Troubleshooting pet peeve

TravisW

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Jul 24, 2002
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Fargo, ND USA
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My 5150 has been giving me intermittent trouble for the past couple of months. The volume drops a ton and the tone thins way out, which says "preamp tube" to me. Normally, I could do a "Fonzie" by whacking it on the top with my fist, but last practice I couldn't get anything out of it aside from a Crate practice amp tone and very little volume.

So, tonight I went over to our rehearsal pad armed with two 12ax7s, ready to do some serious troubleshooting. Greatest tone ever. I couldn't get the thing to have any problems. It was even less noisy than usual. After an hour of playing it at various volumes and settings, I gave up.

The moral to this thread? If you have the parts to fix something, it will never break.