These good value for money home studio power amps must be one of the most popular home studio amps there is. I guess it is because they look good in a home setting compared with traditional rack mounted gear. Also no fan is a blessing. Annoyingly the Samson Servo range does suffer from a common … Read more
Had the pleasure of servicing a Hellcat combo this week. A low serial number from around 2003 or 2004 built to the usual high Cornford standard. Compared with your average production amp like Fender and Marshall it’s the little things that I notice on these amps that make them stand out. For example aerospace PTFE … Read more
Problem: excessive hum from speaker. Solution : Often caused by faulty capacitors not smoothing the rectified ac properly however in this amps case it was something else as well. In this amp a number of op amps that are used for the effects send and return loop are powered by a 30v supply. It’s worth … Read more
Nice little budget amps with a range of built in effects. Seem to suffer from intermittent sound loss and cutting out. The PCB are plagued with bad joints around ribbon cables, regulator U10, and although I have not seen it the numerous large resistors and caps. Also recently saw one making g a terrible humming … Read more
Great looking vintage amps powered by tiny chip amp like you might find in car stereo but don’t let that put you off. Inside you have a pair of quality Celestion speakers, twin channels clean and valve powered drive channel, tremolo and reverb depending on model. Construction wise it’s pretty poor inside with a budget … Read more
These monster heads are well liked by metal players for their high gain and awesome volume. Well this one came to me like a crippled kitten, working one minute and then cutting out where volume dipped completely strangling the output. The cause? Well Laney do design great amps, in terms of tone, but due the … Read more
Nice Diddy combos that have a massive sound despite their tiny size. Issues I have seen inclue: Output transformer cut out after a while and the culprit turns out to be the tiny output transformer. If you google round you’ll find this isn’t such an isolated problem and if you have this then you are … Read more
Just recently worked on a few of these lovely PA speakers that are common site in pubs and mobile DJ. Great build quality means they are generally very reliable but occasionally things do go wrong. Despite being surface mount components they are good to work on and definitely worth repairing.
This horrible farty little distortion is spoiling a lovely Sheldon TT3 1W combo amp. It is most obvious when you play hard on a single string, as per the clip below which shows the scope trace measured on the speaker output terminal. Farty Distortion on Sheldon TT3 Combo
Well made PCB amps with high quality components and Lead dress. Watch out for the hidden mains fuse holder on the back. Its functiona is combined with voltage selector so if you put it in incorrectly then there could be trouble as you could be accidentally configuring the amp for say 110v and applying 240v.
What an oddity. Is it a storage heater? Nope its a 212 hybrid combo from Germany and by date on some of the caps 1971. The design inside is completely eccentric, it feels more like a laboratory prototype than a rock amp. There are bus bars for the HT voltage, ground rail and little clusters … Read more