Clean Low Plate Skyliner w/3 tube reverb - need some help

[mhartman]

I had a couple of days off, so I converted an old PA135 that I had laying around to a clean dumble channel with a 3 tube reverb (I saved a tube to add OD later). I'm now tweaking voltages and having fun playing around with it. My one hang up that I'm running into is that, with the 3 tube reverb, the clean signal coming out of both sides of V1 is hitting the mixer tube too hard and causing distortion.

How would you approach reducing, but optimizing, the clean signal as it enters the mixer stage? I've tried various resistors to ground, but by the time I get the signal low enough to avoid distortion, it has lost too much "sparkle". I'm kind of a rookie, so I suspect that I'm approaching it incorrectly. Thanks in advance for your help.

[boldaslove6789]

What values have you tried to ground? Fender Blackface amps have a 500pF ceramic cap and a 1M resister in series to ground where the verb gets taken from (after the 500pf cap ), try something around that...

[mhartman]

What values have you tried to ground? Fender Blackface amps have a 500pF ceramic cap and a 1M resister in series to ground where the verb gets taken from (after the 500pf cap ), try something around that...

Thanks. That's around the range where I've been trying - I tried a pot, but things get muddy by the time the distortion goes away. Maybe I should work in a bright cap on that stage. I'm thinking, that, without the low and high cut filters, the signal is getting too strong with the extra gain from the mixer tube -- possibly the PI is getting hit with too much signal. I'll have to keep on experimenting a bit. Maybe I should just try to inclement the filters? BTW, when I'm not hitting things too hard, the amp really sounds great -- 1000% better than the old PA ever did.

Mike.

[Structo]

Are you using a 12AT7?

What is your plate voltages on the reverb tubes?