Have you ever had a valve amp fail on you mid rehearsal or mid gig?

[Sidler72]

I never have but I was in a band with a second guitar player who had a power tube go out on his Marshall amp in the middle of the gig. Luckily he was also the keyboard player so we did all the songs we could with keys in them until our lights guy showed up with his amp which I think was a spider 1/12

 

[PatF]

I had a 50W DIY Marshall go down at rehearsal from a bad solder joint. I took the chassis out to check and one of the guys asked where the high voltage spots are. I was pointing down the power rail and touched something and it shocked the F*CK! out of me. Hurt bad. I finished the practice disoriented with a backup amp.

My rack went down at a gig. I was able to get some of it back in mono to finish the set.

 

[unix-guy]

My first ever tube amp was a used jcm800 that died every time I rehearsed with it. I returned it to PMT about a month after buying it and they traded me a jcm600 combo. This also kept dying. So they traded me that for an Ashdown fallen angel 60 watt combo, which also kept dying.

That got sent to Ashdown who repaired it, but it never sounded as good after the fix.

Maybe bad power where you rehearsed?

 

[adam]

Maybe bad power where you rehearsed?

With the 800 very likely, when I got the 600 we moved to a different location. I think the 600 could have been tube related as it lost gain and volume, not all power.

 

[JasonE]

I have only ever had one amp fail on me and it was at a gig. It was an Egnater Tweaker 40 combo. I hadn't had it for very long. Thankfully, I had packed a second combo amp and had it in the car when it happened. The Egnater would sound like someone flipped the standby switch on it while I was playing. The sound would get a bit fuzzy then go out. It then came back. It did this a few times. I was so mad at it at one point that I put my foot on top of it and shoved it against the wall once to jolt it. That brought it back for a short while. We had to take a break so I could get the other amp and hook it up.

I talked to the local amp repair shop about it and they told me to open it up and look for any dull solder joints on the power tube sockets because it sounds like it was losing voltage by what I described to them. Sure enough, I found ONE solder joint on a power tube that was dull. I grabbed my soldering iron and reflowed the joint. That fixed the amp. I played a number of gigs with it after that and it has been solid since then.

I bought the amp used from GC. I am betting that is why someone got rid of it. GC never had it running long enough to cause the issue to happen. The amp needed to heat up for it to happen. I am sure whoever sold it to them or traded it in knew it had an issue and that it took a bit of time playing though it to make it fail. They had a mistake in the computer on what the amp was and had it priced $100 less than it should have been priced. I told the guy that if they had the footswitch for it I would buy it. He found the footswitch and went to ring it up. That is when he found that they had it in the system as a head and not a combo and had the price set lower than what it should have been. He said since they had it marked at that price he would honor it. He said if I didn't buy it the price was going up as soon as I walked away. That could have become interesting if I didn't buy it and someone else bought it and had the issue I had and just returned it.

 

[MatrixClaw]

I had a Bugera 333XL catch fire during practice

 

[Will Onyx]

Had an amp go down at a show one time. Effects loop got buggered up and the amp kept getting cleaner and quieter until it quit. Jumpering the send and return did not fix it. I kept trying to compensate by turning up the gain on a blues driver pedal I kept on my board for edge of breakup tones.

Luckily it was the last set, there was only like 3 songs left and there was another guitar player in the band to finish it out.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

The only gig problems I've had have been down to cables.

I've had a preamp valve start making noises in my jcm900 at a gig but made it through ok and a power valve in a mesa transatlantic blew on me once, this was at a rehearsal though.