bloke, the electronics expert 🤣

[bloke]

hail no, I ain't, but this FORMERLY hummy/clicky/buzzy hot mess now operates/sounds like new with no noise from any of the pots nor slides.









(This c. 30-year-old 1990's Peavey TNT 115 BW is MINE...I've been BORROWING my son's much newer Ampeg BA-115 v2, which is an EXCELLENT amp, but it is NOT mine, and I don't like borrowing stuff.)

Both are analog (preferred by old blokes, such as myself).

I also own own a good-working (early 1970's) Ampeg 115N Portaflex (tubes), but consider it to be (though a sturdy cabinet) too fragile to haul around and use for gigs.

I would REALLY like to get my (12" speaker super compact - maybe only 13" x 13") Polytone Minibrute (early 1980's) working again...Someone here offered...I need to find that thread...

I also have a dual-tower (4 x 10" x 2) Woodson (assembled in Missouri...1970's) P.A. (same electronics and speakers as made-in-Kansas Kustom) that - even with just one tower hooked up - would get all the seismometers within a fifty-mile radius pegging out...and it's working perfectly...but that's some crazy-serious gear (just to run a bass through it) to drag to a gig.

bloke "a vintage Made in USA" type of person, in regards to guitars and amplifiers"
now:
to get The Peavey put back together WITHOUT bustin' it.

[Schlitzz]

Please don’t stand in front of that with a microphone.

[tubatodd]

Peavey TNT amps are legendary workhorses.

[bloke]

There's a quiet/background 60 c. hum...but I can tolerate it...
I could buy my son's (newer/slightly-quieter-and-slightly-cleaner-sounding) Ampeg B115v2 from him, but I don't want to pay what he's askin'.

[tadawson]

I'm glad that it looks like the EQ is out . . . I look at that and (as a sound engineer) I hear unusable mud . . . .

[bloke]

I'm glad that it looks like the EQ is out . . . I look at that and (as a sound engineer) I hear unusable mud . . . .

yeah...I set that up later.
At that time, I was just trying to eliminate epic 60 hz hum epic crackles and pops...so DETERMINE whether this combo amp was salvageable and worth buying.

"sound engineer"
I'm sure you're really good at it, but so many have the inability to set levels and take a nap, OR turn everything up absolutely as loud as possible - ALWAYS on the very edge of feeding back.

[tadawson]

Yeah, that's not me . . . A proper mix has everything detailed and audible, no "sea of swimming mud" on the bottom, and takes pretty constant attention. (That's after hours of system setup and room eq (at least in a house system). (Hence my comment on the eq . . . I like some attack anddetail in the bess . . .)

Perhaps I should consider it more of an obsession . . .

[bloke]

Having heard what highly paid so-called sound engineers do to the sound of string basses (fairly consistently) when they amplify symphony orchestras, I don't have much respect for the industry but I have respect for talented individuals (who I've encountered) in the industry.

Several years ago, I played a jazz band concert in a medium size venue. Perhaps it held 500 people..
Maybe...??

They hired a sound guy. OMG.

All we needed was one of our own microphones and maybe something like a guitar amplifier for someone to sing through almost never and to announce the titles of the tunes we played. Every other microphone was totally unnecessary and ruined the sound of the band. and of course he had a laptop with some fancy program loaded onto it.

Something tells me that recording - though I know it takes a whole lot of know how - must not be as difficult as live amplification.

[tadawson]

Recording is definitely a different animal, in that you don't have to deal with the amplified sound coming back, and you can isolate instruments, and can do multiple takes. The downside is that you don't get any of the ambiance of the space . . . . both present unique challenges, but yeah, a lot of studio/recording gues face-plant badlywhen confronted with the "real time" nature of live work.

I think being a musician myself also helps . . . .

[bloke]

I tried rolling this out to the car for a gig, last night, and it wouldn't (well, not easily) budge, so - one more (the last?) time, I used my son's Ampeg B115v2 (which is actually better - and for sale, but I don't want to spend the money to buy it from him, as I already own a working 1973 Portflex, and I would REALLY like to get my 1982 12-inch Polytone Minibrute working again...and - actually - I have a (ridiculously large, but) two-towers 4x10(x2) 1970's Missouri-made Woodson PA - nuclear-level output ) that would work wonderfully as a bass amp (though absurdly unwieldy).

After cleaning this 1990's Peavey TNT15BW, I had NOT looked at the casters, and two of them are trashed. (plastic ball missing on one, cracked and ready to fall off on another, ball bearings falling out).

There are way more heavy-duty casters available for not much mo' money...and I know Wade likes to buy THE BEST wheels for stuff, but...

- The plastic o.e.m. wheels on this amp (no...) obviously didn't last THREE decades, but (based on past service) at least lasted TWO decades...and (in two decades) I seriously doubt that I'll be using this amp.

- These were cheap. ($20 for four - delivered - is the equivalent of $10 in 2020.)

- These LOOK VERY MUCH the original ones (to me: a plus). The screw pattern footprint isn't the same, but I can reuse the outer corner screw holes (for accurate oem-ish placement), and make nice fresh screw holes (not even pre-drilled, but gentle-setting impact-driver-installed) for the other three screw holes for each caster. ...I'll be reusing the original hex-head screws, which will play nicer with the impact driver.

- Plastic ball casters are going to be easy on (our and others') floors.

ELECTRONICS EXPERT: I can recharge the battery on my impact driver.


https://www.ebay.com/itm/375714516409





THE GOOD:




THE BAD:




THE UGLY:

[tubatodd]

Sounds like @bloke needs to invest in a Trace Elliot Elf and a Markbass ultra light cab. I have both and they are fantastic.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/vVpqwA1pqyPXauyW7

[bloke]

I'm sure it's great, but I would rather hold on to the money I'm getting paid to have fun rather than rolling it back into even more gear.

There are actually four working things here...
- a vintage tube Ampeg with a 15
- a new condition recent vintage Ampeg with a 15
- a monstrous vintage PA with a pair of 4 X 10 towers
- the Peavey with a BW 15
...that would all do well for bass guitar (specifically) amplification and one more that needs repair that probably doesn't weigh much more than the one you're showing me and nor is it much larger (an early '80s 12-in polytone mini brute).

I'm trying to get @tadawson's attention - via email - to see if I can send it to him to repair the polytone, and waiting for a response.

[tadawson]

I sent a reply to your email the day you sent it . . . did you not get it?

[tadawson]

Just resent here via PM . . . summary: one question, and send it!

[tubatodd]

I'm sure it's great, but I would rather hold on to the money I'm getting paid to have fun rather than rolling it back into even more gear.

100%. Glad to see you've gotten your amps repaired.

[bloke]

The relatively large Peavey amp is sporting a small amount of 60 cycle hum. I would rate it as tolerable, but I'm not a very tolerant person. I don't like my tubas making any noise and I really don't like this (albeit in the background) noise. I've said before that I don't claim to be able to hear the grass grow, but what I'm playing through this amp and the 60 cycle sharp B flat is resonating with other pitches (even though the sharp B flat is sort of pianissimo), they just don't go too well together.

Probably the most annoying ignorant person is someone who looks up stuff with a search engine, drops into chat rooms, and then considers themselves to be an expert because they quote stuff that other people said about this or that.

I try not to be that guy, but consistently people are telling each other that the capacitors ("filter caps") where the AC current from the wall is being converted to DC are probably worn, those are usually responsible for eliminating 60 cycle hum, and when they went ahead and replaced those - actually on my specific amplifier (which is thirty years old) - they got rid of the hum.

I'm either going to have a friend of mine (who is versed in electronics but not specifically in amplifiers) replace those capacitors, or I'm going to talk to a guy in a shop in the small town nearby and ask him what he would charge to replace them (with me demanding absolutely no guarantee of success).

These amplifiers don't seem to have really strong resale value, but I like the thing, and I like the sound of the legacy highly touted "Black Widow" 15-in speaker which it features... And it's got a pretty good bit of power at 150W.

LOL... Sadly, this one's way too big and way too heavy to ship to our tubaforum friend up in Michigan, but - if he sees this - I wouldn't mind a note with his comments on whether he thinks I might be on the right track.

(I can do a nice job of soldering the most impossible to reach brace on a tuba, but I don't have any experience soldering in capacitors, transistors, resistors, or the like.)

... Hey, I got the casters replaced, so that's at least something.

@tadawson

[tubatodd]

@bloke dumb question, but is the 60-cycle hum at all times (ie bass plugged in or not)? Have you tried changing power cables? Is the outlet properly grounded? (Probably is) Are your jazz bass knobs all the way up? Single coil pickups, like on your jazz bass, WILL have a hum when soloed. It is when they are run together the hum is cancelled. Do you know if the grounding in your bass is sufficient? These are all of the basic things I'd ask myself if this were happening to me.

[tadawson]

The relatively large Peavey amp is sporting a small amount of 60 cycle hum. I would rate it as tolerable, but I'm not a very tolerant person. I don't like my tubas making any noise and I really don't like this (albeit in the background) noise. I've said before that I don't claim to be able to hear the grass grow, but what I'm playing through this amp and the 60 cycle sharp B flat is resonating with other pitches (even though the sharp B flat is sort of pianissimo), they just don't go too well together.

Probably the most annoying ignorant person is someone who looks up stuff with a search engine, drops into chat rooms, and then considers themselves to be an expert because they quote stuff that other people said about this or that.

I try not to be that guy, but consistently people are telling each other that the capacitors ("filter caps") where the AC current from the wall is being converted to DC are probably worn, those are usually responsible for eliminating 60 cycle hum, and when they went ahead and replaced those - actually on my specific amplifier (which is thirty years old) - they got rid of the hum.

I'm either going to have a friend of mine (who is versed in electronics but not specifically in amplifiers) replace those capacitors, or I'm going to talk to a guy in a shop in the small town nearby and ask him what he would charge to replace them (with me demanding absolutely no guarantee of success).

These amplifiers don't seem to have really strong resale value, but I like the thing, and I like the sound of the legacy highly touted "Black Widow" 15-in speaker which it features... And it's got a pretty good bit of power at 150W.

LOL... Sadly, this one's way too big and way too heavy to ship to our tubaforum friend up in Michigan, but - if he sees this - I wouldn't mind a note with his comments on whether he thinks I might be on the right track.

(I can do a nice job of soldering the most impossible to reach brace on a tuba, but I don't have any experience soldering in capacitors, transistors, resistors, or the like.)

... Hey, I got the casters replaced, so that's at least something.

@tadawson

I agree with @tubatodd . . . if it hums with no instrument, it may well benefit from a recap. IIRC, you play a Jazz, and those single coil pickups will pull in hum from anywhere (and I swear make thier own if there is no source in the room . . . ) In any case, not sure how big/heavy the actual amp chassis is in this one, but that would ship cheaper/lighter/harder to break . . . ) As an alternative, still looking at logistics of getting my 186 to you this spring . . . If the timing requires two trips, well, this amp could travel then as well, if the timing works.

Kind of depends on the part quality and use history of the amp, though . . . . I've got stuff from the late 1960's that's working fine, and mid 80's stuff that has had catastrophic cap failure. YMMV . . . but a lot of instrument amps do get pretty beat down . . .

Oh, and if you have it recapped locally, make sure to get parts from a reputable source like Mouser, and not offshore crap from eBay, etc. - a lot of that stuff is bad from the get-go.

(Hint on electronic soldering: *No* torches or paste flux! :-) :-) ).

[bloke]

I asked a friend who I suspected has experience with replacing capacitors, transistors and resistors on transistor powered equipment. He absolutely does and feels confident that he can easily replace those filter caps.

He tells me that he's replaced a lot of them and can often look at them and tell whether they're good or bad, because he says fairly often they swell up from being overheated or failing (but he also says not always).

This guy has an incredible spectrum of remarkably high skill sets, including teeth implant skills, which is probably the last thing he did before he retired, though he still does some of it.

...so this concrete-weighing behemoth is already over at his house and he's the type of person that I'm going to have to be insistent on paying him...
... but I've already grabbed something of his to barter with, which is one of those incredibly thick (speaking of heavy) Taylor trumpets. It has three small dents that I'm going to remove so he can put it up for sale.

He says that caps are easy to replace, and I say the dents in the Taylor trumpet are easy to remove, so it sounds like a deal to me.

Now: Let's just hope that the capacitors replacement does the trick.

This 73 or so jazz bass:

Since it was new, anytime I turned the two pickup knobs to different positions, it created a slight hum, but as long as I keep them in the same position (whether nearly all the way down or all the way up) there is no hum, and this is consistent across the board regardless of the amplification equipment.
I'm fine with changing the sonority spectrum on the amplification equipment -:rather than on the guitar itself, because that's what I've always had to do with these pickups...and I just don't want to junk up this bass with any aftermarket pickups, regardless of how super cool and en vogue those pickups may be.

(Without the new casters, it sure would have been a good trick to get it out to my car and then into his house.)

Hey, I treasure you guys and your input.

[tadawson]

Sounds good. A lot that fail are not visibly detectable . . . I figure if I'm doing the work to do one, might as well do all of them wile I am there. Keepa it from biting you on the a$$, as it were, at a gig if another old one dies.

(The high end 1980's tuner I just reworked, well I changed about 45 electrolytic caps . . . 2 hard fails (shorted) and 20 or 30 way out of tolerance . . .).
(There will be a heck of a lot lessmin an amp!)

(And you haven't see heavy unless you have owned a Mesa Bass 400+ with two 15" EV cabs. 400 watt *tube* amp . . . insane sound *and* insane weight! Bought it "hurt" and restored it 15 years or so ago . . . )

I ended up shielding a similar vintage Jazz for the bass player at the big Dallas church I was engineer for. The power wiring in there brought outnthe worst in just about anything with regard to hum. And yeah, running both pickups in a Jazz will basically humbuck between the pickups (they are out of phase with each other), but it leave a lot of the tonal versatility of a Jazz behind . . .