Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

[LedSabbath]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

JJ's warm up generally but I find sometimes they are a bit thin in the highs in some amps. I prefer Tung Sols although to me they sound a lil glassier then JJs. I think speaker change is your best bet and then tubes.
If you cant afford celestion or eminence give a look at WGS.

Thanks, I'll look into getting that celestion.

[FuseG4]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

Just looked it up. the Power-amp tubes are Sovtek and the Pre-amp are JJ. What exactly were you saying in your first post about JJ tubes? Were you saying that they would be good or bad for classic rock stuff?

normally I assume that an amp comes stock with something other than JJs, in which case throwing in JJs tends to back off the presence of the amp a little. JJs are fine for most amps for most types of music, so long as you don't miss that little bit of extra definition in the treble.

But since you're already rocking JJs, I'd say the speaker is absolutely the next thing to look at.

You might want to get a different EL34 somewhere down the road, but a speaker will make a bigger difference. The Svetlana EL34 sounds really thick, and they are the tubes that come stock in most EL34 marshalls these days.

[Wattage]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

Re-cap that pup, ditch the JJ's, get Tung Sols in and run the low input

[Chickenwings]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

celestion g12t75 is the bomb. The peavey windsor is an attempt to capture the sound of the marshall jcm 800s etc, and the stock marshall speakers of that era was the g12t75. Most of the combos and quads had them in there. Fat bottom and smooth tops. These speakers are plentiful and not expensive. Grab one second hand. If it does not fit the bill perfectly, then you can always resell it for waht you paid. These things are big sounding crunch machines.
Also - dont just crank the bass or mnids on your amp heres why:
The Mid control on most 3 band parametrics really lifts all 3 parts of the spectrum. Its kind of a base line for all of them. The treb and bass will increase as you turn them up but only above the mean line created by the mids.
For example - if your treb and bass are on 0 and your mids are on 5, then all 3 are really on 5, you dig? If the mids are on 10 then all three will be up pretty high. A big turn of the treble or bass knobs at that stage will only add a little. You will not get less treb at that stage by dropping it down to 0. However if say the mid is set at one or two, then the treb and bass knobs will be much more sensetive. In short...all three are interconnected.
Try this...
set your gain where you like it and your master.
Start with all eqs at zero.
Turn presence down to zero also.
slowly turn up the mids as you play until you can hear some body in your tone. Lets say they are areound fiveish maybe.
Then slowly turn up the bass. You will find that there is a point that turning the bass past a certain point will not give you any extra bottom end. Dont turn it up past that point.
keep playing.
Now up the treb until you can hear its voice - it may be plenty as low as 2 or 3. But use your ears - thats the main thing. Wherever you like it, turn it back by one....
Then adjust the presence. Presence is very much dependent on the room you are playing, so you will have to readjust it wherever you play.
That is a good way to get a fat smooth sound. If that wont do the job, then yeah...you need either different speakers or a different amp.
Bear in mind that big tube amps like that get fatter as you crank the power tubes, so you may have to eq the presence and treb again when you do that.
good luck

[FuseG4]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

the windsor *studio* which the OP has is a different amp. It's not a combo version of the head.
his is a single-ended ~20W EL34 amp with no presence control (it has no negative feedback circuit at all, actually.)
Other than that, the speaker and EQ suggestions are great.

[St_Genesius]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

To me, the fact that your first instinct when trying to tame the highs is to crank the bass tells me that the problem likely lies with how you're THINKING about your gear, rather than with the gear itself.

[drpietrzak]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

Try a C-Rex speaker.

[FuseG4]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

To me, the fact that your first instinct when trying to tame the highs is to crank the bass tells me that the problem likely lies with how you're THINKING about your gear, rather than with the gear itself.

If you've ever played the windsor studio you may know that thing has like NO low end until you crank the bass. Some combination of small cab+crappy speaker make this thing sound weak. I had to run the bass near full any time I played one.

I heard they did that on purpose. It's the windsor "studio" and so they wanted it to sound tight and direct, and have it mic well when you crank it.

When the OP talked about cranking the bass to get rid of harshness, I think he was just medicating two different problems that he thought were one problem. No, cranking the bass won't remove harshness, but that amp NEEDS a bass increase and less blaring mids and treble.

[dr. ad]

Re: Anyway to mellow the high end on the Peavey Windsor?

Try a C-Rex speaker.

you know a windsor with new tubes pushing a few rexs would indeed be most interesting