Hi there,
Was playin around with my strat for the first time in ages on my Vox and my little brother was annoying me to death by blaring guitar hero. I cranked my amp a little higher than normal but not more than 2/3 on the back. He then cranked his further (oh the fun) and then I got annoyed and while leaning over to switch off the vox I touched the top (plastic part) with the end of my Strat. This resulted in a loud-ish pop/bang sound. Now the amp still works but produces awful sound, seems quieter and the effects seem a lot more pronounced than the actual sound if you know what I mean?
Do you think I may have broken something in the amp? The tube for example? I don't think its under warranty anymore unfortunately and to fix it my local shop where I bought it from want to charge me £48, which seems a bit steep for me if it was something simple wrong with it.
Something may have happened to the Strat rather than the amp but I haven't got a second guitar to test this theory.
Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Ouch.
I hate to stir up any more sibling rivalry, but do you think little brother could be persuaded to let you try your guitar on his amp and vice versa? You could be nice to him at least long enough to narrow it down to the guitar or the amp.
I wonder if Duane and Gregg Allman ever went through "volume contests" like that. :P
I doubt anything in the amp's electronics would have fried from playing loud, but I've killed more than one speaker that way.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
I thought the VOX AD--VT amps were all solid-state, so there shouldn't be anything to blow in the electronics. I'd agree thta it might well be the cone.
Best,
A :-)
"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk
It's a rather simple job to replace the speaker in a combo amp. A line of inexpensive speakers I'll recommend (I've got a couple in amps of my own) are the Jensen MOD series. You may or may not have to unsolder and resolder two leads to the speaker terminals, depending on whether they're soldered or simply connected with push-on terminals.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
That vox has a tube in the pre-amp stage. I'm thinking maybe you pushed the manual, preset, or channel buttons by accident. When fooling around with mine, I've found some extreme sound differences by accident. I have also decided, I do not like using a gain pedal in front of the amp when I have the amps' distortion on, because it then sounds like crap. Let us know what you figure out, as it may affect some of others.
It is a small world for metal fanatics. I welcome you fellow musicians, especially the metalheads!
That vox has a tube in the pre-amp stage. I'm thinking maybe you pushed the manual, preset, or channel buttons by accident. When fooling around with mine, I've found some extreme sound differences by accident. I have also decided, I do not like using a gain pedal in front of the amp when I have the amps' distortion on, because it then sounds like crap. Let us know what you figure out, as it may affect some of others.
97reb, you are a genius. :D
At a gig, Dom our bass player thought his amp was blown. He was checking everything for 10 minutes and couldn't get a sound out of his amp. He was freaking out. Finally I asked if the head was connected to the cab. That was it. He had forgotten to plug the cable from his head into the cab.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
At a gig, Dom our bass player thought his amp was blown. He was checking everything for 10 minutes and couldn't get a sound out of his amp. He was freaking out. Finally I asked if the head was connected to the cab. That was it. He had forgotten to plug the cable from his head into the cab.The "obvious" stuff like that is usually inexpensive to fix (as in "free"), but you can feel kinda stooopid afterward. :oops:
I won't tell you how many times I wondered why there was no sound from my MG30DFX before I learned that the guitar cable should be plugged into the input jack instead of the adjacent footswitch jack. It's been awhile since I did that, but brain cramps can reoccur.
Doug
You are not alone. At a gig I had my amp on standby. When I switched the amp back on I was surprised I didn't hear any sound out of my amp. I even reached down and strummed my guitar strings as my guitar was sitting on it's stand. I started turning all the knobs and nothing. I also thought my amp was blown.
After about 5 minutes I realized I had also turned the volume all the way down on my guitar. :oops:
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
That particular problem of not having the output cable plugged into the amp or the speaker can be expensive, as on tube amps it can cause the output transformer to fail, immediately or some time later. Tube amps shouldn't be run without a load, even for an instant while switching between speakers.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
Ricochet
Oh, I know you are correct. Fortunately Dom's bass amp is solid state, there was no damage at all. He has a Peavey, not sure of which model, but it's 700 watts.
It might be this one, but looks a little different, the faceplate is red.
My amps are all tube. I am extra careful to make sure there is a speaker load before turning the amp on.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
I know you know that, Wes. Just thought I'd mention it again, because a lot of new players don't.
A lot of amps are built with protections against high voltage spikes in the transformer from unloaded playing. If there's not already something there, soldering a 5W power resistor of about 150 ohms across the 8 ohm output jack, or 330 ohms across a 16 ohm jack if there's one there, will be enough to kill the spikes and won't draw off enough power for you to hear while playing. Where there's a tone-corrective filter across the primary of the OT (a resistor and capacitor in series), it does pretty much the same thing to damp the high frequency "ringing" that produces the voltage spikes.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
That particular problem of not having the output cable plugged into the amp or the speaker can be expensive, as on tube amps it can cause the output transformer to fail, immediately or some time later. Tube amps shouldn't be run without a load, even for an instant while switching between speakers.Being new to tube amps, I'd forgotten about things like that, by which tube amps can have glitches that are both embarrassing and expensive.
I'll take a little embarrassment over a nasty financial hit any day.
Okay, here's a new poll. Which is worse:
a) "Stop flipping that switch and plug your outlet strip into the wall instead of into itself."
b) "Those amps run on smoke. You've let all the smoke out, so it won't run anymore."
:lol:
b) happens.
:shock:
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
Thanks for the replies I'll try having a closer look when I get home. I may have accidentally selected another channel with the top of my strat or something but the cable has been in the same port for ages and the sound transition was immediate...in that I played it and it sounded good, made a pop, and then sounded bad :D.
Doug: Guitar hero is a game for the Playstation 2 where you get a plastic SG and play along to rock classics so we ain't swapping heh.
