Cool trick with a Peavey 5150

[fillmore nyc]

In the owners manual for the 5150, it says that if you plug two guitars into the amp (using both the low and high inputs) BOTH guitars will act as if they are plugged into the "low" input. What they DONT tell you is that if you are plugging in just one guitar, assumedly into the high gain input, and you plug a guitar cable into the low input connected to a simple on/off footswitch, the footswitch will toggle the guitar between the low and high inputs. I discovered this by accident, and called the engineering dept @ Peavey, who seemed as suprised as I was, but they said that this is totally safe for the amp. It is a great, usable extra gain stage, as the inputs are not radically different in their levels. Just enough, not too much. Makes it a 4 gain stage amp. Cool stuff for small coin!!

[JD]

Cool post.

[the_haunted]

hmm, it says the same thing in the rockmaster preamp manual, which is the same preamp as xxx, and a few others (jsx?) I bet this trick would work on them too.

I think what you are actually doing is reducing the input by shorting the input to ground through a 22k resistor. So actually you have low input, and lower input. if you unplug it, you will get back to high.

[fillmore nyc]

Hey, haunted. The input trick does toggle between the low and high inputs, not between a "low and lower" input. I used this method for a few years, and checked just what you're talking about. You can verify this by plugging only your guitar into the high gain input, check your volume output, and then plug the 2nd cord into the low gain input, with the switch in the "open" position, or you can try it without any switch at all on end of that cable. There is no drop in level if you do that, only when you close the circuit, like when the switch is in the "closed" position, or as the manual explains it, when a second guitar is plugged in. (which also essentially closes the circuit). I've never tried this with any other (Peavey) amp, but as you say, it may work with the JSX, or the XXX. Ciao.

[JD]

I agree, looking at the schematic all you are doing is breaking and establishing the circuit of one input, which is linked to the circuit of the other input. Pretty simple and clever really.

[OdgeUK]

Brilliant find! I'm just about to buy a JSX (ok, ok, it's not a Marshall but I need it for a covers gig ok? ).

I noticed when trying one out, that if I used the high-input, I could get a nice break up on the clean channel but was dissapointed to then find that the crunch channel sounded shite. So this is really useful for accessing that sound on a footswitch (although I imagine i'll still have to scoot back to the amp between songs to adjust the volumes when changing from Low to High gain input.

Nice.