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.Okay, got it. So the only actual guitarist in the room was/is you. I hope it turns out to be something easily corrected, an "oh, yeah" rather than an "oh, crap."
Sorry for the late reply lol...busy bee recently.
Not sure if its broken or not but I think it has lost some oomph. I think something has happened to the tube in the amp but I'm willing to put up with it for now. Might consider getting a tube amp to replace it if I get some extra cash to burn :).
I doubt it is the tube. I've done a lot of work with tubes and own a lot of tube equipment. Generally a tube either works or it doesn't. Just before it blows it may "ring" a little and you'll hear it in the sound "maybe", but if it blew > no sound. So don't wast your money and buy a new tube. Also, the tube stops glowing as the filiment (actually cathode) stops glowing (stops shooting off electrons) and that is easily seen in VOX amps by looking in the slits on the back, which are on the left as you face the amp. All the AD...VT VOX amps have one A12X7 pre-amp output tube, the type usually used for low output circuits in pre-amps on high end stereo's, or sometimes in the "auto-biasing" circuitry of high putput high end stereo tube amps. Things that might be wrong:
1.) The adjustable wattage on the back is turned way down. Turn it up.
2.) Make sure your guitar cable is working and your guitar is turned up.
3.) Make sure that nothing is pluged into the line/phone jack or the external speaker out jack, both on the back of the VOXAD30VT.
4.) Make sure that the gain, volume, treble, bass, mid, and master volume are at least all set at half way or more while testing.
5.) Before any testing restore the factory settings by shutting the amp off, hold down the "ch" and "write" buttons, turn the power on, let go of the "ch" and "write" buttons when the "ch1" and "ch2" LED's are blinking, then press "write". The red led's will sweep on across the top of the amp from right to left re-initializing everything to factory settings.
6.) Adjust the noise reduction: press the bypass button untill the LED is lit, then hold down the tap button and turn the edit knob all the way to the left, then to the right a little bit (giving you very little noise reduction; you can reset it later, but this will rule out noise reduction set too high, which will result in a wierd sound or no sound).
7.) Press the "Preset button" to light up that LED so the different amps can be tested thus the different circuits, and press the bypass light to exclude the "effects" circuit from the testing. If everything works OK and then it goes bad when the bypass button is taken off then you know the problem is in the effects circuit.
8.) Finally put the amp in "Manual" instead of "Preset" mode in the pre-amp section and keep the bypass LED lit. This will test the preset circuitry by bypassing it and allowing you to set it manually. If you can make it sound good using manual setting and adjusting the gain/vol/treble/etc. then the prob is in the "preset preamp section". Not that you can fix it, but you can tell if your dealer knows what he/she is doing.
I can't think of anything else. The most important thing is to think of the VOX as a totally tube amp, and if that tube blows you have nothing. Everything in the AD..VT VOX series is engineered to run off the tube in some way, shape or form in an attempt to get a tube sound. Impediences, push-pull versus class A, reverse loop circuits- all go through the tube circuit, and if the tube is bad the amp won't make a sound.
Ironman
