Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Bushman

Bushman

New member
Howdy Forumites...
My trusty Twin Tube Classic pedal had to be pulled from my pedalboard and temporarily replaced by my J&H pedal. Bummer!
It started making fairly loud crackling / frying egg kind of sounds. I am running it on the stock power supply. Checked all cable connections, all solder joints, components for scorching, nothing obvious.
Have any of you experienced this? Know what's possibly going on?
Any help would be awesome...
The circuit board has "412515 rev. A Seymour Duncan Research" on it.
Here's pics of the board:
PedalTubes3.jpg

PedalTubes2.jpg
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

I honestly don't know what could be the problem. I used to have a twin tube mayhem, but never had that problem. Have you called SD and told them about it? They'll be more than willing to help.
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

I sent them a voice mail and an email.
Didn't figure they work on the weekends, so waiting till next week for a reply, I would assume...
I have heard that tubes in an amplifier can make frying / crackling sounds when they go microphonic or just bad.
I didn't know if a tube change might cure it.
I don't have a clue...
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

How long have you had it?

If it's old enough, then a tube change might be worth the investment anyways. I change the tubes on my amps about once a year. Marshall recommends that you change them every 18 to 24 months if used 2 or 3 times a week. I use my tube amps nearly daily, so once a year is a good rule of thumb. But I digress.

According to the Twin Tube Classic Manual, you shouldn't have to change tubes often, but the problems that you're describing are virtually identical to what they describe the pedal might sound like when the tube goes bad. In the manual, it says to not switch the tubes out yourself, and instead contact SD for more information. They'll probably recommend that you send in the pedal, and they will switch out the tubes for you.

In the mean time, anyone know where I can get a good deal on some 6L6's? It's about that time of the year.
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Thanks for the replies...
The pedal is about 3-4 years old..
The tubes look to be a piece of cake to replace, 8 posts abouve the circuit board to solder to, insulation tubing on the bare wires, notch in the tube wiring for correct orientation. I won't even have to pull the circuit board out.
But waiting on SD's reccomendation...
Maybe do the tubes on my '65 TRRI at the same time...
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

It's probably just a tube problem. Does it crackle on both channels (I'm assuming one tube is for one channel and one is for the other)? Those look almost identical to the tubes I had in my Siegmund Missing Link and they're supposed to be military tubes that are supposed to last a very long time (much longer than your standard preamp/poweramp tubes), but I suppose anything can fail if subjected to excessive vibration/wear and tear.
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

That90'sGuy said:
It's probably just a tube problem. Does it crackle on both channels (I'm assuming one tube is for one channel and one is for the other)? Those look almost identical to the tubes I had in my Siegmund Missing Link and they're supposed to be military tubes that are supposed to last a very long time (much longer than your standard preamp/poweramp tubes), but I suppose anything can fail if subjected to excessive vibration/wear and tear.
Click to expand...

Yeah, crackles both channels. Of course the lead channel is dramatically louder than the rhythm channel.
As far as excessive vibration/wear, that's not the case I assure you. It has lived on my pedalboard, in a flight case from day one. But a have quite a bit of playing hours on it. I generally play about five nights a week for about four hours or so per session. And it's my go to dirt pedal, so it's had a good workout in its life so far...
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Looks like a cinch to swap out those tubes. I'd certainly do it myself rather than sending it out.
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Bushman said:
Yeah, crackles both channels. Of course the lead channel is dramatically louder than the rhythm channel.
As far as excessive vibration/wear, that's not the case I assure you. It has lived on my pedalboard, in a flight case from day one. But a have quite a bit of playing hours on it. I generally play about five nights a week for about four hours or so per session. And it's my go to dirt pedal, so it's had a good workout in its life so far...
Click to expand...

Well, it is hard to make a diagnosis over the internet, but given the fact that both channels are crackling I'm almost inclined to believe it's something other than the tubes (unless you hear from SD that there's a tube that actually impacts both channels). I'd say it's a tube issue for sure if it was just crackling on one channel (if that makes any sense), but it would be interesting to hear what SD has to say about it.
 
Last edited:
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

GuitarDoc said:
Looks like a cinch to swap out those tubes. I'd certainly do it myself rather than sending it out.
Click to expand...

Normally when it comes to guitars, I'd rewire that ***** in a heartbeat, but my soldering iron isn't exactly precise, so if it were my pedal, I'd be sending it out. If you can do it though, good luck.
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Scott from SD shot me an email today, saying "send it to us. we'll fix you right up". Good customer service. So I'm sending it..
I concurr with T90G about each channel having it's own tube. Makes sense.
I'll keep you posted...
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Update: I sent my Twin Tube Classic in to SD, got it back pretty darn quick, no charge as well!
You Rock Seymour Duncan!!!
They replaced V1 and T1, whatever those componenets are.
Anyway, thanks for the help guys, and thank you Seymour Duncan, I have my favorite dirt pedal back!
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Bushman said:
Update: I sent my Twin Tube Classic in to SD, got it back pretty darn quick, no charge as well!
You Rock Seymour Duncan!!!
They replaced V1 and T1, whatever those componenets are.
Anyway, thanks for the help guys, and thank you Seymour Duncan, I have my favorite dirt pedal back!
Click to expand...

V1 is the first tube. T1 is the transformer.

I'm pretty sure V1 is used on both channels, and V2 is used to boost the gain on channel 2.
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

(No prob, but this actually should have been posted in the amp forum).

Glad to hear that SD takes such good care of us. And glad to hear that you got your dirt back so quick.

As we all know, this is a great company in every respect....great products, great support, great people!!! The Forum Fugly Bucker is a great example of that.

SD.....I love you!
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

I'm told that both the TT Classic & the TT Blues have power supply design problems. I don't know if they use "wall warts" or not but this seems to be a common complaint with them. They have a very strange input voltage and so you can't just buy a replacement power supply at the music store. If SD is good to fix it up that's a good deal.

The TT Blues was my favorite pedal that I never bought. SD took them off the market while I wasn't paying attention & I missed my window. Every so often I crawl the web & see what's out there, but I haven't found anything yet.

Good Luck
 
Re: Twin Tube Classic Making Crackling Sounds...

Aha! Tube and Tranny, that would make a racket, wouldn't it?

The Power supply is a 16V wall wart. So far no problems with the power supply and I haven't heard anything about them being problematic.
 
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