Tube Amp Archive

Just wanted to give a last report in. My amp is finally back to 100% and rockin' and rollin' again! When we got into the amp this time it turned out to be a pretty easy fix. There were more than a few loose connectors in the amp and one of the ground connectors was just barely hanging on. It looked ...

Thanks for the heads up VibratoKing, We're getting back into the amp on Thursday and we'll check about that as well. I would look right now but we put the amp back in it's cabinet wondering if the wiring was picking up noise when it wasn't in a shielded environment. For some reason still unknown to ...

Hey Ampgeek, He took one look at your pic and saw what he did wrong. Your cable going to the probe has the shield removed, which he says makes perfect sense. He wired it with the shield on the probe, just comes from how we've sandwiched in time to work on the amp. We've been trying to make the equip...

Thanks for the insight guys, we'll check into that and see what we can track down. I'm wondering if we might have knocked something loose when we used the contact cleaner and that is now resting on something it shouldn't. Some of the debris I mean. Is that also possible? We'll go down the list and s...

So we've had success on fixing the amp... sort of! The original problem has been corrected. We went over it again and fixed any joints that looked even slightly suspicious and also went over it again with contact cleaner in all the pertinent places thoroughly. When I hooked everything back up I no l...

Thanks Structo, Hopefully tomorrow will be the fateful day. Yeah I was surprised too. The B-52 heads aren't what you would call a premium tube head by any means, but they weren't exactly cheap either. I was disappointed that they used particle board but I guess it's getting to be more of the norm th...

Hey everyone, Especially since Nakedape is having similar proglems I didn't want to keep everyone in suspense about what's going on with my amp repair. I hate it when I am following a forum post that I need/want information from that just seems to die when the OP gives up or has a fix. I'm still on ...

Hey Nakedape, Welcome to the club of defunct B-52s :( I didn't have the wire issue that you were talking about in my amp. Maybe at the factory someone wasn't paying attention at quality control? I actually had my amp modded a fair bit a couple years ago as it was overheating the tubes at the factory...

Been a few days so I thought I would post back here while I had a minute and update the status of my repair job. At the moment I am at a slight stand still. We decided to try the listening device ampgeek had mentioned but unfortunately the local Radio Shack lacks one of the parts, the capacitor. Aft...

True enough! I don't know why I didn't even think of that... guess that's what happens when you are staying too busy :oops: I do have a second tube amp (Fender Blues Jr.) that takes 12AX7s. I can test the preamps anyway. The power tubes are very different, but I kind of expect it is the preamp secti...

Hey ampgeek. The B-52 is a 100watt amp. 4 6L6s are used in the power amp section. Don't know if it would make one bit of difference for what you need to know on gauging things but it also has a 5AR4 tube for the rectifier stage and has a Class A/AB/Solid State switch. I'll have a family member of mi...

Thanks for the info guys, Perhaps I misspoke when I said that the amp was burning up tubes. Not a good thing to do when you're asking for technical advice huh? :oops: No tubes are burning out in an obvious way. I'm not even sure the tubes ARE burning out at all. I only have one spare preamp tube tho...

Well, looks like I'm not going to get the time to spend working on the amp today like I had hoped. It might be the weekend before I get a chance to set down with it now. I believe that it's the preamp section, but I guess I can't be 100% on that. When I changed the tubes I changed them on two differ...

Hey guys, Just reporting in. I got to take out the chassis today and start looking over the components inside. Didn't get as much time as I would have liked though. It was pretty clean in there as far as dirt and oxidation goes. Very little of any grit at all and components seemed solid and of good ...

I got to try the initial cleaning of the sockets today but no luck there. There might have been a very slight improvement, but I believe it might just have been a psychological wish to have my labors reap a reward :wink: I'm hoping to get the time on Tuesday to take the chassis out and clean the sol...