The Amp That Keeps On Breaking!

[atomicmassunit]

I swear...

The Blackface Vibrolux Reverb is supposed to be one of the greatest amps of all time. I grabbed one last summer, really liked it, and ended up selling it to fund a guitar purchase. Missing it, I replaced it with another one (borrowed money and paid interest to the bank, stupid!) when a clean one came by. The new one had some bad tubes in it, and I had speaker trouble. Got those sorted out, then it went down on me at a gig. Ended up thinking I fixed the prob, gotta love intermittent stuff, didn't. It was a bad treble pot on BOTH channels. What are the chances of that?!

Good tubes, good speakers, biased, 3 prong, cap job. Good to go. Sounding good. Last time I plugged it in, I played for a few minutes and a hellacious blaring WWWWOOOONNNNKKK! came out, vol control wouldn't affect it. Turned it off, pulled the PI tube since it was obviously after the vol control. No noise. Put the tube back in, it works fine. Now, I can't for anything get it to act up again. I chopstick'd all the parts and solder joints, cranked it, nothing. This thing feels like a ticking time bomb, because I know it'll happen again.

I've been working on amps for years and maintain all mine, but this thing is making me crazy. It works, but I don't want to take it out to a gig because every time I do, it breaks!

Any of you have an Amp That Keeps on Breaking?

[Rod]

Get some Deoxit spray cleaner and spray out all the pots and tube sockets....The tube sockets might also be loose...Tighten all the pin connections....I'd also look inside the amp and see if there's anything loose.....solder connections in particular...wiggle caps and resistors...see if somethings got a cold solder joint...let me know if this helps

[Rod]

To answer your question, no my amps don't break///but they're not 40 years old either......although the Rivera is 14 years old, and I need to spray out the pots on it

[phyrexia]

No, I don't own any fenders. ;)

[bosstone]

I had an amp that went to the shop four times (2 different and good techs) before it was discovered that it had an intermittent short in the output transformer.

[Rosewood]

To keep an amp working well for a long while you have to go through it and repair or replace everything that's not up to par, and do it all at once so things are in kind of a cycle. Then just routine checkups to keep it running good. When tubes, caps, plate resistors, pots, and solder joints are in good condition you should be down to just occasional tube replacement.