Peavey Generation with ACM Identification

[jreising326]

Agreed. For me the Belly Cut was the selling feature, and the seller said it was a Korean model. Honestly I don't think he mislead me, it took quite an effort and hours of digging to figure out what this guitar really was and most of the info online says these are Korean made high quality guitars.

All that being said, the neck is very nice, very similar to the one on my Firenza with a nice satin finish. That is ultimately why I decided to keep and try to "rehab" this guitar. I paid $200, which I thought was a great price. In retrospect, if I had a chance to plug this in in person, I wouldn't have offered over $100 for it.

Now the Fishman Bridge and Powerchip alone sell for ~$300. The neck, other than the Nut feels very similar to the Fender Player Plus I as checking out last weekend, which is $1100. I'm confident I can turn this into a nice playing guitar for under $100 in HW, not counting labor. I've already dressed and polished the frets and rounded the fret board edges/sprouts and it just feels good. I'm not sure what wood the body is, it is really light, but also very resonant. Probably Basswood, hopefully not plywood though.

The weak links are the Nut, Pots/Switch and knobs. Worst comes to worst I can repurpose the Fishman HW in another guitar, assuming it's not the source of the noise/scratch.

Full disclosure I'm an Electrical Engineer with 30 years experience in the electronics testing industry, so I'm not worried about taking on a project guitar like this. I certainly wouldn't expect many others to choose this route, and in fact would advise against it and to steer clear of this particular model Peavey. It is several levels below the quality level of my Predator, Firenza and Patriot and more like the $70 Lyon Telecaster I turned into an EVH Bumble Bee guitar..

[jreising326]

So I started to change out the switch and pots and found 2 issues. There was a broken ground wire and an unconnected signal wire between the Tone and Volume Pots. That ground wire was causing the scratchy sound in the middle pickup. I verified this before removing the original Pots and Switch.

I left the wire that was supposed to go between the Pots open so I could test it and make sure I didn't break the wire while removing the Pots. So it sounded similar as before but without the scratchy-ness. I then soldered that wire in where it belongs and now the guitar sounds way better than before. Also painted the cavity black and now am waiting for it to dry before re-installing the pots and switch/jack. I'm going to order a graphtech nut for it and maybe some locking tuners from Guitar Fetish and call it good for now.

[studiodtk5]

Good to hear that there were some simple repairs needed. I wonder if someone else was in there messing around with the controls before.

I have used the shielding type paint on a control cavity before. I was disappointed in the effectiveness of that paint. The amount of coats required to meet simple copper or aluminum type tape shielding was unbelievable. Although it looked nice, it wasn’t as effecting. Now I pretty much always do a complete shield of the control cavity when I do a rework.

So you just have a bit of touch up on the controls and then some new hardware. Not bad.

[jreising326]

Yeah I was wondering the same thing and checked with the seller. He got it in a trade for an amp and never opened it up or used it much. So I guess I'll never know unless someone else finds something similar and posts here in the same/similar guitar. Funny you mention the cavity paint, I had similar experience. I read somewhere you can mix paint with Graphite to make shielding paint cheap and I tried that. It didn't work well, and it almost looks like that is what someone attempted in this guitar, except they mixed way too much graphite into the paint and it didn't bind to the surface. I couldn't clean it up well so I just painted over it with the black acrylic paint I bought at Hobby Lobby when I tried to make my own shielding paint.

I sure hope it didn't ship from the factory like this, but I guess I'm thinking it's 50/50 because of the white gunk in the cavity and neck pocket. I doubt anyone before me pulled the neck off as it was also full of sawdust.

I've also decided to add the toggle switch like your model, that's a very easy and useful mod.

[studiodtk5]

The toggle switch is nice. It selects between mag, mix, and piezo pickups. Although on mine the switching is accomplished through the circuit. When the battery is dead, nothing works. I am going to mod to a system bypass so mag direct out. Not sure if that’s a 4 position or another switch.

[jreising326]

This guitar has the Fishman Power Bridge and Fishman Powerchip Pre-Amp, which is pretty small and mounted on the Piezo Pot. Adding the switch and wiring it is very easy and covered in the Fishman Manual. I'm assuming Peavey didn't add it just to reduce cost. It seems like a really convenient feature which fortunately is easily added.

In the process of installing the switch I also think I found a wiring error, and the guitar sounds even better now. It's possible I made the error is swapping the switch, although I think I blindly and carefully moved each wire 1 at a time. The strangest part is the "fix" was to completely remove the extra wire.

I might make a similar mod as your considering as well. I just wonder if the Preamp affects the sound of the pickups. As it is right now I'm quite happy with how this guitar sounds.

[jreising326]

I installed the switch, dressed/polished the frets, cleaned it up and played last night. I'm now very happy with the purchase. I'm probably going to put a Graphtech Nut on it but will see how well it holds tune with the nut it has. Here's some pics with the switch installed. I really don't know why Peavey didn't just include one as the Fishman Powerchip has this feature built in. I just needed to add one wire to the Powership and 2 more to the switch.

IMG_4493.jpg (4.05 MiB) Viewed 1055 times

IMG_4495.jpg (3.78 MiB) Viewed 1055 times

[VSW]

Great! I'm glad to know that you are enjoying it now after the doubts at first.

It is a fine looking guitar.

[jreising326]

Thanks!

It's hard to tell but there are some fairly deep scratches in the pickguard just above the knobs and switch. Pickguard Planet has Generation EXP compatible pickguards. Anyone care to help me decide what color to buy? White Pearloid, Mint, Chrome, Black? Sticking with White isn't a bad idea either.

[studiodtk5]

The guitar looks good. Dead to find most issues were minor and easier repaired for you.

So I am thinking the Fishman system is a previous owner modification. I don’t think Peavey would have released a guitar at this price point with Fishman branded parts on it. Every version I ever saw has the black GraphTech style saddles.

I see on eBay the body of a Generation EXP with the Peavey ACM system included. I’ll be watching that sale.

[jreising326]

Hi Darren,

While I was awaiting the arrival of the guitar I saw this one on Reverb, and you can see "Fishman" on the bridge in the photo in the link at the bottom. There is also a Youtube Video review, same exact guitar, Fishman Bridge. Go to the 1:00 mark and he confirms it came with the same Fishman Bridge. I'll post the links at the bottom for reference.

Now I found absolutely zero information on this particular guitar on the old Peavey Websites, and I did some considerable digging. I wasn't sure if it was older or newer than the ones without the belly cut. I've also not seen any other color than the Candy Apple Red of this guitar. It seems clearly to have been made in China, not Korea. I'm pretty confident it's the last Generation EXP ACM Peavey made.

Since I titled this post "ACM Identification" I figure I should document what I've found so far, and what I suspect is most likely. I'm very familiar with how companies outsource to China Manufacturers of Electronics in general and have been to China to visit factories many times since 2002.

Most likely Peavey selected a Chinese Factory partner around 2008, during the economic downturn. They probably picked someone who was already building for someone else. Their own proprietary ACM design would have been so low of a volume build for the PCB, they wouldn't be able to save any money by moving to China. That was the primary driver for decades that put pressure on companies to move manufacturing into China, it saved them lots of money, if your building things in high volume. That's the attraction to the OEM, the manufacturer gets much better prices on components because they are buying in much higher volume, and the labor rates in China were dirt cheap.

The manufacturer likely was using, or perhaps even building the Fishman hardware. So it was a simple, plug and play off the shelf way to keep ACM in the Peavey Generation, which I would guess was a strong selling feature, at least as far as Peavey Marketing would consider.

Further since there aren't many of these Candy Apple Red Generations out there, they probably didn't hit the cost targets, or perhaps the quality level to retain brand loyalty. Or maybe these China guitars were made to sell through retail market sellers like Walmart, Best Buy, etc., and were never handed off to Peavey Distributors or Dealers/Shops. So an early experiment for Peavey into China manufacturing?

I'm speculating quite a bit, but I bet I'm not too far off. Someone on these forums probably would know for sure.



https://reverb.com/item/45765638-peavey ... tic-pickup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIGnVIX73v4&t=24s

[studiodtk5]

Very interesting. I guess this was a short lived incarnation of the Generation ACM. Not unheard of that Peavey didn’t successfully market a product. It may have been this was an end of the line run of this series, so not as much effort put into it. Also, why you can’t find much about it.

[Toprahmen]

Yeah that’s a bummer. On mine I liked the single coil pickup and the acoustic modeling. The humbuckers were meh. That’s why I changed them out on the orange guitar.

The circuit in mine for the ACM is Peavey, not Fishman. I wonder if they cheap the guitar out on that version.

Here are pictures of the back and control cavity.

Hey! I’ve been scouring the entire internet to find help with the wiring of a Generation ACM I recently bought… and your posted picture is the only pic in all the googles that looks just like mine.

I have a random problem where my three way switch won’t switch out of both ACM and humbuckers at the same time… both are always activated. I think it has to do with the black wire (I’m assuming ground) in the middle pole of the switch. I’ve tried to see from your picture where that black wire leads, but can’t quite see where it goes, even with editing that pic out the wazoo to lighten up the shadows

If you have the time to look into this and tell me where it goes you’d be a huge help to me!! Thanks either way. For what it’s worth I love this guitar and am just trying to get it at 100%

Joe in MD

[studiodtk5]

Sorry I hadn’t checked back in a few days didn’t see this post. I will check tomorrow and let you know. I have three of these now. Two in the Generation EXP Customs and one I put in a Firenza. I have them all working so I should be able to figure it out for you.

[studiodtk5]

Yeah that’s a bummer. On mine I liked the single coil pickup and the acoustic modeling. The humbuckers were meh. That’s why I changed them out on the orange guitar.

The circuit in mine for the ACM is Peavey, not Fishman. I wonder if they cheap the guitar out on that version.

Here are pictures of the back and control cavity.

Hey! I’ve been scouring the entire internet to find help with the wiring of a Generation ACM I recently bought… and your posted picture is the only pic in all the googles that looks just like mine.

I have a random problem where my three way switch won’t switch out of both ACM and humbuckers at the same time… both are always activated. I think it has to do with the black wire (I’m assuming ground) in the middle pole of the switch. I’ve tried to see from your picture where that black wire leads, but can’t quite see where it goes, even with editing that pic out the wazoo to lighten up the shadows

If you have the time to look into this and tell me where it goes you’d be a huge help to me!! Thanks either way. For what it’s worth I love this guitar and am just trying to get it at 100%

Joe in MD

Check out this post:

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=20467&p=155493&hilit=ACM#p155493
I did a circuit diagram adding a bypass switch. The Peavey guitar schematic is there.