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5150 II / 6505+ Mods

MODS for 5150 II / 6505+

11 months ago
tagged:
peavey
amps
5150

These are my combined mods for the II/+ version. The lead channel is the same as the rst 5150/6505
except for three capacitors and a resistor. The clean channel is completely different, using a separate
12AX7 rather than swapping out circuit values inside the same gain structure.

mods

Disclaimer: DO THESE MODIFICATIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK. YOU SHOULD KNOW HOW TO
WORK SAFELY ON HIGH-VOLTAGE CIRCUITS BEFORE ATTEMPTING THESE. I will NOT
provide support for DIYers doing these mods, so please do not ask. I developed them myself

(they are not aNever

knockoff
missofaVoodoo
post! or FJA, which I have never heard nor seen in person), and
Im posting them for informational purposes. If you need help, I can do these mods for you
atomiumamps
affordably.
Follow
Electronic States
Supply & power stage

Add a choke. I use a 10H/200mA (Hammond 193J, though its obnoxiously large Mercury
makes a smaller one). Replace R210 with the choke.
Move the standby switch. Short position S1, cut one of the PT B+ secondary legs and insert the
standby there (wire that connects to F1).
Replace screen resistors with 1K/5W.
Change R68 to 5.6K to get a better bias range.
Input stage
Short R27 and C15. The Soldano SLO100 and high-gain Marshalls just use a 68k grid stop and
dont worry about the rest.
Increase R2 to 220K
Lead channel
In the 5150, C17 is a 2n2 cap and 470K resistor in parallel. In the 5150II, its a 470pf cap. The
former is the SLO100 value, and gives you more bass and thicker voicing. The latter gives you a
tight klank sound on palm mutes and more nasal snarl. I have both options mounted to a
switch. The switch has a 8.2M resistor across it to eliminate popping.
Increase C2 to .022uF, which is the 5150/SLO100 value. The loss of bass from using .001uF
here is frustrating. Just the 470pf caps highpass in the previous stage is plenty 'tight for death
metal etc.
Change R4 to a carbon comp for sweetness. No noise penalty because the signal is knocked
down 10:1 immediately after the stage.
Change R93 to 2K. Biases the EQ driver a little hotter.
Change R94 to 47K or 68K (I like 68K). Increases mid presence and thickness, moves lead tone
toward SLO 'vocal quality with a lot less scoop and boom.
Add 500pf-1.5nF cap in parallel with R94. Cuts zz. I like 1nF here, because in combination with
68K at R94, it keeps a lot of the 'snarl treble but dumps most of the zz without making the
sound dull. Makes the amp feel clearer and less mushy on the lead attack, though this is an

illusion in some ways.

C14 is 470pf in the 5150II and SLO. The earlier 5150 adds a 100pf cap in parallel with it for
570pf total. I like it at 470pf.
Clean channel
C27 is a mid/treble bleed cap on the gain pot. Its responsible for the horrible boxy sound of this
channel at lower gain settings. Cut it out, or replace it with a 100pf-1nf cap for brightness. I like
100pf.
Replace R154 with 1M if you do the above. This will restore most of the gain you lose from
cutting C27.
If the above mods cause the clean sound to be too clean and quiet relative to the crunch sound,
change: R23 to 10K, C63 to .047uF, and R174 to 33K. This will give you about 4dB more gain
in clean mode without affecting the crunch mode. I found this made switching between the two
feel much more natural after the above mods.
If you want more bass punch in the clean (but not crunch), cut out R174 entirely. This gets the
clean into Fenderish territory with real 'V-shape prior to the gainstage.
For tighter crunch (but not clean) sound, lower C13 to .001uF. This is not as huge a change as
you might think, but makes the crunch more Marshall-y. Only do this if youve removed or
drastically lowered C27.
Replace R150 and R170 with carbon comps if desired. No noise penalty because lots of signal
is thrown away immediately before the EQ.
Change R158 and R155 to 2K. Biases both triodes slightly hotter.
Increase C166 to 10uF for full-range bass.
'Bright mode is actually the normal tone stack sound; when you turn it off, treble is being
dumped before the EQ. I found that changing R75 to 47k and R159 to 10M made the nonbright sound much less mufed, but still different from bright and useful.
To cut some zz from the crunch (but not clean) sound, add an 820pf or 1nF cap in parallel with
R157. I like 820pf, which is pretty subtle.
Remove C150 to get tone stack to standard Marshall values.

FX loop & phase inverter

Change R5 for carbon comp if desired. Doesnt audibly increase noise. Notice this stage is
AFTER the master volumes and there was no audible hiss from the speakers in a quiet room.
Remove C158. This is a treble boost at 10k on the FX recovery stage. Not needed and
contributes to zziness.
R46 and R58 were carbon lm in my amp. I replaced them with metal lm for temperature
stability and because Im anal.
Add a 47pf cap between pins 1 and 6 of V4. This is in the SLO and most Marshalls.
You can short R48 if you want, to get the SLO value. The SLO does not have a grid stop on the
phase inverter input (and neither do most Marshalls). Or lower it to 10K. I left it alone.
Link to schematics here.
A word about the presence/resonance circuits
Presence and resonance are frequency-selective controls that, when turned up, reduce negative
feedback around the power stage. When NFB is reduced at one frequency relative to another, gain
increases at that frequency, along with output impedance (meaning less control over the speakers
motion). Both controls at zero produces roughly at frequency response and maximum 'tightness.
Turning them both up produces a 'V EQ curve in the power stage with less ability to dampen the
speakers motion.
The ranges of the two controls are nearly continuous, that is, the presence control rolls in not too far
above where the resonance rolls out. I didnt like this because it seemed to swamp the tone stack
settings; the resonance was boomy and the presence was quacky. I opted to move the ranges further
apart.
You can lower the corner frequency of the resonance controls by increasing C12 (clean) and C60
(lead). Try 8.2nF or 10nF. I used 10nF since that moved the corner nearly an octave lower. The

resonance is now useful for compensating for cabinet rolloff making a 2x12 sound more like a 4x12.
The presence range is determined by parallel combinations of C8/C62 (clean) and C161/C162 (lead).
These combos are .1uF+.033uF, yielding .133uF total. I like just .1uF, but you can alter it in either
direction. .1uF or maybe 82nF seems to be more useful for compensating for dark speakers to get
more articulation and cut, without bumping the mids as much. Given that I had already modded the
amp to have more vocal mids and less treble, .1uF works better than stock.
Many people also notice that the resonance controls range is smooth, while the presence control
seems to 'wake up only in the last 3rd of its rotation. This is because both pots are audio taper, but
are working in opposite directions resonance is a series resistance, presence is a shunt to ground.
The presence pot should be linear or reverse-audio. I replaced my presence pots with 10K reverseaudio, and their range became much more useful.
A word about the FX loop
There is a huge amount of misinformation out there about the FX loop. It is NOT parallel, it is a
SERIES LOOP. Yes there is some crosstalk around it when the amp is at bedroom level, but it is
negligible at recording/stage volume. Remember that the master volume comes before the loop, so the
loop is always at max into the power stage. Theres a little bit of capacitive coupling around the MV,
which is amplied by the loops return, even if your outboard gear is muted. It will never get louder than
a whisper; its not worth worrying about.
The loop is NOT passive like many internet forumites claim; it IS tube-buffered. V3B is an ACcoupled cathode follower, which provides a buffered, low-impedance output for the send. V3A is a
recovery stage with a gain of ~15. The confusion arises because V3B/V3A are ALWAYS ON and IN
CIRCUIT, what is being switched is the jacks. If you have a footswitch, it is controlling a relay that
simply hard-bypasses the output of V3Bs CF straight to the input of V3As gain stage. If you dont, the
signal is always routed to the FX jacks, through their switching contacts, again, straight from V3B to
V3A.

Both channels knock the signal level down about 10:1 before their EQ networks, so the CF buffer is
never overdriven. The buffered output is guitar level (-10dBV nominal) for pedals, NOT line level for rack
gear. Because the loop level is so low, it is highly susceptible to noise. Use the shortest/best cables
you can, and do NOT sit your effects on top of the amp where they can pick up hum from the power
transformer. The other thing is that the grounds of your patch cables form a ground loop from send to
return, which picks up hum and buzz. Keep the send and return cables as physically close to each
other as possible, to minimize the area of the loop. You can also use a special cable for the send with
the ground disconnected at one end.
The CF buffer output has a 2nd-order (2-pole) highpass lter with a corner frequency of about 10Hz.
For some reason, certain New Sensor-made tubes appear to have trouble with this, and lose bass
response when external effects are patched into the loop (although theyre ne with external effects
disconnected). If the external load is heavy (<100K), the corner frequency of the lter shifts, which may
or may not be audible.
The recovery stage gets the signal level from guitar level back up to line level to drive the phase inverter.
This triode is not intended to be overdriven, and does not sound good when it is. The preamp-out jack
on the back of the amp is actually taken AFTER the recovery stage, so it is nominally line level.
However, it has a high output impedance (on the order of 150K) so you need a DI box/buffer if its
going into a low-Z input.
12AU7 conversion:
Using a 12AU7 for the loop wont hurt anything (and MAY help with driving low-Z effects), but it WILL
change the sound of the amp because it affects supply voltage throughout the preamp. 12AU7s draw
about 3-5x the current of a 12AX7 at the same circuit values, so you lose about 74V from the B+ when
you plug one in. If you actually need to drive inputs that require this kind of current, then you can use
47K/1W load resistors and 2.2K bias resistors for both the send and return stages, and fully bypass
the return cathode by changing C159 to a 22uF. This will get you a lower output impedance for both
stages in the loop (better noise rejection), lots more current capacity on the send, more headroom,
more transparency, and precisely the same recovery gain as the original 12AX7 setup. I left C159 out in

my amp with a 12AU7 (about -5dB relative to stock 12AX7), because I didnt need all of the recovery
gain. To keep the rest of the amp sounding the same, replace R60 with a 10K/5W to get supply
voltages back up to where they were before. Raise C53 and C65 to 1uF/400V lm caps to keep the
low end intact for really heavy loads.
A word about tubes
Beyond not using a New Sensor 12AX7 in V3 (FX loop), I tried lots of different tubes in the amp.
For power tubes, JJ 6L6GCs performed the best in terms of power. They put out 110W before
clipping. Ruby 6L6s did 95W before clipping, Sovtek 5881s did 90W, and EH/Sovtek 6L6s did 100W. I
found the tone to be indistinguishable among power tube types at any reasonable volume, though I
had already controlled for the fact that they bias slightly differently.
For preamp tubes, I like the JJ ECC83S best across the board. I tried the JJ 803S in the clean channel
and in V1, and was not impressed. It was nasal and spitty-sounding by comparison. EH/Sovteks
sounded zzy and were noisier than the short-plate JJs. Tung-Sols (made by Sovtek) had a nice bite to
them but very squishy bass response. Several of them hummed in the amp.
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I repair, modify, and custom-build musical instrument electronics, particularly tube amps and effects units for guitar and

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