Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum

Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: murraymurray on September 28, 2009, 01:23:26 AM

Title: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: murraymurray on September 28, 2009, 01:23:26 AM
Had our first show in months on the weekend, all was going good, had my amp sounding good.
Then a swarm of people fell onto the drums and knocked over the drums and nearly toppled over my amp, i thought i had saved my amp then noticed there was no noise. Got rid of the wireless, still nothing, checked all speaker leads and pedal connections still nothing, then noticed the singers beer had managed to fall off my amp and prop itself up between a shelf behind my amp and the back of the head, pouring directly into the chassis  :shock:

are amps savable after being flooded? or is it time to go shopping?

Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: FernandoDuarte on September 28, 2009, 01:26:18 AM
This sounds REALLY bad! :(
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: Dmoney on September 28, 2009, 01:30:05 AM
Had our first show in months on the weekend, all was going good, had my amp sounding good.
Then a swarm of people fell onto the drums and knocked over the drums and nearly toppled over my amp, i thought i had saved my amp then noticed there was no noise. Got rid of the wireless, still nothing, checked all speaker leads and pedal connections still nothing, then noticed the singers beer had managed to fall off my amp and prop itself up between a shelf behind my amp and the back of the head, pouring directly into the chassis  :shock:

are amps savable after being flooded? or is it time to go shopping?



I had this happen to me with a JCM900 dual reverb.
I took it home and removed the tubes. took out the chassis and (making sure the filter caps are discharged) patted dry the outside of the chassis with kitchen roll, just clean the outside in general, then left it for a week or two (used a spare amp). I then came back and checked for any damp patchess and rust. burn marks on the pcb and other suspicious things.

I couldnt see any. so i put in a new set of power tubes, changed the fuses, turned it on using an attenuator as the load. all seemed fine, fuses didnt blow. rebiased, and away i went! thing was fine!


Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: murraymurray on September 28, 2009, 01:35:49 AM
So i take it i need to go buy an avenger?
Sounds alright to me

just saw the beer and thought how the f**k did it manage to get stuck perfectly on that angle?
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: Dmoney on September 28, 2009, 01:46:47 AM
So i take it i need to go buy an avenger?
Sounds alright to me

just saw the beer and thought how the f**k did it manage to get stuck perfectly on that angle?


nah i didnt have an avenger then.
i had a jcm900 that a did some tone stack and gain mods too. and i had a 6505 with a bias mod.

what amp got the beer in?
mine only got water in. I imagine beer might leave some horrid residue.
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: murraymurray on September 28, 2009, 01:52:11 AM
It was my red bear, basically a JCM800
will have to take it in to a tech this week sometime and hopefully it can be saved, just sold off my spare amp (5150) but i sold it to my flat mate so ill be able to borrow it for the short term at least
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: Dmoney on September 28, 2009, 02:13:25 AM
i think it'll be ok
in mine, the thermal shock cracked the o/p tubes and i guess water on the bases of the sockets shorted the power fuse.

there is nothing too weak in a jcm800 i think. no switching IC's like in a more complex amp. I mean there are less components to short out and ruin i think
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: murraymurray on September 28, 2009, 02:23:40 AM
yeah, hoping its straight forward since there not much in the amp, its all p2p so hopefully any components that are busted can be changed easily. Just got new tubes for it about 2 months ago!
the tubes were still all glowing after it stopped making noise, would that mean its possibly something else?
just looking for an excuse to HAVE to buy an avenger  :lol:
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: Dmoney on September 28, 2009, 02:25:13 AM
yeah, hoping its straight forward since there not much in the amp, its all p2p so hopefully any components that are busted can be changed easily. Just got new tubes for it about 2 months ago!
the tubes were still all glowing after it stopped making noise, would that mean its possibly something else?
just looking for an excuse to HAVE to buy an avenger  :lol:


if the tubes where lit i guess the fuses didnt blow because power was still getting to the filaments. so yeah, maybe something else is up.
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: hunter on September 28, 2009, 10:57:46 AM
So i take it i need to go buy an avenger?


Yeah, and the best thing is: your singer will pay it!

 :lol:

Good luck with the fix of your bear. It sucks if beloved gear gets f%&ed up!
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: tomjackson on September 28, 2009, 12:11:43 PM
Had our first show in months on the weekend, all was going good, had my amp sounding good.
Then a swarm of people fell onto the drums and knocked over the drums and nearly toppled over my amp, i thought i had saved my amp then noticed there was no noise. Got rid of the wireless, still nothing, checked all speaker leads and pedal connections still nothing, then noticed the singers beer had managed to fall off my amp and prop itself up between a shelf behind my amp and the back of the head, pouring directly into the chassis  :shock:

are amps savable after being flooded? or is it time to go shopping?



Why did a swarm of people knock the drums over?  You should have swatted them with a Tele like Keith Richards!




Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: ToneMonkey on September 28, 2009, 04:47:51 PM
The problem with beer is the sticky mess that it leaves (which I think conducts due to the sugaryness or something).  Don't know much about this amp, is it a pcb (which would probably be more serious) or a point to point job?

Not an expert in these matters by any stretch of the matter - well an expert of spilling beer on things, but that doesn't help.
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: murraymurray on September 28, 2009, 08:50:37 PM
Why did a swarm of people knock the drums over?  You should have swatted them with a Tele like Keith Richards!

just a lowkey show in our garage so no stage, and over 100 people turned up, which is too many to really fit in our garage.


Yeah, and the best thing is: your singer will pay it!

 :lol:

 :lol: yeah of course they will, we have a 4 bands that prac at our house, so thats 4 singers and im the one who had to buy a PA since theyre all useless
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: Frank on October 02, 2009, 01:29:55 PM
if the tubes where lit i guess the fuses didnt blow because power was still getting to the filaments. so yeah, maybe something else is up.

What the man said. The filaments are there to heat the tubes up so they can conduct direct current through the vaccuum but if the glass envelope is broken, there's no way the electrons can flow through the tube.

If you're very lucky it'll just need new tubes, re-biasing and a quick clean. If there's damage to the HT or OP transformers then you're going to have to go without beer money for some time but really, nothing breaks a Marshall. Just tell yourself it probably needed new tubes anyway, it'll come back sounding better than it did before it got damaged.
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: murraymurray on October 14, 2009, 01:24:58 AM
Just got the call telling me that its working and ready to pick up
Will find out what went wrong with it soon.
Also got them to rewire my preamp tubes so it can run 12ax7's instead of the 20year old russian 6n2p's or something or rather that were in there, hopefully that will make it sound better than before i broke it.
Practice tonight so will get to give it a good old cranking
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: noodleplugerine on October 14, 2009, 09:48:27 PM
This happened to my friend once, he took it to a tech who said he should buy an avenger, did the trick, sounds fine now.
Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: murraymurray on October 15, 2009, 03:43:34 AM
It was sounding pretty good last night so will hold off on buying another amp...for now
i was quite surprised with some of the techs comments, when he was asking about the amp i told him it was some old russian made thing and he said theyre probably just made in china, i told him that i dont really think too many companies lie about things being made in russia to seem higher quality, that would only happen for vodka.

Title: Re: BAD - Blown Amp Day
Post by: HTH AMPS on October 15, 2009, 02:36:40 PM
It was sounding pretty good last night so will hold off on buying another amp...for now
i was quite surprised with some of the techs comments, when he was asking about the amp i told him it was some old russian made thing and he said theyre probably just made in china, i told him that i dont really think too many companies lie about things being made in russia to seem higher quality, that would only happen for vodka.



if its a RedBear amp, then those were most certainly made in Russia by Sovtek (if I remember rightly).

those 6n2p's are still available and cheap too, though I can see why someone would want to rewire the sockets for ECC83s just for ease of sourcing parts (and playing around with various valves to tweak the tone).

never used those 6n2p's, but some of those old Russian valves are very nice quality (especially the EL84 types).