Peavey Classic 50

[otgordin]

Last night, I brought out my Classic 50 4x10 to practice after getting fed up with the sound of my drummer's Crate I had been using. I haven't used the Peavey in 4 or 5 months, but back then turning it up past 3 meant shattering ear-drums in the basement we practice in. Last night, after letting it warm up, I flicked the standby switch and found that volume on the clean channel was significantly reduced and the lead channel was more or less inaudible. After another maybe 20 minutes of fiddling around with knobs and frustration I got both channels at workable levels but the volume knob was at 10 (peaveys go to 12). I ended up playing through the crate for fear of damaging something. This is my first real tube amp and my first time running into this after two years of use. Is it gonna go back to normal, do i need new tubes, any suggestions? Thanks

-Vadim

[marksound]

Unplug the amp (always do this first), then pull and reseat the tubes. See if that helps.

[Daniel Sorbera]

I'm by nop means an electronics expert but it sounds like you have a power tube problem. I'd replace the power tubes.

[lovekraft]

Marksound's suggestion is not only an excellent one (and would save quite a few people from paying my bench charge for having me reseat a preamp tube ) , it's the only thing I'd suggest you do to the amp unless you know what you're doing - of course, if you have spare tubes (or you can "borrow" them from another amp for testing purposes), try replacing one tube at a time (powering off before changing each tube, of course) to see if that corrects the problem. If that fixes it, you know which tube to replace (if it's a power tube, replace the pair, with a matched set if possible) - if not, take it to a tech for repairs, and have him rebias and retube it if necessary while he's in it. Life is too short to play a crappy Crate combo.