Peavey Nashville 112 Project Completed - Finally!

[Tony Oresteen]

Today I finished up my 1st Nashville 112 project. Took way too long to do but family first.

In November of 2023 I finally bought a Nashville 112 from Gary Sill. It is a USA model from the early 2000s. It had a few issues and Gary was up front about them and we settled on a very fair price for both of us. When I got the amp I just used it for 30 minutes and re-boxed it up and sent it Peavey for service. Over the years I have gotten great service from Peavey and they did a wonderful job with the amp as usual. It need a new reverb tank (expected) and a couple of small parts. The pots were cleaned etc and I got it back in tip-top shape.

I decided to upgrade the speaker(s). I like the sound of a 12" speaker with a 15" speaker so I asked Tommy Huff to make me a cabinet for a 15" speaker to go with my Nashville 112. We settled on a 15" Eminence Legend 1518 and the Eminence Travis Toy 12" Double-T.

The 15' cabinet is 21" high, 21" wide and 11" deep. It is open back like the Nashville 112 is.

Now the Nashville 112 comes with an Eminence 12" 4ohm speaker as the Nashville 112 expects a 4ohm load. The Travis Toy 12" Double-T is an 8 ohm speaker. All is OK as the 15" is 8 ohms so I wired them in parallel giving a 4 ohm total load. I wanted to use the Travis Toy 15" speaker but it comes only in 4 ohms. Bummer. I had to add an external speaker jack to the Nashville 112 for the extension cab.

If you decide to do this understand that you will HAVE to change the internal speaker! Do not run the amp with less than a 4 ohm load! It runs just fine with an 8 ohm load (just not as loud) but never less than 4 ohms.

On a side note, I had decided back in 2017 to buy a USA Nashville 112. At that time I bought the Opamp Upgrade kit from Ken Fox and finally installed the kit - 7 1/2 years latter! My time flies!

Here is the Nashville 112:

nashville 112 A front with ext cab 15 inch 1000.jpg

And the rear:

nashville 112 A back 1000.jpg

I used 16ga lamp cord to hook up the speakers. I haven't had much time playing through it but I am planning on it this week! I had a spare 4.5" Peavey logo so I put it on the new cab.

Tommy did and outstanding job on the cab!!! In fact, I had him make me two of these cabs as last year I bought another USA Nashville 112. The 2nd one is for a 12" speaker. More on that later. I bought a cover for the Nashville 112 & tracked down the correct foot switch. Now to play it!

[Jerry Overstreet]

That looks nice Tony. Good to hear you kept the impedance to 4Ω by using the 2 8Ω speakers in parallel.

You mentioned wanting to use the TT for the 15 but didn't due to it being 4Ω.

I know you prolly don't want to start over since you've just finished it up but maybe for future use, there is a way to use 2 4Ω speaker cabinets in series by building a simple connections box and wiring the jacks in series. Only issue is you have to avoid grounding the jacks.

Here is a thread Len Amaral posted about his series box project shown on pg. 2 and it's the info I used to build one for myself.
viewtopic.php?t=368679&hilit=series+speaker+box

[Tony Oresteen]

Thanks Jerry. I did consider making a 2 x 15" cab and putting two TT 15s in it but I am getting too old to move such a beast. The other option was to make a cab that holds a 15" & a 12" and put the original 12" 4 ohm speaker in the cab with the TT 15" in series for 8 ohms. Still too big! I also considered using a 50watt 4 ohm metal frame resistor in series with the TT 15" to get 8 ohms but all that does is turn the output of the amp into heat not sound and would reduce the volume. So I went with the Legend.

The best solution was for Eminence to make a special run of TT 15" 8 ohm speakers but they thought that was a bad idea

[Jerry Overstreet]

I understand the bulk and weight of wiring 2 speakers in a single cabinet, but with the series patch box, one can use 2 separate cabinets and let the patch box handle the series routing.

You can use 2 speakers of any size in 2 separate cabinets with this. I use mine with a 1501-4 and a 1203-4 in separate cabinets with a single mono 100W TubeWorks combo amp sometimes or I can mix and match any of my other 4 & 8 ohm 12 &15 cabinets without causing any issues.