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Noises My Amp Shouldn t Be Making (Help!)

Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 10:10 am
by Antero_Archive
Thanks for the help, everybody. We've got our last gig for a while a week from Thursday, and I'm hoping to have it back in action and making more appropriate noises by that time.

tgavin wrote:I think Scott's on the right track. Did the lamp/light go off (on the amp--if you took out all the lights in the room, congratulations!)?
You know, I can't rightly recall. The lamp on the old thing tends to be spotty regardless; next time I'm in the practice space I'll check to see if there are any signs of life at all.

This would indicate the fuse blowing. What you're describing sounds like an output tube dying; it will often take a screen resistor with it. If you're feeling adventurous, and have spare fuses and tubes, you could:

: take out the output tubes, put in a good fuse, turn it on. If it lights up and nothing smells funny, try...
Now, here's a question: How do I know what sort of fuse I want? There are a bunch of different ratings and there's this "slo-blo/fast-blo" stuff that is incomprehensible to me.

: putting in new/good output tubes. Let it warm up a bit. Once again, if it doesn't blow the fuse, and nothing smells/smokes, plug your guitar in. If it sounds okay, you're probably fine. If it still sounds low-power/too-distorted/crackly/etc., you may have a blown screen resistor, though this is just the most common problem--there could be other damage. I don't know if you really want to get into that stuff; if not, it would be time to see a tech.

Good luck--those are cool amps.

-Tom