Late 80's Peavey Stereo Chorus 400 conundrum

Tube or solid-state, this section goes to eleven!
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Jay Bones
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Post by Jay Bones »

This is my first and (until recently) only guitar amp. Served me well gigging every weekend in a decently popular working band, but its too big and loud for what I do now- bedroom playing and home recording.

It also started acting up a while back- scratchy pots, and intermittent feedback on the distortion channel. Local music shop sends them away to an electronics repair shop, which charges $80 to diagnose the problem, then $80 and hour (minimum 1 hour charge) plus parts to fix it.

I was looking at minimum of $160 to rebuild an amp that in all honesty isn't worth much more than that.

So I bought what was IMO a better amp for me- Bugera V5 Infinium. 5, 1 and 0.1 watt, 8" speaker, single channel (gain, tone, volume, reverb- not spring but does the job) and weighs about 20 pounds. Spent not much more than getting the Peavey repaired, which even if it was working perfectly was still not meeting my needs.

My question is, should I (or can I) teach myself to repair SS amps? I have a basic multi-meter and a Weller 40 watt soldering station. A solder sucker, and the general knowledge of how to work on PCB.

Should I try and sell it for what I could get out of it?

Or (and my mom thinks this is what I should do), throw it away/recycle it?

The last 2 I don't really feel totally comfortable with, since to me it does have some intrinsic value. As well as sentimental.

If I did manage to repair it, what would I do with it then? I wouldn't play it, and it feels like a disservice to keep it in storage gathering dust when it could be screaming and crying.

My rule with guitars is if I don't play them, I don't keep them. Not sure how that could apply here.

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okgb
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Post by okgb »

you could get more money selling it working , so cleaning the pots is not hard to do, buy some cleaner , take it apart
while you're at it clean the pcb connectors with any luck that will help with the distortion channel problem , if it's not
obvious that may be harder to diagnose , but still sell it as a clean amp get some value out of it!

btw , maybe this post should have been in amps and not the library ? you'll want to pay attention when you're taking apart your amp!

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