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AMPEG BA115 TUBE MOD!

C

CamaroPower37

Jun 9, 2011
2
0
#1
I've heard a lot of talk from a lot of musicians who use the BA115 that there is a mod to put a pre amp tube in this combo. Is this possible and does anyone know how to do it? I have been searching all over the internet and nothing concrete has really come up. I love this amp considering I've had it for 7 years with no issues. It needs more power for practices and I figured for all the hype I have heard about this mod, it will certainly do the trick. I'm very mechanical and can probably handle it myself, just don't know where to start. THANKS!
 
#2
I'm not sure where you're getting your information from, but unless you get some kind of tube-based preamp pedal to put in the signal chain, there's no economically beneficial way of putting a tube into the BA115. The amp is probably all connected through a single PCB circuit board anyway, so I'm not sure how you would mod your way around that regardless of how mechanically adept you are.

Also, I don't think you're going to get more volume from the presence of a pre-amp tube. I don't have enough experience trying to use high preamp gain for a more overdriven sound to know whether that really creates a volume difference.

Plus, even if you got more power out of the amp somehow, you'd probably need to change the driver in that thing to deal with the extra power since Ampeg builds those BA115s as cheaply as possible. That in turn could make the amp sound bad since the driver was not designed for the BA115's cabinet (and vice-versa).

EDIT: I tried to Google for any kind of BA-115 tube preamp mod and got nothing.
 
#3
CamaroPower37 said:
I've heard a lot of talk from a lot of musicians who use the BA115 that there is a mod to put a pre amp tube in this combo. Is this possible and does anyone know how to do it? I have been searching all over the internet and nothing concrete has really come up. I love this amp considering I've had it for 7 years with no issues. It needs more power for practices and I figured for all the hype I have heard about this mod, it will certainly do the trick. I'm very mechanical and can probably handle it myself, just don't know where to start. THANKS!
Click to expand...

i dont see how adding a tube preamp will give you more power.
better tone, yes.
 
#6
CamaroPower37 said:
I've heard a lot of talk from a lot of musicians who use the BA115 that there is a mod to put a pre amp tube in this combo. Is this possible and does anyone know how to do it? I have been searching all over the internet and nothing concrete has really come up. I love this amp considering I've had it for 7 years with no issues. It needs more power for practices and I figured for all the hype I have heard about this mod, it will certainly do the trick. I'm very mechanical and can probably handle it myself, just don't know where to start. THANKS!
Click to expand...

This mod sounds like someones gutted the amp and built another one into the case. Adding a preamp valve would be alot of hastle with the current transformer.
 
#8
My buddy is a huge guitar tech and he said it's possible. He has been known to stretch the truth as well. Thanks for the help everyone. I just wanted to see if this was a crackpot kinda thing. Looks like I'm spending more money trading mine in. I bought it for around $500, how much is it worth now. It's in great condition.
 

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