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Your idea of sending the speaker output to another cabinet or another amp to my speaker is great advice (assuming I could persuade some fearless friend to allow me to do this with their baby. One of my Marshall-owning friends quivered in fear when I once asked to try a "stereo" two amp hookup with his amp and mine - my volume pedal has two outputs). Wish I'd thought of your scheme sooner. I did try sending the effects output to one of my stereo amps to see how that sounded - I understand this is like using a different power amp with the internal preamp. It sounded good this way on both channels, but your suggestion would also test the power amp/EL84's. I managed to find a Blue Marvel Classic 8ohm speaker online (instrumentpro.com) after an incredible amount of B.S., and decided to buy it - $100.00 total with shipping (not in stock of course, 10 days till predicted arrival - factory>dealer>me). Peavey really doesn't seem to have many dealers, I guess Fender, Marshall, and Vox have everyone's interest. It's too bad, judging by my experience with the Bravo and what I hear from owners of the Classic series, they make a great domestic product at a very modest price - rare in these days of offshore manufacturing dominance.

the wire-ups you describe wouldn't really have worked. you need to unplug the wires coming out of the back of your amp from the speaker, then hook those wires directly to the terminals of another 8 ohm speaker that is rated high enough not to crap out. most marshalls use 16 ohm celestions which you can technically use(you can always use a higher ohm load but not lower or you could screw up your amp) but it'll lose power and it wouldn't be an accurate comparison.

anyway, you bought a speaker so i hope that fixes the problem.

btw, if you are interested in these things, you might want to buy a book called "a desktop reference of hip vintage guitar amps" by gerald weber. it explains all of this stuff in a way that non-electrical guys like me can understand. you probably need to get it through his website at kendrick amplifiers.

The proposal to my friend was just to try a two amp sound, not to test the amp. The Bravo has a 1/4" speaker jack output like many amps which would have been perfect for an 8ohm external cab test like you suggested. I might try this in the future. I heard about the effects send>external power amp idea on the Peavey forum, and I understand it's actually a good way to isolate or test the preamp independently from the power amp.