Amps Problem with Peavey Delta Blues

[CapnDenny1]

About 5 or 6 years ago I bought a Peavey Delta Blues. It was my first tube amp besides theFender Princeton. I planned on playing out, so I wanted something that was louder than the Princeton. I had heard my son play thru a Peavey Classic 30, and it sounded really good. The Delta Blues is the same as the Classic 30, except the Delta Blues has tremolo.

But my Delta Blues never sounded very good. It was nice and clean, but it jus never had any oomph behind it. It sounded like a solid state amp. I tried new speakers and it didn’t help much.

I moved on with my quest for tone. And considered selling the Delta Blues, but ever did.

So I have a PRS Sonzera 50 I am chasing a noise issue. I decided I needed some different preamp tubes to rule the tubes out as the noise source. So I swiped the three out of the Delta Blues. I went to put them in the PRS and I checked the brand, They are all JJ’s which I don’t usually care for. But I also noticed that one was an ECC83, another an ECC82 and the 3rd was an EC822 or something. I guess the previous owner did some tube swapping?

So I took 3 good preamp tubes, all the proper 12ax7 types and put those in. Omg! It is a totally new amp! Loud as heck now, full bass and nice treble. And the gain channel is amazing now. With the old wrong tubes the gain channel never got loud. Now it goes to Marshallville with ease. Just amazingly better sounding amp.

So at least with this amp, the original designed tubes are so much better sounding

 

[PapaBear]

My Delta blues was not impressive when I first got, but after about 2 weeks or so when the speaker broke in it was awesome other than the occasional tube rattle

 

[Bernie Fitz]

I bought a Peavey Classic 30 a few months back (April?) and only kept it a couple of days. I really wanted o like it based on things I'd heard about them but just didn't. I had a small window for the full refund and just couldn't wait a few weeks to see if it "opened up".

 

[CapnDenny1]

Peavey tends to use Eminence speakers, and Eminence speakers are prone to needing some break-in time. When new they sound brittle and stiff, and not very musical. After about 20 hours or so they completely change and become very sweet and round, and loose the brittle sound. The good part is that Eminence makes good speakers, so if you buy a Peavey amp, chances are there is no need to upgrade the speaker. I've tried a few times, and it doesn't really help much.

Fender amps on the other hand, at least at the lower end of the line benefit greatly from a speaker upgrade.

 

[TwoNotesSolo]

Whenever I buy a new amp I break it in for a few days. I take my looper which has 5 minutes and play chords and solo stuff all across the neck, and once the 5min memory is full I set it on loop in the morning and leave it all day while I am at work and maybe even some of the time I'm home. I boost the volume every day and by the 3rd day it's a good thing it's in the basement for the neighbors don't complain.
I change what I play in the looper every day but that's probably unnecessary.
By the time I'm done I have at least 30 hours of music through the amp. Also it gets the tubes (if tube amp) nice and hot and I expect it might get out any problems with the electronics.

To be honest I've only heard a significant difference in only one amp between before and after. I guess maybe it's my ears.