I turned my Peavey Windsor into a bass amp using a Metro Bass board

[Nitro Express]

I picked up a Peavey Windsor on the cheap but found myself never using it. For the money these are nicely built amps but the preamp tone sounds like a Marshall JCM 800 that has been hotrodded to rediculouse preportions and you can't use the volume knob on your guitar to clean the drive up which I hated.

One night I was bored and just tore into the thing and when I noticed the presence and resonance used jumpers to the power amp board and that was a self contained unite I figured I could bypass the whole preamp using a Metropolos Super Bass board and then I still could use the Peavey Resonance, Presence, controls to control the high and low frequencies of the speakers.

I drilled new holes and taped them for the Metro board in the cassis an used jumpers to connect into the Peavey power amp board. I had to completely redo the power supply circuit but I used the Peavey transformer but I added a choke.

It all worked fine when I fired it up and it sounds cool as a bass amp. Old school and the presence and ressonace controls help you shape your tone more. I tossed the Class A to Class A/B control. I never liked it much.

Not counting my time and tools I probably did this mod for $180. Not bad. I got the amp for $280 so that gives me a 100 watt EL-34 powered bass head for $460! It drives my Avatar 4x10 cab just fine and it's surprisingly loud!

It's a fun and inexpensive mod. With a good peddle it still works for guitar. LOL!

[BrownSound1]

You need to take some pics of your mod, I'd love to see it.

[Nitro Express]

Yeah I'll have to post what I did. The power amp section of these amps rock, it's the preamps that suck. You can actuall run any preamp you want into the effects return jack and throttle the EL-34's.

The transformers on these amps are good ones. One person I know spent the bucks for a Mercury Magnetics and ended up putting the original Windsor transformer back in because it sounded better.

There's a lot of room in the chassis and it's heavey guage steel. No reason you couldn't put in any preamp board you wanted. I did it the cheap way by using the existing preamp tube sockets and then just eliminating the traces and jumping them to the Metro board with high voltage teflon coated wire. I always can add ceramic holders later but I was doing this mod on the cheap.

[BrownSound1]

Nothing wrong with doing it cheap. Was the original board a bunch of surface mount shit, or was it at least thru-hole?

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by BrownSound1
Nothing wrong with doing it cheap. Was the original board a bunch of surface mount shit, or was it at least thru-hole?

Through hole on an old style fiberglass circuit board. Lot's of room between the traces and nice big traces too. Actually the power supply filters and bias adjustment and preamp are on one circuit board and the Power amp is on a completely sepparate board. The tube sockets are even ceramic but they are the type that direct connects to the circuit board. The jumpers are like you see used in computers. Those plastic plugs. The two circuit boards are jumpered together with ribbon wire like a PC and two of the front controls are jumpered with higher voltage wire.

I have found these little plugs to be problematic though on this amp and on my Golden Tube Audio amp. They move and get a bad connection. One side of my Golden Tube Audio amp would run the heaters in the tubes and just wiggling the jumper connections fixed the problem. So if you have a problem in a modern tube amp, those quick connect plugs seem to be a problem. They make assembley and repair nice but you can't beat a soldered connection.

[ELVIS]

"rediculouse preportions" ??


:D

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by ELVIS
"rediculouse preportions" ??


:D

Exactly. They took the sound of a good JCM 800 and over wanked it to buzzsawland.

[cdwillis]

Sounds cool. I have a peavey ultra head thats sort like that. The overdrive is just insane and you can't clean up with the volume knob so I'm running straight to my POD XT to the return of the effects loop for a van halen type tone.

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by cdwillis
Sounds cool. I have a peavey ultra head thats sort like that. The overdrive is just insane and you can't clean up with the volume knob so I'm running straight to my POD XT to the return of the effects loop for a van halen type tone.

I hate how Peavey voices it's preamps. The only good one are either the 5150 II or the SJX. They seem to built a well built amp for the money and I like how they put the power amp and preamp on sepparate boards. You could put a Metropaulos plexi board in the thing. It's a matter of cutting traces and jumping traces to the new board which means you need to know the layout and schematic of the amp. Peavey seems to use good transformers. I just put in more of a traditional power supply than to try and rewire the original one on the board. I just cut it off and bypassed it.