Really?
I played an Avenger for an hour once at half volume (that was darn loud), and it was smashing.
What is wrong with yours?
Here is the saga of my Avenger....
I got it in April 08 from Sounds Great near Manchester. I played it at home with a 16ohm hotplate just to tame it a bit on and off for a few weeks and i was really into it! then my band went on tour round europe in june 08 for almost 3 weeks with 2 other american bands. the US didnt have work permits so i said they could all borrow my gear and id hook up some cabs and drums and transport etc. (they returned the favour last month when we toured in the USA). All three bands used my 6505 (which i swapped for the LTD in the photo) and my soldano.
At the penultimate show, the soldano just cut out. all the volume dropped right out. cos im busy with work when im not doing band stuff, i got straight in touch with the dealer and with soldano to ask about diagnosing the fault. Bill at soldano sent me some details and i agreed after communication with sounds great that id take it to my tech in london to see if he could narrow down the fault. save courier cost to get it to manc etc....
Anyway, after he had it a week it took me a while to get a lift to go pick it up, and then i was going to drop it off in manchester in october when i had to get a lift up to sheffield to pick up some merch. we were gonna stay in manc and swing by sounds great in the morning and drop it off. basically, it took me a while to get it back.
after a while trying to find out what went wrong with the head (sounds great didnt tell me they had recieved it back or that anyone had even looked at it yet) i eventually was told it had a faulty output transformer. I had serious missgivings about the amp at this point from a reliability point of view. I was also accussed of damaging the amp by using the hotplate in a stupid way, which offended me greatly.
i told them id be going away to tour after xmas in america so they could take it easy with the amp as i was in no rush to get it back (this was in november when i called them). when i got back from the USA at the end of January this year, i email a few times and find out nobody has done any work on my amp. At this point i was getting angry and just asked for my money back. they told me a replacement transformer has been shipped out and they'd fix it soon and soak test it.
i was offered a the chance to get a different amp, a 50watt Avenger plus store credit, or store credit. I didnt want store credit as i wasnt happy with the service id had and i dont intend to buy anything from there again, so all those options where out. i just wanted my money but that wasnt going to happen. I thought id give them the chance to fix it and get it back to me. then i could play it and maybe get into it again. fair chance aint it!
so yeah. i get it back yesterday and unbox it.
i notice the bolts that would hold in the chassis have been replaced with rusty big fat flat head types with rusty washer that dont match the marks in the tolex. so they clearly lost the original bolts. which really annoyed me. loosing the nice looking bolts out of a £1300 head!!
on seeing this i thought id take out the chassis and give it the once over. the preamp tubes had all be changed for sovteks, which didnt actually sit in the preamp sockets well. they were so loose they kept tipping up. i put some electro harmonics tubes in and they sat fine. sturdy.
I then decided to use my Bias Rite to check the current draw on all the 5881. i would assume a matched quad would draw 36mA at 490v plate current. the tubes read 35mA & 67mA for the centre pair, and 45mA & 55mA for the out pair. NICE! so i pulled those and put in my spare set of 5881 and rebiased and they all lined up. but hey... thanks sounds great for sending my amp back with horribly hot power stage!
THEN! with nothing in either input i put the preamp up to 2 and the master up to 2 with the head straight into my 4x12 and i get the odd pop and crackle with lots of noise and low frequency hum. i swapped out each preamp tube one after the other and the problem hasnt done away.
definetly all good fun that you want to go through with such an expensive and well built amp. maybe.
in april i will have had this amp year and used it for a total of 2 week. well less than that in terms of hours!.
ill never buy soldano again or buy anything from sounds great after this mess is sorted.
im so bored of this im tempted to walk into sounds great with the head and just ram it into the floor and walk out. im that angry about it. if they'd have given me my money back when i asked id have probably gone with them for something else.
