Crosstalk between stages of Mesa Road King II guitar amplifi

[cheater]

Hi guys,
I am new to the forum so if I am breaking any rules please let me know!

I have a Mesa Road King II here. It's basically a very souped up Dual
Rectifier. It's not doing what I would like it to be doing.

You can find a schematic here:
http://milas.spb.ru/~kmg/files/schemati ... g%20II.pdf

The amp is in pretty good condition, however the stages have a lot of
crosstalk. What I mean by this is: if I make the signal run through an
effects loop, and put empty plugs into the send/return, the amp should
be totally quiet, but a lot of sound does come through.
If you look at the schematic, the (two) loops are between V5a and V5b
which is a 12ax7. The sound that comes through is fairly loud
especially compared to normal practice-at-home levels; it's a bit
bypassed. Either way, it means to me that V6 is getting the signal
somehow through a voltage rail or some other way.

What this results in is that when my nice Decimator G-String II gate
cuts out because I've palm muted the guitar, i still get a lot of
string rattle coming through, which pretty much makes the gating
useless. The gate gets its control signal from unprocessed guitar, but
it mutes at the very end, in the last effects chain.

Here's how the leakage responds to the various controls on the amp:

chan 1/2 master: at 0, there is no output. turning up to max makes the
output loud.
chan 3/4 master: at 0, there is noticeable output. turning up to max
adds bass to the leaked signal or seems to change the resonance of
whatever "send level" is doing.
gain: at 0, no leaking. at max, noticeable output.
presence, bass, mid, treble, raw/vintage/modern switch, clean/fat/brit
or clean/fat/tweed switch: no control of leaked signal at all
output: at the lowest setting, there's noticeable output. then as you
go 5% up the output becomes duller and a bit quieter(but there's still
a lot of low signal leaking through, just the high freqs are
attenuated), then as you turn output up it becomes really, really,
really loud.

signal leaks even with tuner mute engaged, but a bit quieter. BTW,
engaging tuner mute results in a really loud popping noise.
send level (on the back) seems to not control the loudness of the leak
at all, but there is a resonance, like a 4th order resonant peaking
EQ, and as you turn the knob, the resonance sweeps frequency. So it's
like the freq knob of a really nasty peaking EQ.

taking out V4 or V5 changes nothing, the leak persists. removing
either V1, V2, V3 or V6 turns off the sound completely, including the
leak, and the usual expected hum/buzz that you get even when the
guitar is perfectly quiet.


I have several questions:
1. Has anyone come across this kind of issue?
2. How do I fix this?
3. Where would the crosstalk be coming from? Could it be coming from
the preamp tubes' "C" voltage rail, that is the HV supply going to the preamp tubes? Are there any other places?
4. Could this be due to dual tubes being used rather than singles? AKA
could two halves of a tube be leaking to one another?
5. Could this be fixed by re-biasing the tubes in the preamp?
Especially what I assume is a differential push-pull pair made out of
V6a and V6b.
6. Can I decouple the C rail? The idea was to do something like this:
http://tinyurl.com/j35c7dq
however I've never worked with tube circuits and don't know how the
tubes might react to this kind of thing. Naturally the values are
wrong but that's the topology.
7. Does anyone know of a good mailing list or forum that talks only
about servicing and modifying Mesa/Boogie amplifiers? Or just in
general only tube guitar amps?

Thanks everyone!

[pdf64]

The issue may be due to high impedance circuits and stray capacitance, eg between the contacts of the various relays, some of which carry very high signal levels, others low signal levels.

The trebly nature (?) of the crosstalk indicates that it's unlikely to be occurring via the HT; if you wish to eliminate that possibility, C7 / C8 / C16 may be replaced with a very low ESR type, and a 0.1uF film cap could be added in parallel with one of them.

The LTP phase splitter V6 is very unlikely to have any affect on the crosstalk; it is key to the power amp, so it would be best not to mess with it.

As the crosstalk remains with V5 removed, it can't be due to signal coupling between its sections (the send and receive circuits).

The thing is that the amp is an extremely powerful pro stage type, and at the levels it's intended to operate at, it probably isn't an issue?

Modding the amp to mitigate the issue may cause other problems, and with a densely packed double sided pcb, may be complex, require a high degree of technical competence, and perhaps even be ultimately futile.
ie if there was a simple fix, Mesa would probably have done it.

Consider working around it, eg use a different amp for home practice.

Or if the Mesa pre-amp is vital, try taking the output from the fx to a different power amp; to avoid the leakage from the Mesa being heard, may need to use a suitable dummy load in place of its speakers, or operate with eg V6 removed.

Good luck!