PEAVEY
SESSION 400 & LTD 400 PAGE
Back in the early '70s
the overwhelming demand for lighter, louder,
lower-maintenance amplifiers for steel guitarists brought
about a wave of new designs to replace the standard tube
amp options offered by Fender, Standel, Sho-Bud, and
others. Hartley Peavey clearly saw this demand and with the
helpful guidance of Curly Chalker, Buddy Emmons, and other
steel guitar masters developed the Session 400 amplifier in
or around 1973 and released its first production models in
1974. These amplifiers used open back cabinets sized like a
Fender Twin Reverb and offered the option of 2-12" speakers
or a single 15" speaker. The main innovation with these
amps was the 6-transistor based 200 watt power amplifier
and the all discrete transistor preamp section with
tremolo, reverb, and a passive, sweepable midrange control
for critical voicing of the steel guitar tone. Today, after
30 years, these classic Peavey amps are still widely used
professionally and have proven to be rugged, reliable, and
most importantly, great sounding amplifiers. Soon after the
release of the Session 400, Peavey released the smaller
counterpart, the LTD 400. The LTD is based on the exact
same preamp and power amp, but squeezed it and a 15"
speaker into the smaller Peavey Pacer cabinet. The LTD
sounds different only in that the smaller cabinet reduces
the bass response quite a bit.
This unofficial page has been created partially as a
tribute to these great amps, but also as a guide to keeping
them running. The main factor in keeping a 20+ year old
amplifier running properly is to replace the old
electrolytic capacitors. These cap's simply age and need to
be replaced as general maintenance. These old Peavey amps
can be brought right back to life with a re-cap job. This
page will also offer information for upgrading the quality
of a few other capacitors in the amps that will help
enhance and improve the tone. The upgrades are NOT
modifications. The original design remains unchanged, only
the parts quality is improved. All of the required
capacitors can be found thru large electronics suppliers
like Digi-Key or Mouser. [this page still incomplete]
See this link for the old Session 400 site:
Old Session 400 page