Two amps not working this week

[M Fowler]

Well it has taken me this long to get any response from the shipper and that was to ask for my order number.

Filled out the UPS damage report, good thing I have lots of experience being a government employee breezed right through those forms

I am requesting three new ECC83 preamp tubes as they seem to be the ones that took the brunt of the damage. Small claim if you ask me.

Tried the amp on loud this afternoon it rocks, things started falling over and coming off the walls. This thing has pure power either high channel I or low channel II. So I jumpered ch I into ch II and now that was nice. When you do that you get some very nice SRV grind with the strat and ZZ top La Grange with the Les Paul. I can see this amp being popular. Will be fun to see what other people have to say about it.

Mark

[M Fowler]

I finally called and got my authorization to return the 1960 amp, I decided there could be more problems internally so I'll will start with a fresh amp and see if there is a difference.

Customer service never did tell me what the problem was with no getting back to me on email, oh, well done now.

The Rebel will be going on my work bench to see what fried and to see what makes the blend control work.

Mark

[M Fowler]

I emailed Bugera about their warranty and they said of course you can replace the tubes but that will void the warranty as they cannot be responsible for those that remove a platform (chassis) and do not bias correctly and etc. They said I hope you understand.

I wrote back and said you are selling a vacuum tube amplifier it will need new tubes as some time. If a customer needs to replace a pre-amp tube that is one thing. I can understand that a tech should be the one to correctly bias the amp but if you had put a bias point on the back of the amp and used 10 turn precission 20k locking knob bias pot then that would have eliminated removal of the chassis (platform). I don't know if they will replay.

Mark

[Andy Le Blanc]

That's the point really, If the bean counting person can justify a reduction in
the expense that real customer service entails, that makes perfect sense.
It also reduces their liability, you don't want anybody assuming they know
what their doing poking around inside.

[Jana]

I emailed Bugera about their warranty and they said of course you can replace the tubes but that will void the warranty as they cannot be responsible for those that remove a platform (chassis) and do not bias correctly and etc. They said I hope you understand.

This is my opinion on this, I don't see how this is possible. For example, car manufacturers can't require that you use a certain brand of oil, filters, tires, or etc. If they did make that requirement because of warranty, then they would have to also provide you, free of charge, with those parts and the labor to change them. My understanding is that as long as you document things, like an oil change for example, they cannot void your warranty.

I would think the same applies to tubes. They are like oil or tires for a car. They have a finite life span and need to be replaced at certain intervals. It would seem to me that if Bugera says they will void the warranty because you replace tubes, then they must provide the replacements and labor for free.

That's my opinion on this, I am not a lawyer nor do I play one in real life.

[M Fowler]

The Bugera is gone to UPS good bye.

The Rebel 20 is on the work bench and I found the fried resistor now I have to take the top pcb out to get at it but the boards are labeled nicely and I took lots of pictures. I plan to gut this down to see what makes it tick then repair the board and fire it back up.

The burnt resistor is under the pcb in the left upper corner.

Mark

[M Fowler]

Here is the burnt board.

Mark

[Structo]

Any idea why they fried?

[M Fowler]

Not sure it was plugged into a 16 ohm cabinet and amp set to 16 with guitar/amp working fine and then it started to smell and smoke so I hurried up and shut it off. Not sure if an overload of some kind did this. The speaker cab and cable are good.

I took the amp completely apart and will start over after I figure a few things out about this amp.

Mark

[Andy Le Blanc]

I've seen quite a few bad carbon film resistors doing repairs. I almost hope
they got a bad batch, repair shops will do well, did you time the dis-assembly?

[M Fowler]

Andy I did not time the disasembly but I did take about 75 photos.

Mark

[Andy Le Blanc]

Holy cow. Some repairs are though, most companies are very tight with
scheme and board diagrams, let alone any service materials on current products.
photo facts on any unit are a great help.

[M Fowler]

Well eventually I do have to repair the second board, check out the burnt area on the top board and put it all back together so photos was the only way for me to do that. So many interconnects on this amp due to its small size where one large PCB would have been a lot easier.

Mark

[Andy Le Blanc]

In some, the interconnects get flakey, exercise the connections and a host of
issues can mysteriously vanish. Pictures are good, the complexity of some
of these really is daunting.