Peavey Nashville 1000 manufacturing problem

[Terry Edwards]

I have been working on my Peavey Nashville 1000 for several weeks now. I sent Peavey an email and left phone messages asking for schematics or a service manual with no response from Peavey. I realize that my amp is way past warranty and to be fair Peavey has the right to protect proprietary circuit design. But most of the amp is decades old standard preamp and Switch Mode Power Supply designs that don’t need protection and could be released. So I used a multimeter and visually sketched out the Switch Mode Power Supply circuit by hand. A 5 watt 50 ohm ceramic snubber resistor on the input of a transformer was overheating and actually discolored the circuit board. I traced this problem to a bad transformer connection. The soldered stranded wire inside a crimped push on connector was severed inside the connector (see photo). Soldering stranded wire before crimping is a bad idea and not usually done in industry. Crimps are designed to provide a compression weld on wire - not solder and can result in failure over time due to vibrations and temperature changes. I checked all the crimps on the transformers and inductors (chokes) in this particular Peavey Nashville 1000 and the wires are all tinned with solder before crimping. One other connection was loose and I repaired it.

My amp has had intermittent problems for years before it finally failed hard. I am posting this discovery to help others that may have a Peavey amp with intermittent issues or a hard failure. Check those connectors. It’s an easy fix.

[Jack Hanson]

From all recent reports it may seem that Peavey is merely a shadow of its former self. It was good while it lasted.

[Justin Bloudoff]

Funny to stumble upon your post, I recently purchased one of these amps and was having very intermittent and strange noises coming from the unit although it would always revert back to normal operation with just the slightest tap on the cabinet. After puling apart I found the same 50 ohm resistor with heat marks on the leads as well as on the board. After cleaning all the pots, jacks, connections, and replacing the resistor things are now operating as they should and the amp seems very stable. Although these amps were produced during the decline of Peavey's quality and typically get a bit of a bad reputation, it's hard to deny how wonderful they sound as both a steel and as a fiddle and electric guitar amp. The quality of this vintage product is certainly less bulletproof than the older counterparts and more aimed at mass production, but still sounds great 20 years later with a little maintenance and TLC.

Thanks again for sharing you findings!

[Larry Dering]

Terry and Justin, good information and thanks for posting. I have a 1000 I picked up used several years ago with a broken input gain pot and bad reverb tank. I replaced the pot, cleaned the rest and new reverb tank. It's played flawless since those repairs. I didn't see any overheating on the ceramic resistor at that time. Good amps and plenty of power.