Peavey Delta Blues help..

[TS808]

I picked up a used Delta Blues 210 some months ago and had it retubed with the tube kit from Eurotubes (JJ tubes).

I love the amp, but sometimes struggle to get a good tone from the overdrive channel. With the gain set at 7 or above, it gets pretty gritty and pretty heavy on the midrange (I don't use the midrange boost).

I'll turn the gain down, turn the treble up and lower the mids a bit, and then the tone gets a little "ice picky" with my strat bridge pup.

Just wondering what settings seem to work best with this amp, and also, has anyone tried different preamp tubes such as a 12AT7? Just wondering how to tame that gritty distortion. The other option of course is to use pedals, but sometimes I just like to plug straight in.

 

[tunghaichuan]

I've never played one, but did take a look at the schematic. The EL84 is a bright tube, sometimes too much so. Also, if the amp has 2x10" speakers, that is also going to contribute to the the icepick factor.

You might try a lower gain tube in the first position, either a 12AY7 or a 5751. You could try a 12AT7 if you have any, but the circuit isn't really optimized to use it. Ditto with 12AU7.

Finally, the OT may be contributing to the icepick. It is hard to say without actually seeing it and swapping it out for another, but that is an extreme fix for that amp.

Finally, the Delta Blues uses an identical circuit as the Classic 30, so if you Google mods for either you might get som practical advice:

Here's one site with info:

http://www.blueshawk.info/peavey_delta_blues_15.htm

At the bottom is a link to a mods file by Steve Ahola who has done extensive mods to the Classic 30. It's worth downloading and taking a look.

HTH,

tung

I picked up a used Delta Blues 210 some months ago and had it retubed with the tube kit from Eurotubes (JJ tubes).

I love the amp, but sometimes struggle to get a good tone from the overdrive channel. With the gain set at 7 or above, it gets pretty gritty and pretty heavy on the midrange (I don't use the midrange boost).

I'll turn the gain down, turn the treble up and lower the mids a bit, and then the tone gets a little "ice picky" with my strat bridge pup.

Just wondering what settings seem to work best with this amp, and also, has anyone tried different preamp tubes such as a 12AT7? Just wondering how to tame that gritty distortion. The other option of course is to use pedals, but sometimes I just like to plug straight in.

 

[Spudman]

I have a Delta. You wont get a very distorted sound from the gain channel on that amph. It's an amp that is designed to be turned up and played sort of loud. It works great but even then when you have the clean channel at break up and switch to the gain channel you aren't going to notice a lot of difference. It just gets smoother.

If you are looking for metal type distortion then you need to put a heavy distortion pedal in front of the clean channel or just get used to having more tone than gain. That is what the Delta excels at.

 

[duhvoodooman]

This is the usual knock I see on both the Peavey Classic series & the Delta Blues--great clean tone, mediocre overdrive/distortion sounds. I had a DB for a while and loved it (only sold it because 30W was too much amp for my modest home-playing needs), but I pretty much left it set up clean all the time and used pedals for various shades of distortion. I found that it took pedals very well. And that was before I had a zillion of 'em!

P.S. And the guy who bought my DB just posted two minutes before me. Fortunately, our comments agree completely!

 

[Algonquin]

I'm not sure the Peavey's excel at both gain and clean with the same set of tubes. I was fairly happy with the gain channel with the original set of tubes, but it didn't have the clean headroom I wanted. My set now gives me much more clean tone at higher volumes, but the trade off was the gain channel. Maybe there's a work around... but I just go with a drive or distortion box now.

Cheers :beer:

 

[TS808]

You might try a lower gain tube in the first position, either a 12AY7 or a 5751. You could try a 12AT7 if you have any, but the circuit isn't really optimized to use it. Ditto with 12AU7.

I was browsing the web today and saw quite a few posts on different sites about replacing V2 with a 12DW7. I went to the Eurotubes site and saw that in their "blues upgrade" it includes a 12DW7 in V2.

Supposedly, the 12DW7 smooths out the distortion and takes a way some of that gritty, edginess. I ordered a couple to give it a try in V2. What I want is a smoother distortion than what is on there now. I'm not looking for high gain tones; I want the kind of overdriven sound sort of like on the Blackheart Handsome Devil or say a Blues Deluxe.

I'm finding too that the EQ is a bit fussy on the DB. Even with 2 10" speakers you can get some pretty deep mids, so I have the bass on 3, mids on 6, and treble on 7 right now, with the drive at 6 (the knobs go to 12) and turning down the bass, rolling back on the mids, and rolling back the gain seems to do the trick. It is a fussy EQ on there (my opinion anyway). You really don't notice drastic changes on the EQ with tweaks...more subtle than other amps I've played.

 

[TS808]

You might try a lower gain tube in the first position, either a 12AY7 or a 5751. You could try a 12AT7 if you have any, but the circuit isn't really optimized to use it. Ditto with 12AU7.

I went with a 12DW7 in V2 as in the "Blues Kit" that Eurotubes sells. It made QUITE a difference. The overdrive is not as gritty and is alot smoother now; kind of like what I find on my Blackheart Handsome Devil. It really tamed down the mids and even with the drive on 8, the distortion is not buzzy and gritty.
Also it seems to manage the volume better too....I had pre-gain at 8 and the post at 4 in my basement, and it didn't rattle the windows. Sounded really sweet.

The 12DW7 didn't affect the cleans at all.

I also saw that the 12DW7 is used alot in the Hot Rod Deluxe to tame the overdrive channel on that.

 

[Spudman]

I went with a 12DW7 in V2 as in the "Blues Kit" that Eurotubes sells. It made QUITE a difference. The overdrive is not as gritty and is alot smoother now; kind of like what I find on my Blackheart Handsome Devil. It really tamed down the mids and even with the drive on 8, the distortion is not buzzy and gritty.
Also it seems to manage the volume better too....I had pre-gain at 8 and the post at 4 in my basement, and it didn't rattle the windows. Sounded really sweet.

The 12DW7 didn't affect the cleans at all.

I also saw that the 12DW7 is used alot in the Hot Rod Deluxe to tame the overdrive channel on that.

Good to know. Thanks for the tip.:beer:

 

[tunghaichuan]

I went with a 12DW7 in V2 as in the "Blues Kit" that Eurotubes sells. It made QUITE a difference. The overdrive is not as gritty and is alot smoother now; kind of like what I find on my Blackheart Handsome Devil. It really tamed down the mids and even with the drive on 8, the distortion is not buzzy and gritty.
Also it seems to manage the volume better too....I had pre-gain at 8 and the post at 4 in my basement, and it didn't rattle the windows. Sounded really sweet.

The 12DW7 didn't affect the cleans at all.

I also saw that the 12DW7 is used alot in the Hot Rod Deluxe to tame the overdrive channel on that.

On the technical side, the 12DW7 contains one triode with identical characteristics to a 12AX7 and the other with characteristics identical to the 12AU7. So it's like half of a 12AX7 and half of a 12AU7 in the same bottle.

IIRC, NOS 12DW7s have the first triode with 12AX7 characteristics and the second with 12AU7. JJ 12DW7s have this reversed, although you can special order the tube with triode sections reversed so it will work in sockets wired for NOS tubes.

tung