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The reason for the standby switch... Tubes have to reach an "operating temperature" which is just known as warm... when setting the amp up you cut it on first and leave it on "standby" to preheat the tubes. when stepping down between sets you put it back on standby to keep the tunes warm.

Then there is the point of "Overdriving" tubes. You get two different sounds:

Overdriven Preamp tubes have a nice fuzz to them, very midrangy.

Overdriven Power tubes have a clarity I prefer...

In the case of your amp I think you have two tubes that govern the "gain" of the clean channel. If you replace only those tubes (with less powerful tubes) it will reduce the gain on that channel only, leaving the other channel and power section sounding the same as before.

The Peavey Forum will help you know which tubes govern the clean channel and what some good selections for lower gain would be.

I love the distortion on my Peavey, but I cannot dial in a clean sound on my rhythym channel for the life of me. What do I need? A Noise Reduction pedal?

There's this crackle I just can't get rid of on the clean. Everyone complains about the feature on this amp.

Actually I own one and the clean isn't as nice as say an old Fender amp, but it's just as clean as a Marshall. What you need to do is to back off the pre-gain and use the post gain for your volume. Also depends on your pickups. Too hot of a pickup won't get clean no matter what you do (ie: EMG's and the like). My one Ibanez Prestige has a Duncan Full Shred in it and it cleans up nicely. Have you tried the "bright" switch yet? That gives it a "bell-like" tone. Also on the back of the head there's a positive/neutral/negative switch. If you're getting crackle or the like, try going to "+" or "-". I switched mine to "+" and it's MUCH better. Hope that helps.

That did help... a lot! Thank you sir.

I was using my SG Standard bridge pickup the whole time*doh*! I don't know why I was spacing that off. The neck pickup helped greatly with a few knob adjustments.

This really is a nice amp. Finally, I can do it some justice. It wouldn't hurt to take Dewy's advice on changing the tubes on the rhytym channel either. I might be too stubborn to do that right now.

No prob my man! Believe me, I had to do a lot of messing around with mine to figure it out as well. But...DON'T do what Dewy said and take the tubes out. There's a guy in Erie that did that and all that channel is good for now is strictly clean. Mine is now set up as a sort of 3 channel head. I can go from a decent clean, to a nice heavy crunch, right to a searing gain, all from the pedal. Granted to really totally clean it up (like you noticed) you have to dump the pre-gain way down and pump the post gain, but there is a happy medium in there where you can make it work as 3.

Try this. Rhythm channel: Pre-gain between 6 & 7, Low around 7, Mids around 4 or 5, highs around 5, and post gain at 3. Leave the crunch button in and the bright button out. From there you should be able to achieve the same results as I did. Hope it works as well for you.

To be honest...this is the best amp that I've ever owned. Even better than the top of the line Marshalls, Engls, Laneys, ect. I'm a metalhead like you, so yeah...there's no better amp out there right now.

I needed someone to tell me not to gut my amp, I'm relieved.

Thanks for the knob adjustment formula! That's something nobody would give away on the Peavey forums.

I hear everybody claiming that this amp is better than most. It may not look pretty, or have LED lights shining brightly everywhere, but it does what it does. I can't believe how inexpensive this head was! I'm addicted to the solo channel.

No problem my man! I hate people that won't share ideas about amp settings. Especially the newer ones like we have since it can be a nightmare to even get to a good starting point. Something else you may want to try is to use way less resonance and presence on your lead channel as opposed to your rhythm channel. I have them both at 7 on the rhythm/clean channel and around 3.5 on the lead channel. Let me know what you think...