myself and love it, yet the SLO100 is spurring my GAS.
Everyone needs a SLO or a clone!
It's surprising just how many high gain amplifiers are based on the SLO topology.
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I swear, one day either I'll get myself a Clone built, build one on my own or buy the real deal :shock: