Tube Troubles...

sacto68

So last week while a practice my tube amp (Fender Blues DeVille 410) started making a weird crackle noise. It would first only do it while I played my bass (svt4pro - 810 cab). Then it would crackle with just the guitar playing in the room. I shut the amp down for about an hour. Warmed it back up & then everything was back to normal.

Dose this sound like the tubes a going out? I bought the amp used a year ago. The guy who I bought it from gave me a receipt showing me that the preamp tubes were just replaced.

Anyone else have this happen to them?

gimmesometruth27

sacto68 wrote:

So last week while a practice my tube amp (Fender Blues DeVille 410) started making a weird crackle noise. It would first only do it while I played my bass (svt4pro - 810 cab). Then it would crackle with just the guitar playing in the room. I shut the amp down for about an hour. Warmed it back up & then everything was back to normal.

Dose this sound like the tubes a going out? I bought the amp used a year ago. The guy who I bought it from gave me a receipt showing me that the preamp tubes were just replaced.

Anyone else have this happen to them?

it doesn't sound like a typical tube issue to me. it can be a number of things. typically in my experience when tubes are going bad i have volume fluctuations going from normal to quiet and back. usually when i get crackling it is due to one of the following...

1. bad or loose connections somewhere in my chain. i start by checking my guitar cables and sub one or both of them to see if that takes care of it. next i clean out the amp cable inputs. if those do not help then i go to my board and make sure i have solid connections there, which is a major pain. i ues george l's connector cables and i just sub each one out until i find the problem one or i will just make better connections between the cable and the end pieces until it is fixed. if that does not help i inspect and clean all of the inputs and outputs on my pedals....my main problem usually occurs where my guitar cable enters my pedalboard input jack. for some reason that jack always is getting a bad connection and has had to be replaced twice in 7 years. the input jack just goes bad for some reason. probably from the inserting and removing of the guitar cable since that is the only input jack i really use besides my amp input.

2. you could have a dirty pot on the guitar or amp.

3. check your power source. sometimes there might be a grounding issue. we use power conditioners and that seems to help with many issues my bad might be having. maybe try a different outlet?

i would try those suggestions. hope that helps.