While I was sitting drinking my morning coffee, I found this interesting article on diagnosing valve tube problems in amps ( I know I am a bit sad!). It is on the Mesa Boogie website and I thought it was worth sharing. it is well written and I thought it would be useful for folks when their amp starts “misbehaving”. We have suffered not just tha p stopping in its tracks, but the crackles and pops that start appearing and the loud hum and horrible sounding distortion appearing.
Here is the link to article just click on this sentence. The article is by Mesa Boogie but it applies to all valve/tube amps.
For those who want to delve a bit deeper here is an article that goes through a whole pile of faults and recommends the likely cause. You might not want to dig into the amp yourself but it will help you narrow down what is wrong and save you a trip to your local amp tech. It might be something simple you can tackle
Here is the link click here . It is quite an old site but the info is good.
It should really help narrow down the fault for you and then you can have a look at all the nicely priced valves and kits in our store 🙂
If you are new to valve amps you might want to click here and have a look at this overview. Some good hints on what to look for when buying an amp.
Finally, please remember that valve/tube amps use hundreds of DC volts and this is lethal, so if you are not sure – visit your local amp tech and you can live to play another day!