Peavey Session 400 & LTD

stuff

'75 Peavey Session 400

Peavey LTD
 LTD Rear view

Power Supply Filter Capacitor Update

New power supply filter capacitors with high quality film cap's bypassing
them. This is the first and most important mod for the Session 400 or LTD.
Mainly because electrolytic capacitors go bad over time. Actually this should
be called general maintainence. The stock value was 6000uF/50v. It's been
recommended to increase that value. On one of mine I used some 10,000uF/65v.
The ones shown here are 8200uF/100v. The larger value (in uF) cap's will
provide a bit more reserve impulse power that comes in handy with loud
punchy/bassy parts. The high quality film bypass caps are also very key in
this section. The electrolytics smooth out the DC power supply but only so
well. The high frequency ripple and noise from the power supply and wall A/C
can pass thru electolytic caps, leaking garbage into the amplifier circuit.
It's sort of like a 2-way speaker. The big cap smoothes out the bulk of the
power, the low end. The little film cap cleans up the high frequency junk.
What's really cool in this amp especially is how much the transistors quiet
down when they aren't fed all the power supply junk. The difference in noise
floor is huge compared to the stock setup. I think this is a must for anyone
recording with the Session. It's already a real quiet amp but with this cap
mod you wont even think the amp is on when sitting next to it. The film bypass
cap's also really help when you are on a circuit with lots of neon,
compressors, dimmers, fluorescent lights, etc. Like any bar gig. The little
film caps I used here to bypass the big electrolytic ones are .47uF/450v.
Really any film cap from .1 on up to 5uF rated at 50v or higher would do.
 Signal and Tone Capacitors

Here you can see the preamp mod's (upgrades). I call them upgrades because I'm
not changing anything in the amp design at all. The Session 400 EQ is so
perfectly voiced for steel that I wouldn't want to alter anything. What I've
done though is improved the quality of just a few of the capacitors through
which the audio signal passes. Imagine looking thru a piece of glass, then add
another, and so on. Pretty soon your view is less clear. Since capacitors are
usually required in an audio path to prevent any DC from getting thru (audio
being AC), the cleaner the capacitor, the more pure the end product is. For
cost and size reasons, corporations have to draw the line on parts costs and
decicide how good is good enough. So what happens is that in a few stages (5)
here in the Session 400 or LTD, one section of the preamp passes the signal on
to the next stage. Each interstage pathway is coupled with a capacitor to keep
DC from entering the next stage. These cap's need to be relatively big in
value so as to carry the widest bandwidth of audio necessary. Since the values
are large, the cost issues have helped choose the use of cheaper electrolytic
capacitors. When film cap's get that big, they start to cost a whole lot more
than electrolytics, and they are physically big (see photo). This happens with
every company. Peavey actually leans toward the higher end of the spectrum
with regards to component quality. Their longevity is a testament to that.

The smaller cap's indicated were originally ceramic disks. These aren't big
interstage cap's, but are smaller tone capacitors in the EQ section. Ceramic
disks are not known for their warmth and tone to put it nicely. It's easy to
find good film cap's at these values. For the mod I recommend, there are two .
02uF, and two .01uF caps in the tone section, and one .047uF for the reverb
return. You can do more but these seem to be the most critical.

Here's another angle where you can see the replaced reverb return cap and some
of the big coupling caps. The reverb cap will clean up the fidelity of the
reverb tank's signal. I replaced 5 electrolytic 2.2uF caps with the big blue
film ones in this picture. Keep the voltages on all these caps at 50v or
higher.

Original 2uF Coupling Capactors

Here is one of the original 2uF coupling caps. This one in particular is at
the output stage of the preamp. I've upgraded it also since the photo was
taken. These little 2.2uF electrolytic caps are very worthy of replacement.
The amp design really gets to breathe and do its thing well when these caps
are upgraded to film types.

Also notice all the little transistors and the total lack of IC's. This is an
all discrete amplifier. Today you'll only find very high end audiophile gear
made this way. It's a delicate design to build thus too expensive to build for
the big market. In it's day it was really the only option because the audio IC
chip was just developing. Modern high-end IC's do sound great, like the Burr-
Brown chips found in the Peavey upgrade kits for their post-Session 400/LTD
amps. But, there is a real warmth and sweetness to these old transistors in a
discrete circuit used for a guitar amp.

This is in no way an official website. It's just for fun. If anyone has cool
photos or more information or corrections to my info, please drop me an email
at bradsarno@earthlink.net . I want to thank Bob Mason, Scotty's, Ken Fox,
Mike Brown, DeWitt Scott Jr., Peavey, Curly Chalker, and Buddy Emmons and
everyone else for their info and/or involvement with the development of this
very cool steel amp. This amp is a recent discovery for me. I'll try to keep
this page updated as more geeky technical info comes in.

Thanks,

Brad Sarno

Blue Jade Audio Mastering

St. Louis, MO

BIRTH OF THE
LTD

--- NEW ---

SESSION 400 AND LTD
\
UPGRADE KIT
 DIAGRAMS

Check here for

Session 400 (or
LTD)
preamp schematic

1975 Screened faceplate

1976 Molded plastic faceplate

Here is a newly added photo of the Session 400 preamp and power amp boards with cap locations indicated. Take note of the small 470pF
(picofarads) cap circled in green. This cap should have been part of any cap upgrade kit, but was somehow neglected. It is part of the treble
circuit. I recommend a 470pF polypropylene capacitor for this location. At some point I'll get this page all cleaned up, but at least for now the
useful info is here.