Peavey Blazer 158 Silver Stripe

[aoresteen]

Well, as I'm leaving the Orlando area on Thursday, I made a final pass through the pawnshops today to see what treasures I could find.  I hit the last 8 today having been in 12 others on Saturday.

Walking into a Cash America shop, I see a battered Peavey Blazer 158 Silver stripe and after some negotiations I walk out with it for $18.78 plus tax - $20 total





Obviously it's a very rare model as it has a YELLOW Peavey logo:



I'm thinking that it must have beed a custom amp for the Sultan of Brunei with that yellow logo.  The logo alone is worth $26.73 as they are very very rare !

It must have been a factory relic as it's missing the all the top corner pieces:



When I looked at the back I knew it was a very hot amp as the rear back has been totally removed to allow greater air cooling to get to the amp.



Alas, when I got it home the disappointments sank in.  It has the following deficiencies:

1.  None of the pots have any scratching sound.  For a relic I expected at leat one pot would be scratchy.  What a disappointment!

2.  Both channels work.  I would expect at least one channel to be out if not both.

3.  The reverb is too strong.  With a relic the reverb should be weak.

4.  The overdrive channel is usable.  The OD channels are supposed to be tinny and scratchy.

5.  It's too loud for my apartment.  These relics are supposed to be for display, not to actully work and make noise.


With these faults I'm thinking about taking it back tomorrow and getting my money back.  What do you think?

[J M Fahey]

BEG them to take it back, and offer twice the amount you already paid to sweeten the deal. :lmao:

Or tell the Sultan of Brunei you found his amp, he might send this "courier" to pick it up.

[DrGonz78]

So yeah Obama met yesterday and I was disappointed to see a green tie when I was expecting yellow. The funniest amp I ever bought was a Peavey Backstage Plus... I called it "The Package" not quite sure just why either?? I find if you want to have broken/dirt filled pots the Peavey amp needs to date to at least the 1980's.  :tu:

Edit: Notice the smaller Reverb knob?? That pot was missing a knob and it could not be turned. Still put a Peavey knob on it but it was from one of those small porta-amps from the 80's.

[Roly]

"after some negotiations" - what with, a baseball bat?  You have The Hulk with you?  :lmao:

Nah, you can't beat Murphy, and a $20 amp must have something majorly wrong with it. 

Not to upstage you, but to confirm that these things do happen; as the SysOp of Australian Valve Amps people sometimes send me e-mails about particularly good scores.

One of the best was a guy who got a text from his mother saying that she thought there was a guitar amp put out on the nature strip around the corner for the hard rubbish collection.  On one hand he thought his mom would know a guitar amp when she saw one, but on the other was expecting wreckage, or at least nothing too exciting.

So he went over for a look see, and you can imagine his surprise and joy to find, still sitting by the roadside where it had been for a couple of days, a classic vintage Aussie made Moody valve (tube) amp in showroom mint condition - slightly damp from a light fall of rain, but not a scratch on it, all knobs, logo, original and intact.  Even a crappy one of these would sell on eBay for upwards of $400AU, but one in mint condition?  Perhaps $1000AU.  He was even happier when his amp tech found it to still be in perfect working order.

Given that some real gems turn up at op-shops (thrift stores), pawn shops, garage sales, tips, dumpsters, and even dumped by the side of the road, we can be sure that there are more lurking in sheds, storerooms and garages just waiting to be found.

You made your own luck by beating the underbrush - very well done.   Enjoy.  :dbtu:

[aoresteen]

Thanks all.  After some thought I decided to keep the amp.    

Of course I'm going to mod it.  First up is a channel & reverb foot switch.  Shouldn't be too hard to do.

Next will be a pre-amp out for recording.  Maybe an XLR balanced out.  Ideas?

Next would be an effects loop.  I think I will look at the effects loop circuit from the Bandit 112 to see if I can copy it.

Why all the work on a 15 watter?  'Cause if I screw it up no great loss!

Other ideas?

[Roly]

Of course I'm going to mod it.  First up is a channel & reverb foot switch.  Shouldn't be too hard to do.

A couple of low power relays.

Next will be a pre-amp out for recording.  Maybe an XLR balanced out.  Ideas?

There are quite a few ways to skin this cat.  There are a range of signal transformers that have been used in this service, typically "600ohm:600ohm CT", which give full ground loop isolation and the center tapped side gives balanced output.  While the specs on these don't look all that brilliant I have found that if you run them under the specified level they have much better bandwidth, so what looks like a telephone quality tranny at +15dB can be quite acceptable run down at say 0dB or -6dB.  e.g. http://www.altronics.com.au/index.asp?area=item&id=M1005  Just mount it well away from the power transformer.

Why all the work on a 15 watter?  'Cause if I screw it up no great loss!

Here in Australia, at least, 15 watt amps are now favored by many guitarists.  They are easy to transport, ideal for bedroom or recording, and at this power level they have quite sufficient power for smaller gigs, and in larger gigs it is now expected that there will be a PA available to carry them into the room and they become on-stage foldback.  And if you have ever tried moving a Marshall stack ...  xP

[aoresteen]

......
.....  And if you have ever tried moving a Marshall stack ...  xP

Worse:

Here's my rig:



Do I ever need a roadie!

[J M Fahey]

Do I ever need a roadie!

Not at all if you

a) play always in your living room

b) carry only the Peavey 15W to gigs

[Roly]

Phfff ... lotas small bits.  No ploblemo.   8|  Pity the poor keyboardist lugging a Hammond B-3 containing a giant gearbox, and a Leslie the size (and weight) of a family fridge.  Then you don't need roadies, you need a couple of tame gorillas.   :duh

[aoresteen]

Phfff ... lotas small bits.  No ploblemo.   8|  Pity the poor keyboardist lugging a Hammond B-3 containing a giant gearbox, and a Leslie the size (and weight) of a family fridge.  Then you don't need roadies, you need a couple of tame gorillas.   :duh

+1000   :lmao:

[Roly]

After several beers with a musician friend one night I remarked that I was going to build a giant Leslie on the back of my truck.

"How are you going to unload it?" he asked.

"Unload it?  I'm not going to unload it - I'm going to back it up to the stage door!" 

[Enzo]

Ahem, Gorilla here...

When we were playing the clubs back about 1970-1973, we carried a full B3 and Leslie.  We had an 18 foot truck.  I could get the Leslie out of it by myself.  No ramp or lift gate, just technique.  The organ itself, yeah, it needed a guy on the other end.   Leslies are not near as heavy as they look, and I am not especially strong.


Then our keyboardist decided he wanted a piano.  He wanted a REAL one, so we started hauling this full size upright to gigs.  900 pounds if I recall.  That took the entire band to move.   I have always hated the sound of a Fender Rhodes, that distorted "bonk" sound does nothing for me, but I sure would have loved to see one back then.


Here in town, we have a local guitar hero named Frog, and he has been known to put an amp out in the van, and run a mic out to pick up the sound, so he can get the sound of a screaming loud overdriven amp without blowing the whole bar away.  So there is a precedent for the story Roly just posted.

[Roly]

A real piano? OMFG!

:lmao:

I once had a B3 dropped on me down a staircase - didn't seem so light at the time.   8|

[Steve Dalllman]

I have a Rage (same amp without the reverb) and love it. I did a lot of tweaking. I listened to what I liked about the clean and distortion and what I didn't and changed a couple values, added a couple caps, and was pleased with the results. I let a little more low end and added a bright cap to the master for the distortion to sparkle the distortion up at high gain levels. I added a switch to the distortion channel to change from a vintage toned overdrive to a scooped mids modern sound, copying the circuit from the next generation of Rage amps.

I added a parallel effects loop, and changed the wimpy 8" speaker to a 10", which improved it a lot. I used an 8 ohm speaker and added an ext speaker jack to run another 8 ohm extension speaker.

I found an old ART, compact multi-effects unit, and put it in back of the amp, patched into the effects loop. I put an AC socket under the chassis for the AC adapter for the ART. There is a reverb program that works perfectly.

I wired the amp to use a footswitch for channel switching, putting a relay in place of the channel switch, and put an LED in the switch hole. The footswitch also has an LED.

I think I replaced the TDA2040 with a TDA2050, improved the heat sink and put in larger filter caps, not to increase power but to increase reliability and headroom.

It's a little beast. I love it. The best mod is I replaced the grill cloth.

[aoresteen]

I have a Rage (same amp without the reverb) and love it. I did a lot of tweaking. I listened to what I liked about the clean and distortion and what I didn't and changed a couple values, added a couple caps, and was pleased with the results. I let a little more low end and added a bright cap to the master for the distortion to sparkle the distortion up at high gain levels. I added a switch to the distortion channel to change from a vintage toned overdrive to a scooped mids modern sound, copying the circuit from the next generation of Rage amps.

I added a parallel effects loop, and changed the wimpy 8" speaker to a 10", which improved it a lot. I used an 8 ohm speaker and added an ext speaker jack to run another 8 ohm extension speaker.

I found an old ART, compact multi-effects unit, and put it in back of the amp, patched into the effects loop. I put an AC socket under the chassis for the AC adapter for the ART. There is a reverb program that works perfectly.

I wired the amp to use a footswitch for channel switching, putting a relay in place of the channel switch, and put an LED in the switch hole. The footswitch also has an LED.

I think I replaced the TDA2040 with a TDA2050, improved the heat sink and put in larger filter caps, not to increase power but to increase reliability and headroom.

It's a little beast. I love it. The best mod is I replaced the grill cloth.

Now that's what I'm taking about!!!  The pawn shop thatsold me the Blazer also had two Peavey Rage amps priced at $65 & $50 - way above the Blazer.  Go figure.

Care to share the details of your mods?  I have the schematic.

Parts arrived today from Peavey so tomorrow I start my mods.