One reason I would like to find a way to eliminate feed back is so I can crank my amp up just to be able to experiment with all its possibilities. When I spoke with the Peavy tech people and I told them I wanted to find a way to crank my master volume up to 10 and my individual volume controls up to 10, they said, "if you buy a car and the speedometer goes up to 120 does that mean you are going to try to go that fast?" I said yeah. they said O.
Anyway, I have a Peavy Ultra 410, (60W, 4 10" speakers, 3 separate channels) and I think it's the cat's meow. I tried the following to get more volume and/or the ability to turn up the controls to overdrive the amp without earsplitting volume: 1) Power Attenuator: I really liked this (I had an old one) and was getting some good overdrive but when I cranked the amp to FULL POWER I blew a fuse (the amp was only a day or so old and I nearly died). I have been told that power attenuators will push your tubes and they will burn out faster I can deal with that if the tone is worth it. More importantly I have been told that damage caused by using one is not covered under the warrenty, and some people have said that they will burn out your amp. A dealer I was talking to said that this should not be the case. Another dealer said that it probably was because the attenuator I had was an older model and that the new model he had for sale for about $150 would not do that. Who knows? (if you do please post). Anyway now I am very nervous about trying one again: It sure was great sound when I used it, and I would like to use it again--if I knew I wouldn't blow up my amp.
2) An adjustable noise gate: I did not really like this. Although it helped me get a louder volume, still on the higher levels, where I really wanted to go, the sound would cut out, I suppose because the feed back at these levels was so high it would kick on automatically.
3) I have an old stomp box graphic equalizer with volume control. The problem, if I set it manually to knock out the frequencies I am feeding back on, the richness of my sound is diminished. What I do like to do sometimes is leave the GQ settings on normal but crank the GQ volume to max, this gives a nice tone to the clean channel. The GQ also gives you more tonal controls if you want to go for more bass etc. I like this toy.
4) I have not tried this yet, but I have heard if you pull one of the power tubes the amp will overdrive i.e at lower volumes. Is this true? Is this safe?
5) Also heard and not tried: running more speakers through the amp and/or running the amp at a lower impedance; my amp can handle 4,8,and 16 ohm loads and has a jack for external speakers. Is this true? Is this safe?
6) I have read some other posts about customizing amps (the the bassman RI thread) and plan to try different tube configurations in the future. is a bias pot necessary to do this, and is this amp mod worthwhile on a new amp or is it only needed on older models?
At this point, I am really happy with my amp and find a multitude of tonal variations to play with. I put it side to side with the new Blues Deville (60W 4 10" speakers) and close in price and bought the Ultra.
Russ Gray
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