:eek2: :yell: :blackeye:
OK... so Evergrove's practicing at my pad this afternoon and we're in the middle of a tune. Midway through I hear this KKRRRTTCH sound from my amp. I check my pedals... still powered, cords still in. Then Liana goes, "Oh my God, you're on fire!!!"
I looked back and the amp's lights were off but there's very nasty-looking and smelling gray-black smoke curling out the back of the amp's rear grille. I ran over and yanked all the power and signal cables out of the amp, and Russ ran to the garage and got a screwdriver and a small desk fan.
I unscrewed the rear grille and fanned out all the smoke in there... Tubes looked normal and weren't burnt or broken or discolored. However the output transformer (the bigger of the two, I think that's the OT tranny) was too hot to touch and smoke was leaking out from under the chassis.
We took it outside (didn't want that smoke in the house) and kept the fan on it until it was cool enough to touch. It took half an hour to cool down. After that I unscrewed the amp from the headbox, and underneath the amp this is what i find...
Total damage...
Right underneath the transformer, next to the V1 preamp tube:
Between V9 and V9 power tubes.
As you can see... the fire came from two resistors next to V1. My drummer, Troy, has been training to be an electrician and he said what it looks like they got hot enough to explode and set the board on fire. The other two in the lower section burned but didn't explode.
The fire probably used all the air under the chassis and burnt itself out. it probably only lasted a few seconds or so.
Here's the weird thing... my amps been a bit noisy for the past month so Friday night I took the back off and powered it up normally The tubes didn't display a negative reaction to the tap test with a chopstick and behaved normally... good color, no O2 leakage, etcs. They sounded worn but looked perfect. Nothing else looked strange.
As some of you may know I run an attenuator... this heats up the tubes a little but higher than normal but aside from the paint on the tubes turning from red to brown from the heat (happened a long time ago) I've operated the amp like that from day 1 (almost 2 years) with no ill effects.
As you might imagine the fuse blew as well haha.
Lucky for me Russ is letting me borrow his Classic 30 head until I get a replacement, but before I get another Legacy I wanna know WHY this happened so if it's preventable I can take stock of that and not do something to make that happen again. I don't redline the amp, I put it on about 6 for both channels, and then the attenuator controls that to get it to non-earsplitting level. I've run it like that for two years with no trouble.
Any idea what the hell happened??
OK... so Evergrove's practicing at my pad this afternoon and we're in the middle of a tune. Midway through I hear this KKRRRTTCH sound from my amp. I check my pedals... still powered, cords still in. Then Liana goes, "Oh my God, you're on fire!!!"
I looked back and the amp's lights were off but there's very nasty-looking and smelling gray-black smoke curling out the back of the amp's rear grille. I ran over and yanked all the power and signal cables out of the amp, and Russ ran to the garage and got a screwdriver and a small desk fan.
I unscrewed the rear grille and fanned out all the smoke in there... Tubes looked normal and weren't burnt or broken or discolored. However the output transformer (the bigger of the two, I think that's the OT tranny) was too hot to touch and smoke was leaking out from under the chassis.
We took it outside (didn't want that smoke in the house) and kept the fan on it until it was cool enough to touch. It took half an hour to cool down. After that I unscrewed the amp from the headbox, and underneath the amp this is what i find...
Total damage...
Right underneath the transformer, next to the V1 preamp tube:
Between V9 and V9 power tubes.
As you can see... the fire came from two resistors next to V1. My drummer, Troy, has been training to be an electrician and he said what it looks like they got hot enough to explode and set the board on fire. The other two in the lower section burned but didn't explode.
The fire probably used all the air under the chassis and burnt itself out. it probably only lasted a few seconds or so.
Here's the weird thing... my amps been a bit noisy for the past month so Friday night I took the back off and powered it up normally The tubes didn't display a negative reaction to the tap test with a chopstick and behaved normally... good color, no O2 leakage, etcs. They sounded worn but looked perfect. Nothing else looked strange.
As some of you may know I run an attenuator... this heats up the tubes a little but higher than normal but aside from the paint on the tubes turning from red to brown from the heat (happened a long time ago) I've operated the amp like that from day 1 (almost 2 years) with no ill effects.
As you might imagine the fuse blew as well haha.
Lucky for me Russ is letting me borrow his Classic 30 head until I get a replacement, but before I get another Legacy I wanna know WHY this happened so if it's preventable I can take stock of that and not do something to make that happen again. I don't redline the amp, I put it on about 6 for both channels, and then the attenuator controls that to get it to non-earsplitting level. I've run it like that for two years with no trouble.
Any idea what the hell happened??
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