Extreme Peavey RAGE mod!

  • Thread starter Thread starter mshilarious
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ocnor said:
Dark sounding is an under statement. Peavey amps are very muddy sounding to begin with so it was pretty much like trying to polish a turd. It looks really good though.;) The mod itself is very cool and it would be interesting to hear how it sounds in a half way decent amp.
Click to expand...

Well I don't think I can blame the amp itself, because a very large number of the components at this point are my design. Nearly every capacitor was replaced, for example, as was the opamp. The power amp is a decent quality part. Therefore it must be an issue with my design.

Even if it is dark right now, I don't think the clean channel is muddy--remember this is a Gibson with a wound 3rd string and oldish strings too. The tube stage, however, is losing highs somewhere. I will figure out where.
 
The $5 Peavey RAGE! mod

As promised, here is the non-extreme version.

A link to the schematic:

http://natcade.tripod.com/schems/Peavey/rage158.gif

That doesn't show the layout, PM me and I'll email you the pdf.

Mod as follows:

R2: 470K
C8: 10pF ceramic

increases the input impedance and moves the RF filtration farther away from audio--stock was a bit close for comfort.

R9: 15K

reduces clean channel gain, makes the upper ranges of the knob useable.

R15: 1K

reduces lead channel gain by a factor of 10 (20dB). Yeah, that sounds like a lot, but the channel is designed to provide such a ridiculous amount of gain that it should restore some linearity to the supersat control.

CR3-6: change to LEDs. I think LED distortion is groovy, plus that increases the max post level off the lead channel slightly. If you don't like it, it will only cost $0.50 to restore the 1N4148s. Be sure to mind the polarity when you install!

C12-14,16,21,40-42: change to poly film of stock value. These are all ceramic in the stock EQ section.

All those parts should be available at your local Radio Shack. If you buy their bag of assorted LEDs for $2.59, there will be at least four little rectangle LEDs which are perfect for this circuit, although if you are cool, use a round LED for one of them and route that through the front panel, then you have a clip meter :cool: Then you still have 16 LEDs left to play with!

Be careful about using higher voltage LEDs like the blue or white ones, they will clip the signal at a much higher level, and that will let more voltage through to the power amp stage. That could be a good or bad thing, I don't know. Stick with the little greens and reds if you don't want to experiment.


That's it! If you want to spend a little more, you could try upgrading the opamp to practically anything you like, I used OPA2134 which is $2 or so.

If you really want to get spendy, the Eminence 875 is around $50.
 
Today I finished rewiring the pickup on the So-Cal :cool: I think the So-Cal is gonna be a better match for the RAGE! than my The Paul. I'm not 100% happy with the wiring on the So-Cal yet though. When I hand-wound the pickups so I could get four-wire leads for switching, I was only able to get 5K ohms out of both coils in series. Thus my idea for a series/parallel switch quickly seemed like a bad one. Instead I figured, hey I've got single-coil resistance out of a humbucker. That's actually a groovy idea. Since I already have a bright sound, I simply made the pull pot a tone switch, but I don't like the value I picked, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Also tomorrow I'm going to investigate the high frequency loss in the RAGE! After thinking about it, I'm nearly certain it's gotta be C39. Also I'm going to try to improve the reverb noise problem.

Here's a picture of the pair, the Extreme Peavey RAGE! and the Fender So-Cal featuring Brian Wilson Presents Smile :) :cool:


Edit: after playing around with both guitars, I eventually discovered that my Gibson has a very hot bridge pickup, I measured it at 12.7K ohms :eek: I don't know why I never noticed that in six years of owning it, but I never really compared it with anything. I just thought that kind of thing was more of a shredder guitar type pickup :confused:

Anyway, I believe that further explains the amp's darkness. After playing the the So-Cal for a while, I removed the pickup cover, which made it a little brighter (in case you ever wondered if pickup covers actually make a difference, I have scientifically proven that pickups are brighter without them). I'm digging this bright humbucker sound. I think I'm going to change from a treble cut tone switch to a bass cut tone switch on the So-Cal though, maybe then I can get those even brighter Tele-type lead sounds.

I did an FFT of the two guitars through the clean channel, and then the So-Cal pre and post pickup cover. The Gibson pretty much stops at 6kHz, while the coverless So-Cal goes up to about 9kHz, which is probably where the speaker is cutting off.

Second Edit: I just removed C39 and tried a different tube. Wow, what a difference. It had to be C39, because not only is the tube sound much brighter and more balanced, but the reverb is quieter too :)

The good news is there is no cap corresponding to C39 in my pedal designs. I'm gonna post more audio samples tonight, with the So-Cal and the Gibson. It is sounding sweeeeeeet right now.
 
Last edited:
mshilarious said:
Sorry for the delay. I have more pictures, a final schematic, and audio samples, I will post all late tonight. Also I have lots of ideas on simpler mods that could be done to the RAGE! if anybody out there is interested, I'll organize my thoughts and post those tonight too.

Here's a pic of the final assembly to tide you over until then:
Click to expand...

I for one would be very interested, I picked 2 of these little buggers up at a pawn shop last week for $65 for the pair. They are the USA made with the silver not the red. Not had a chance to clean them up yet though.
 
i used to have a rage 150 many many years ago lol....cool nice work man !
 
JazzMasterWil said:
That amp project is looking fun :D I've been dying to build one of thoose ax84 amps forever...
Click to expand...

I am not sure what an "AX84 amp" is- an amp that uses 12AX7 and EL84 tubes?

If that is the case, I would have to say that it's been done- by Peavey. (Re)presenting...

The Peavey Bravo112. a trio of 12AX7's and a pair of EL84's. Tubes are even mounted horizontally, in their own little vented box, so they don't hang down and risk getting knocked off their perches. Tone is sweet, too.

Not to take anything away from your project, MS, just sayin'... the pre-amp circuit from the Bravo110's schematic might be a good resource for you.
 
KYHighlander said:
I for one would be very interested, I picked 2 of these little buggers up at a pawn shop last week for $65 for the pair. They are the USA made with the silver not the red. Not had a chance to clean them up yet though.
Click to expand...

I did that in post #62, read higher a bit. These days I am into asymmetrical clipping, so LEDs only on one side.

As for the good ol' RAGE, well one year the monkey got the tube and yanked it around in the socket, and the tube stage went kaput. I haven't had time to fix it. My latest amp idea is a "full-plate" MOSFET variable class A/AB with output transformer. So stay tuned for that this summer.

I will built that into the RAGE chassis :cool:
 
mshilarious said:
As promised, here is the non-extreme version.

A link to the schematic:

(dead link)

That doesn't show the layout, PM me and I'll email you the pdf.

Mod as follows:

R2: 470K
C8: 10pF ceramic

increases the input impedance and moves the RF filtration farther away from audio--stock was a bit close for comfort.

R9: 15K

reduces clean channel gain, makes the upper ranges of the knob useable.

R15: 1K

reduces lead channel gain by a factor of 10 (20dB). Yeah, that sounds like a lot, but the channel is designed to provide such a ridiculous amount of gain that it should restore some linearity to the supersat control.

CR3-6: change to LEDs. I think LED distortion is groovy, plus that increases the max post level off the lead channel slightly. If you don't like it, it will only cost $0.50 to restore the 1N4148s. Be sure to mind the polarity when you install!

C12-14,16,21,40-42: change to poly film of stock value. These are all ceramic in the stock EQ section.

All those parts should be available at your local Radio Shack. If you buy their bag of assorted LEDs for $2.59, there will be at least four little rectangle LEDs which are perfect for this circuit, although if you are cool, use a round LED for one of them and route that through the front panel, then you have a clip meter :cool: Then you still have 16 LEDs left to play with!

Be careful about using higher voltage LEDs like the blue or white ones, they will clip the signal at a much higher level, and that will let more voltage through to the power amp stage. That could be a good or bad thing, I don't know. Stick with the little greens and reds if you don't want to experiment.


That's it! If you want to spend a little more, you could try upgrading the opamp to practically anything you like, I used OPA2134 which is $2 or so.

If you really want to get spendy, the Eminence 875 is around $50.
Click to expand...

I know this is a very old thread, so forgive me for bumping it.

I found this writeup about a year ago and saved the link on my desktop, and have finally gotten around to wanting to do this. However, all the links and pics are dead now. I joined the forum just to contact Mshilarious for more info, but he does not receive PMs anymore. Does anyone have information on how to go on with this mod?

I have the Rage 158 (transtube series) and its twin, the Blazer 158 lying around. In the Blazer, I have resoldered the loose connections on the board and upgraded the speaker to a Jensen C8R. Now I'm looking to spice up the Rage.

I have never done anything this intricate before! Does anyone have the schematics for these lying around? Thanks for any help here, guys.

tyler5619
 
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